As my first year as ASA Assistant Treasurer comes to a close, I thought it appropriate to use this opportunity to share with our membership ASA’s approach to investing its financial assets.
The precise value of ASA’s long-term investment portfolio obviously fluctuates daily with the financial markets. But, as of this writing, our society has a total of approximately $78 million in financial reserves invested in a broad variety of financial instruments. While that might appear to be more than sufficient, ASA’s Administrative Procedures restrict the overwhelming majority of those funds for specific purposes, future obligations and emergency reserves. After allowing for those commitments, ASA’s available reserves in 2016 have consistently hovered below $7 million.
To put that in context, in 2015 the society needed to withdraw almost $3 million from its available long-term reserves for unbudgeted needs relating to the Anesthesia Quality Institute, the VA Nursing Handbook advocacy initiative...
