What is TeX Users Group (TUG) doing with my money?

Last week, I wrote that I'll be giving up to 5% of my annual salary to Free and Open Source Software, and one of the projects that I'm donating to is the TeX Users Group (TUG). I joined TUG at the "special individual membership" tier at 50 USD - roughly 5000 INR - per annum. The right thing to do now is to check what they're doing with my money or what they've done with funds/donations in the past.

Lemme rewind a little - TUG came into my radar because I came across the TUG 2025 annual conference. I was surprised and saddened to find that it happened in Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram now), Kerala, India because it's an event that we at FOSS United would have loved to support financially. I kept the TUG 2025 tab open for multiple weeks because I wanted to watch a few of the talks.

Note to self : Check if anyone from India was a part of the organizing team for TUG 2025, and reach out to them. Maybe we (FOSS United) could support them in future events. 

The aims of the TeX Users Group are available online here, and so are the benefits offered by TUG to the members and the broader community. TUGboat, the communications of the TUG, seems to be the beating heart of the community, and all but the latest issue of TUGboat are open-access. For example, you can find issue 45:3, 2024 online. I can see the 2024 TUG financial statements in the latest issue (46:1, 2025) of TUGboat but you can find the 2023 TUG financial statements in their 45:1, 2024 issue. The 2024 statements will be available here when the next issue is out.

I'm a little surprised but also not surprised to find that there are only a 1000-ish paying members of TUG worldwide. The annual revenue for TUG is around 100,000 USD, close to 75% of that comes from membership dues. The two major expenses for TUG seem to be payroll and TUGboat prod/mailing, adding up to roughly 75% of their total expenditure. It's not clear to me at the moment what the payroll expense is - does someone work for TUG full-time or part-time? I'll also try to understand what "Office Overhead" is which makes up roughly 10% of the annual expenditure. TUG has a small but active TeX Development Fund, which I was hoping to see as a line item in the financial statement but maybe that's not the norm. There's also the TUG Bursary Fund that enables members of the TeX community to travel and attend the annual TUG conference which isn't listed in the financial statement but a report is mentioned in the conference issue of TUGboat.

If someone from TUG is reading this, please note that this is educational for me and not meant to criticize the TUG Board/Committees. As the head of FOSS United, this helps me understand what we should be doing.

TUGboat is a thing of beauty and it's a shame that TUG only has a 1000 paying members. Tens of thousands of faculty and students from the Physics and other fundamental Sciences departments in Indian academia use TeX on a daily basis and even 1% of them becoming a TUG member will make a significant difference. 

P.S. There's a tugindia mailing list, in case you want to keep up with India-specific TUG activities/news.

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