[Businessmtg] What to do with excess funds over prudent reserve

[Beth1818 at aol.com]

Hi everyone! 
The current discussion about whether our  funds should go toward sending a 
trusted servant (or other group member)  to Pittsburgh along with Dawn and 
Steve's lengthy descriptions of how bad  WSO has been to online meetings and to 
them, I offer an excerpt from recent  correspondence with a WSO representative: 
"Guidance for the Seventh Tradition in  electronic/on-line meetings is 
provided in the Electronic Al-Anon Meeting Guideline  (G-39), available on the 
Members’ Web site, _www.al-anon.org/members_ (http://www.al-anon.org/members) , and 
the  recently revised Fact Sheet for Electronic  Meetings (S-60).  Both 
recommend that electronic/on-line  meetings send excess funds, after the meeting’s 
expenses are met, to the  WSO.  Whether to support a service committee, such 
as _www.ola-is.org_ (http://www.ola-is.org/) ,  would be a group conscience 
decision. "  
Evidently,  WSO welcomes OLA as a "service committee"; therefore, it seems  
WSO is not ignoring online meetings at all, and in fact, publicizes it  in WSO 
literature.  As a  side note, I''ve had many positive experience as a GR to 
another online  group; WSO has been quite prompt and helpful with all of my 
requests  to them.  This is not meant to dismiss or dispute the experience  of 
current and former trusted servants -- just sharing my  own experience.   
Since  some of our current and past trusted servants have had little success  
communicating effectively with WSO, and because their history with and 
attitude  toward WSO is negative at best, I  don't see how ASP paying to send one of 
 them to the convention could further our group's standing within WSO or 
cause  WSO to want to more closely affiliate with us or draw closer to online  
meetings.   
Next, if we set a  precedent of funding a trusted servant or group member to 
a WSO conference, what  chance would a member halfway around the world have to 
be selected by us to  attend a conference?  Are we willing to send a member 
in England or  Australia to Pittsburgh?  We are all equal here and need to 
consider that  we are an international group because our membership is spread 
around the  globe.  Failure to consider this fact is failure to consider all of 
our  group members as equals. 
Next, because I trust that our treasurer  (Jerry) understands ASP's financial 
state, that he gave us the facts and  figures in an E-mail earlier this week 
, and that he suggests  that we do NOT give ASP money to anyone for the 
purpose of going to  Pittsburgh,  it is logical that we pay attention to these hard  
facts, his analysis and recommendation. 
Finally,  for those of you who flame other group members for having an 
opinion (you know  who you are), do not waste your time or energy flaming me for 
expressing my  opinions as I shall delete those E-mails without reading them.  My 
serenity  means more to me than your flame. 
In fellowship, 
Beth 
I think our funds  over the prudent reserve should go to either OLA or WSO.  



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