By Tyree Stovall
NABJ Executive Director Drew Berry celebrated the organization’s apparent success at the opening ceremony for the Chicago convention Wednesday night, but key details about the convention’s financial performance have not been disclosed.
“Our extremely successful NABJ business model harnesses the power of our influence to service both our members and partners,” Berry said during his speech at the opening ceremony. “Our advocacy, which is a mix of very public and quiet diplomacy efforts, are further fueled by a solid financial foundation that we built.”
Berry and NABJ’s executive board have yet to provide concrete data to back up the financial results. No revenue or spending numbers for the convention were provided during open sessions of the board’s Tuesday meeting, and Berry, NABJ Treasurer Jasmine Styles and NABJ Financial Manager Nate Chambers each declined requests from the NABJ Monitor to disclose revenue and surplus numbers for this year’s convention.
Chambers said the organization had brought in “unofficial total revenue” of $3,529,855 as of June 30. That amount includes preliminary convention revenue ahead of the convention. When asked to provide spending numbers, surplus numbers or an explanation of how that number compared to previous conventions, Chambers declined.
Chambers said that he could not provide updated numbers because of the possibility of conflict between executive members.
“We have audits coming in, giving us information, we have treasury’s information, and it wouldn’t be prudent and appropriate for us to give out information that might conflict with what they’re doing,” he said.
The Monitor reached out to Styles to comment on the matter and she declined, referring to the financial manager for information.
This contrasts with the recent history of financial data being reported and provided to The Monitor during NABJ conventions. In 2023, Berry reported that the Birmingham convention was expected to deliver a surplus of $700,000. In 2022, NABJ reported a convention revenue of $2.9 million, and a convention surplus of nearly $1.1 million, with Berry saying at the time that NABJ was “well positioned.”
Between 2014 and 2023, NABJ provided revenue and surplus information to the Monitor every year except 2019.
Former NABJ President and Treasurer Greg Hampton Lee said NABJ’s decision not to provide financial figures or projections is “very unusual.”
“If they don’t want to conflict with each other, then that’s a communication problem with them, and the membership shouldn’t suffer from that,” Lee said. “When I was treasurer, I was on the same page as the finance manager, so that’s very unusual. I don’t know why the numbers are not up.”
Former NABJ President Bob Butler disagreed. “It is not unusual to not know the final financial numbers of an NABJ convention until after it is over,” he said.
Berry has spoken at length about the record attendees at this year’s convention, announcing on Wednesday that the convention has drawn a record-breaking 4,181 registrations, surpassing Miami’s 2019 convention registrant total of 4,105.
He teased the record-breaking registration numbers during the executive board meeting on Tuesday. “As you can see, we do great in big markets, not just the small ones,” Berry said.
Styles also spoke with the Monitor, confident and briefly, about the convention’s success. “This is a multi-million-dollar convention, and I can’t give you the numbers because our books are still pending invoices but we spent some millions and we got millions back. For sure,” Styles said.
This year was intended to be a joint convention with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. In joint conventions the costs are shared between the organizations. This year, however, NAHJ celebrated its 40th convention alone in Los Angeles, July 9-13, meaning NABJ is bearing the full financial burden of the Chicago convention.
The Monitor reached out to Berry on this matter but he declined to comment. While the event’s high registration numbers have been deemed as a positive indicator, the event’s financial success has still not been determined.
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