[Businessmtg] Agenda item #1 - Prudent Reserve - some background on finding ASP a new home for May 2006

[Dawn Werezak]

Hello Everyone,

It seems our Business Meeting has gotten off to a pretty good start.  My 
participation beyond posting the agenda has been pretty limited this week 
due to extended working hours which thankfully ended today at 6 o'clock. 
Back to normal hours next week.

There has been several mentions of costs of a new site and so on in deciding 
what our prudent reserve may need to be so I am going to give a little 
background from my perspective from early March 2006 to present regarding 
costs.

Once elected as List Administrator, I was given the task of finding a new 
home for ASP.  With Steve having ASP on his server and domain we were 
limited in the number of members that we could have at ASP and keep Steve's 
costs down to a reasonable level.  Although Steve tried at various times 
since he co-founded ASP, it was not self-supporting and so, he did it for us 
and provided a great number of people the opportunity to be involved in an 
Al-Anon meeting on line that was as true in format to a face to face meeting 
as is possible.

My task of finding a new home for ASP involved many hours of time 
researching companies that met our needs at ASP.  Most of the places that I 
found that were possibilities upon closer inspection did not suit our needs 
because they did not offer the features we needed, or have the ability to 
allow us room to grow.  In my enthusiasm, and due to the fact that we had 
very regular housecleanings at ASP, I figured that ASP would quickly grow 
beyond the 250 member mark and continue.  Alas, I was wrong.  As of today, 
January 11th, we have 297 subscribers to ASP.  Of those 297 about 10% share 
on a regular basis, another 2-3% share a couple of times a month, but the 
vast majority are lurkers...meaning they may or may not read their emails 
from ASP but they are still on the list.  And as an aside in the last 
housecleaning on June 1, 2006 we lost 127 members because they did not 
respond to the housecleaning, bringing the membership list to 186 people.

When looking for a place to house ASP I also looked for a service that 
provided us with a domain as well...kind of one stop shopping so that I did 
not have to worry about expiry dates and so on.  I have had experience with 
other organizations that went with a cheap domain site and forgot to renew 
their name and found that it had been sold, or that their website size was 
limited and offered limited features.  For those of you who visit our Web 
site you can see that it is a pretty nice place to spend some time.  (Thanks 
to Steve and to Anne, our present Web Master).

And so, I came across Esosoft.  I like several things about them.  First, 
their website was easy to understand.  It gave a lot of information.  They 
offer and honor 24/7 tech support and have been amazingly patient as I learn 
the lingo and how to use the server and so on.  At no time have I waited 
more than 12 hours for a response from one of their technicians.

The price was also right.  A one time $99.00 set up fee, and then $99.00 a 
month for a dedicated server, which we need because of our list size.  This 
gave us the ability to have as many members as were managable from an 
administration perspective, tech support, a domain registry that was very 
competitive.  As well as a quick set up time.  In less than a week - when it 
is normally 3-4 weeks they set us up a test site to give their service a 
test drive so to speak and then when it performed beautifully they set us up 
and had us ready to move ASP over for May 1, 2006.  On April 29, 2006 I 
subscribed the entire ASP list to our new home. They also agreed to work 
with us while we were getting our financial situation organized and were 
having a difficult time with our credit card and getting it working for 
payment...they deferred payment while still offering us our new home, domain 
and web site hosting.

Going back to the "what if" scenario of what will we do if we have to move 
ASP from our present home, where I might add that I am really comfy, I have 
done a little research and have included it below:

What type of server a list requires depends on the Volume of email that 
comes through your group in a month.  Volume is determined by this formula: 
Number of members X number of postings per month = size of the space needed 
on a server.  (300 members x average of 20 messages per month = 6000 
messages in a month)

Keeping this formula in mind, ASP is not eligible for a shared server on 
most of the sites I researched.  Although our largest number of postings 
since I moved the list on April 29, 2006 has been 628, companies figure 
things out using the formula above.

Many of the companies have a limited number of messages that would be posted 
per day (if we managed to be able to share a server).

Some of the companies billed yearly for their service and then limited the 
size of the messages that could be posted and limited the number of messages 
that would be posted to the list, regardless of how many were submitted on 
any given day.

Costs:

$150 a month for a dedicated server because we were too big to share a 
server and set up fee was hidden until actually purchasing a package, no 
mention of tech support, one list only, no mention of tech support.

$172.50 per month, $20 set up fee, maximum of 25 posts per day (no matter 
how many were sent in only 25 would go through) possibly shared server, 
limited post size, no mention of tech support, one list only.

$500 per month, $175 set up fee, able to have more than one list (like we 
have now - recovery meeting, business meeting), limited message size, tech 
support limited to 2 emails per month per calendar year and 1 phone call per 
month per calendar year.  Going over message limit size, needing more tech 
support, etc all charged extra.

So as you can see, if we had to move ASP the costs could be a lot more than 
what we are paying in expenses at the present time.  As Steve said, we have 
no control over what our costs might be if something changes.  What we can 
do is be as prepared as we can to see that if things change ASP continues to 
be around for all of us.  There is no safety net when it comes to "saving" 
ASP if we are not truly self supporting.

When you look at the financial reports on our website you can see that it 
has taken well over a year for ASP to hit our initial target of one years 
expenses (at the current rates) and to be able to maintain that amount.  Yes 
we have had donations to cover the months expenses on a regular basis but we 
have not seen much come in over and above that to build on.

Keep in mind that right now we are only paying the monthly fee for our 
server, and a yearly fee for our post office box and perhaps a little bit 
for mailing costs when Jerry sends me the bank statements.  I claim 
absolutetly nothing in the way of long distance charges for the phone calls 
I make regarding ASP business....why?  Because I have a great long distance 
plan for Canada and the US and I choose not to claim a part of that for my 
calls regarding ASP business.  Too much of a hassle to figure it out and so 
on.

I give you this information to help you see the bigger picture and behind 
the scenes of our meeting.  Until I became involved in the service aspect of 
ASP I had no idea what it was like to administer a list this size and no 
clue of the hours involved either.

Hopefully I have been able to open a door to what happens to make our 
recovery meeting happen as well as giving you all food for thought regarding 
our Prudent Reserve.

Love and Serenity,
Dawn