[Businessmtg] Business Meeting Agenda Item #2

[Dawn Werezak]

In response to Beth's question:  what are the potential benefits of donating to OLA rather than directly to WSO?  Here are my thoughts:

First, OLA-OC is for online al-anon meetings and they are the outreach committee as suggested by the Board of Trustees of WSO when a name change from OLA-IS was made to them.  OLA-IS graciously consented and changed their name.  OLA-OC in my eyes is the next place up the food chain per se for on line meetings.

As for the behind the scenes financing of that group, well I have no answers for that.  But looking back over ASP's 12  year history, for 10 of those years we were privately financed and funded and not one person, myself included had any problem with that despite the fact that we have been listed as a meeting with WSO for almost our entire 12 year history.  So if we want to talk about Tradition violation, well this group has been a huge violator of the 7th Tradition.  It is only since 2006 that we have had to be self-supporting and it took us a long time to reach a one year prudent reserve.

Now going back to the potential benefits of donating to OLA rather than WSO directly, what I see is that by supporting OLA we are saying and showing that on line meetings are a vital and growing part of the Al-Anon family groups.  We are also showing that we operate similarly to the Al-Anon structure....from the ground upwards to management.  

Following that logic there are online meetings, then there is the OLA-OC and then there is WSO.  

While as groups, both f2f and on line, we can donate money directly to WSO, we also need to support the steps inbetween.  If we want to be taken seriously and we want more than what we are getting, this may be a great vehicle to do so.

Love and Serenity,
Dawn