[T]he dinner cost $553,719 to put on, and generated $806,250 in ticket sales and donations. (A detailed accounting of the 2018 event isn’t yet available.) Less than half of the contributions—$108,000—went to 25 scholarships; the rest went to general operating expenses like the organization’s searchable pool report archive or programming like panels with former White House secretaries. And the WHCA as a whole netted just over $29,000 for the fiscal year ending in October 2017.
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$452,817 was spent on the venue and food, $24,191 on host Hasan Minhaj and other entertainment, and $76,711 for the percent of the executive director’s salary spent working on the dinner, as well as payments to vendors and event staff for a total of $553,719.
In 2016, it was even worse. The Washington Post reported the annual dinner was “nearly the entire source of [the association’s] annual revenue of around $600,000.” That year, the association awarded “about $77,500 to 18 students,” Money‘s Kaitlin Mulhere reported. “That’s small change compared to the incredible amount of money spent on and around what’s been dubbed D.C.’s Nerd Prom,” she added.