[Businessmtg] Treasury Transparency

[Steve Rankin]

Hi folks,

I guess this is my cue to come onstage and explain a few things...

I was the first chairperson of the first business meeting for the first
online Al-Anon meeting back in the mid-90s. We were trying to establish some
kind of Al-Anon type structure including trusted servants etc., however the
meeting was plagued with problems. Just the usual problems revolving around
personalities compounded by additional personality-related server access
issues, a list owner that made a habit of abusing his access to information
on new members and finally the fact that it was not possible for the meeting
to comply with the seventh tradition because all of the meeting resources
were donated by outside organizations. Since I knew the list owner and
face-to-face Al-Anon I had the inside scoop on new all too well that he had
no intention of relinquishing any of his control/authority to the meeting
itself.

In early 1996, I spent several hours discussing various online meeting
structure possibilities and our traditions and concepts with Rick B. from
WSO, as well as some of the trustees. Additionally, there was an ad hoc
group of us that have been involved in the online meeting and had personal
knowledge of what worked and didn't work the WSO et al. was clueless about.
Our ad hoc group spent about three months discussing how it might be
possible for an online meeting to be as similar as possible to face-to-face
meeting.

So, in May 1996 I started ASP on my own server. One of the key differences
with ASP was that I delegated complete autonomy to a greeter committee
process new members. There were a number of other detailed differences that
brought a variety of ASP members into the server structure, not just provide
to the meeting but also to be a part of the decision-making process. Since
the meeting itself as well as the website operated on my personal server,
the arrangement was analogous to a meeting that happens in an individual
members living room. While that is not a common arrangement in face-to-face
Al-Anon it is a part of both AA and Al-Anon history and still occurs in some
areas. While meetings like this are generally governed by the group
conscience, the owner of the facility is the ultimate authority on what is
acceptable or unacceptable in the meeting in their home. It was much the
same in ASP where the group conscience governed almost everything, but I was
the ultimate authority. Fortunately, ASP functioned marvelously well and I
was never even attempted to exercise that authority.

FYI, the original ASP website still exists on my server at
http://www.serenitysys.com/A_Serenity_Place/ because the majority of links
on the Internet to ASP point to the site on my server rather than the
current ASP site. The only thing that has changed in recent years on my site
is that I have updated the links on it to point to the appropriate pages on
the new site.

As I mentioned, ASP functioned marvelously well. The meeting was stable with
virtually none of the craziness that often plagues online meetings, and we
went through a number of trusted servant rotations over the next 9+ years.
With the exception of the list administrator position, of course.

After about nine years I decided that it was time for me to rotate out and
turn the meeting over to itself. So I announce this to the meeting and
suggested that the members form a committee to proceed with this but nothing
happened. So, about four years ago I set up a second list for a new business
meeting, made the necessary announcements in the regular meeting, and let
the members of the business meeting through a series of group consciences.
Group consciences were taken on meeting structure, service structure, group
conscience procedures and policies, and finally the move to its own server.

The server is to ASP what the meeting room is to face-to-face meeting. A
face-to-face meeting pays rent to use the room just like we pay rent to use
the server. Having our own domain name gives ASP the ability to move the
meeting to another server without disrupting the membership. If you haven't
tried moving a group of 300+ Al-Anon's to a new server with a different URL
you have no clue how challenging it is. The domain name is a trivial expense
that completely eliminates member confusion should ASP leadership decide to
move to a different provider. By the way, this happened on several occasions
during our first 10 years; our first server crashed and the provider elected
to discontinue that service, the second server went commercial and was
bought out by Yahoo and then added advertising to every share, the next
provider changed their service and price structure, and so on. Since all but
one of these were still on my domain 'serenitysys.com' the membership were
spared from the difficulties and issues faced by the Wizard of Oz behind the
curtain.

Note: ASP has always maintained that it is inappropriate for an Al-Anon
meeting to accept outside donations of any kind. In other words, ASP does
not use a "free" list server such as Yahoo. 

Back to the group consciences. Frankly, I expected that the meeting would
decide to make numerous changes to the service structure, procedures and
policies that I had established back in 1996. However, after some discussion
the members decided to keep ASP as it was in everyone way with near total
unanimity (one dissenting vote).  New trusted servants were elected for the
key positions of list administrator, greeter chair, secretary, treasurer and
webmaster. One of Dawn's first tasks was to find a new server/provider for
ASP. Most providers offered shared servers that were inadequate for the
volume of traffic and ASP generates in addition to being quite expensive.
Fortunately she found a provider that offered a dedicated server that serves
all of ASP's needs extremely well and is affordable. Everything was in place
in late April 2006 so after a week or so of testing and making adjustments
to the server, we transferred ASP from my server to ASP's own server from
May 1, 2006 -- the 10th anniversary of ASP.

There are two key differences between ASP's structure during the first 10
years and today. First, is now the "list owner" instead of an individual.
Second, all positions are subject to rotation. In other words, ASP took the
final step in growing up to be a real Al-Anon meeting that is totally
self-supporting.

Since ASP is now financially self-supporting, the meeting is dependent on
the donations of the general members rather than a single donation of one
member. Having served as an area treasurer and face-to-face Al-Anon, I am
quite familiar with the contentiousness of financial issues and general lack
of trust any time money is involved. So we set up a system that allows
individual members to verify that their personal donation is accounted for
in the ASP books, yet their anonymity regarding their donation is protected,
and the process does not create an undue burden for the treasurer -- balance
in all of these areas is necessary.

The other side of being financially self-supporting is that ASP now has
expenses necessary for the group to operate. As with every meeting, ASP's
first responsibility is to take care of itself. After paying its expenses,
funds in excess of the prudent reserve as established by the group
conscience are distributed to other Al-Anon entities. For a number of years,
we had an online intergroup called OLA-IS it did an excellent job of serving
the online Al-Anon community. Unfortunately, WSO decreed that there could be
no online intergroup. Frankly, I have a problem with WSO decreeing anything
but they seem to be doing a lot of that lately. For example, WSO has also
decreed that WSO will represent the online meetings to WSO.

Back to the prudent reserve issue: in 2007 ASP took a group conscience to
not disperse any funds until the prudent reserve issue was resolved. In 2008
ASP completed its group conscience process regarding our prudent reserve.
The short version is that we will maintain a one-year operating expense
prudent reserve, and that the treasurer will disperse the excess funds
annually. So, there should've been no donations to WSO in 2007 as a result
of the group conscience, not in 2008 because the prudent reserve had not yet
been fully funded, and 2009 is still a work in progress.

Love and SERENITY,
Steve