[Businessmtg] #1 - Prudent Reserve

[Steve Rankin]

Hi folks,

I'm for keeping the prudent reserve at 1 year:

#1.  Our literature tells us that we need to keep an AMPLE prudent reserve.


Our first responsibility is to our meeting, just as our first responsibility
is to ourselves.  I remember all too well when the original server that ASP
was on crashed.  The company that hosted ASP had been bought out by a new
outfit and the new outfit decided to not rebuild the server which left ASP
without a home for a few days while I scrambled to find a new home.  As,
often happens, the new home was more expensive than the old one.  As Dawn
mentioned, ASP is too large to share a server which puts us in the realm of
commercial servers and not the cheap situations that are easily quoted.
It's also important to note that there are MANY outfits that will host ASP's
domain for next to nothing.  But there are very few that will host the
meeting itself.  It's quite likely that if ASP had to move to a new server
that we would need several hundred dollars to capitalize the cost by paying
for 6 months or a year of server rental up front.  

#2.  Many Al-Anon service entities maintain a 1 year prudent reserve.  The
WSO maintains a prudent reserve more like 2 years--and they own their
building so it's not like they will lose their lease. 

#3.  Donating a few months funds only serves as a one-time fix for whoever
the recipient of our donation would be.  To put ASP at risk to make a one
time donation just doesn't make sense to me.  

#4.  The list of expenses that Dawn provided does not include travel
expenses by trusted servants.  Every group is responsible for the travel
expenses of its trusted servants to the appropriate service meetings and
events.  A founding principle of ASP is to be as much like a f2f meeting as
we can, so it follows that we need to send our trusted servants to the
appropriate service meetings and/or events.  If we get in a hurry to make a
donation to WSO, then we will have depleted our prudent reserve prematurely.


#5.  Therefore, I'm for keeping our prudent reserve at 1 year's expenses AND
developing a 'plan' for sending our trusted servants to the most appropriate
Al-Anon service meetings and/or events we can come up with.  Obviously, I
believe those travel expenses will need to be incorporated into our prudent
reserve calculations.   

The Northern California Al-Anon Area reached 2 major goals during my 3-year
term as Area Treasurer about 10 years ago:

a.  We made the decision to fund key Area Officers to significant
service-related Al-Anon events to enhance their personal growth and to help
make the Area a part of that larger Al-Anon family.  

b.  We reached our prudent reserve goal for the first time in Area history
and made a donation to WSO.  


IMHO, we can do both of these things at ASP, but we need to take care of ASP
first and foremost and that includes supporting our trusted servants in the
same kind of ways that a f2f meeting would.

Thanks for listening.

Hugs,
Steve