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The Chapter Fund of the AMS

The Chapter Fund is administered by the Chapter Activities Committee, which consists of three members appointed by the President with the approval of the Board of Directors. The members serve overlapping terms of three years each. The Committee dispenses funds budgeted annually by the Board to help AMS chapters defray unusual expenses (i.e., other than operating expenses).

Click here to view current committee membership.

Following are guidelines for the Committee's activities:

  1. Basic Guidelines
    1. Requests must be consistent with the objective of the Society as defined in Article II of its By-Laws, must be addressed in writing by a chapter officer to the chair of the Committee, and must be accompanied by appropriate documentation.
    2. The Committee provides only partial support for any request, ordinarily no more than one-half of the sum reflected in the request.
  2. Acceptable Fund subvention requests
    1. The Fund may reimburse up to one-half the 30-day economy airfare (not meals or lodging) for each chapter's student representatives on the AMS Council to attend the Friday morning Student Representatives to Council Breakfast meeting and the Saturday noon AMS Council meeting at the Society's Annual Meeting. (If the representative drives or takes other public transportation, the reimbursement request should not exceed the 30-economy airfare amount. Requests for reimbursement for tickets purchased less than 30 days from the date of travel may not be fully honored.) To request such reimbursement, a chapter officer (or student him/herself, upon approval by the Council Secretary) should submit to the Chair of the committee invoices or receipts, or a statement outlining automobile mileage. (The current IRS standard mileage reimbursement rates are used.) Please submit materials via this form. Please submit forms no later than three weeks after the meeting!
    2. The Fund may provide support for unusual expenses incurred for chapter meetings or other chapter activities. Such expenses may include the fees or other expenses of guest speakers or performers at chapter meetings, or the costs of duplicating abstracts of papers read at such meetings. The upper limit for this subvention is currently $250. Please send a note to the committee chair documenting the expenses.
    3. The Fund may be used to support reasonable venue costs for chapter meetings, such as rental of space and insurance, when such costs cannot be met in other ways. This financial assistance must be requested no fewer than 30 days in advance, and must include budgetary details and estimates. Please send a note to the committee chair with this information.
  3. Unacceptable Subvention Purposes
    1. The Fund may not provide subventions for chapters operating expenses, such as payment for clerical help, postal charges, purchase or rental of office equipment, or costs of announcements or chapter directories. (For these purposes the Society allocates annually to each chapter a per-capita sum -- $1.00 for 2023-24 -- calculated by multiplying that sum by the number of AMS members within the chapter's geographical boundaries.)
  4. Other Subventions
    1. Requests for subventions from the Fund that do not clearly fall within a category described above will be considered by the Committee on a case-by-case basis.