[Businessmtg] Agenda Item #2

[Anne OHara]

Hi All,

I am very much in favor of the distribution of funds to our service arms
however I am concerned about the lack of momentum that has taken place in
the last couple of years with OLA.  Will our contributions make a difference
or do we as a group or as individuals need to do more to assist with that?
It feels a bit uncomfortable to me that WSO with all its 'Al-Anon structure'
doesn't support us the way OLA could and OLA seems to be stymied by some of
the WSO practices - something of a catch 22.  I did spend some time on the
OLA website, the only current activity that I could find was the treasurer's
report which is updated regularly.  The other links appeared to be stale in
that they hadn't been updated in over a year or more (I could be wrong
though?)   Would our contribution to OLA jump start some activity?  I don't
know, is there activity there going on behind the scenes that we are not
aware of?  Could we ask "them" to send our LA a newsletter or even an update
of their activity? 

 Since I only have the perspective of funds distribution in a F2F and
district setting - I know that my group and district follows the suggested
distribution of supporting local and then Area offices with greater
percentage disbursements than we do the WSO.  So with that in mind, OLA is
the gateway for online meetings and our 'local' ASP support.  I would say
they in return deserve our support- if it doesn't have expenses at this
time, it then can forward the excess to WSO, which appears to be happening.
I don't know what the percentage break out would be, there have been several
suggestions, 80% OLA and 20% WSO works for me.

The other suggestions for our excess funds (literature and trusted servant
travel/expenses) appear to fall under group expenses and may need to be in
another part of our agenda.

Hugs,

Anne