[Businessmtg] Question re newcomers page-clarification

Wed Mar 29 04:08:08 PDT 2017

Morning Biz-Pals,

As ASP's Treasurer/SC 'n BM Member back in the days of "The Great Newcomers Packet Robbery", a historical note:

Once approval of the motion Steve mentioned was had, I ordered a quantity of Beginner Packets (BP) and had them sent to our duly appointed/elected (?) BP Distribution Person and separately mailed off a sufficient quantity of envelopes and postage stamps to cover posting them.

To my knowledge no newcomer ever requested a copy, and it wasn't long before the BP Distribution Person left ASP without further contact and taking our beloved BP's and supplies with them, never to be seen again.

I'm a bit fuzzy on exactly why we didn't re-appoint and reorder to keep the program going. Intuition tells me we were burned once and weren't prepared to be burned again. None-the-less, the approved motion is still on the books so we ought to something about this one way or the other.

In addition and as a part of this process, the approved motion to set our Prudent Reserve amount as "one year's expenses" was worded that way so future increases in costs and services would automatically increase our Prudent Reserve level. I believe our intention was to add the actual BP and postage costs we incurred after a year of sending out packets to our then-current PR. Since the program withered on the vine after that loss, the annual costs couldn't be calculated, and ASP's PR remained as it was prior to this ordeal (and where it remains to this day.)

Now that we're caught up with sending the WSO funds in excess of our Prudent Reserve quarterly, as called for by approved motion, we want to remember that restarting a Beginner Packet program would also need to include increasing our PR amount both where stated in our 7th Tradition page/footnote and as regards any future ASP donations to the WSO. Since we have no clue about what the actual costs of program renewal would be I'd suggest, if we were to  decide to restart the effort, that we look at the amount of money spent and lost back then and add that amount to our Prudent Reserve number before we calculate any future WSO donations.

Hugs,
Jerry
-

On March 29, 2017, at 1:05 AM, Steve Rankin <steve at serenitysys.com> wrote:

I’m not sure that I’m the one that is confused.

I believe the current discussion is about how to help newcomers to ASP. 

So, I go to the website just like a newcomer might do, and voila! I find a link labeled “Newcomers”. Great!  

Only, the entire page is dedicated to either something I get every day from ASP or to stuff at WSO. I really don’t see how what is on our Newcomer page has to do with helping the newcomer.

So, tonight was my home group. A sponsee was chairing the meeting, and we had a newcomer, so I snagged an extra Newcomer’s Packet just to see exactly what it is our face-to-face meeting gives newcomers. 

“Information for the Newcomer” S-4

An excellent pamphlet arranged in a Q&A format: 

            Who are the members and why are they here?

            How will it help me?

            Do I have to say anything?

            Will anyone say I’ve been here?

            Is this a religious fellowship?

            . . . and so on.

“So You Love and Alcoholic” P-14

This pamphlet talks about alcoholism as an illness, and includes the classic Do’s and Don’ts.

“Understanding Ourselves and Alcoholism” P-48

Another excellent pamphlet. This one addresses questions like:

            What is Alcoholism?

            Who Are Alcoholics?

            Why Do Alcoholics Drink?

Then, it moves onto Understanding Ourselves

“Dear Mom & Dad” P-67

A pamphlet for Alateens to give to their parents to explain to them why the Alateen needs to go to Alateen meetings. As with other Alateen literature, there’s some really good stuff there for adults.

“Sponsorship - Working Together to Recover” M-78

The sponsorship bookmark describes what sponsorship is and who sponsors are. 

“Al-Anon Spoken Here” P-53

Besides being an excellent pamphlet for newcomers, this pamphlet is especially useful for members of other anonymous fellowships as well as professionals. 

“What do YOU do about the Alcoholic’s drinking?” P-19

This pamphlet outlines an amazing number of things that many of us did before we got to Al-Anon. The bullet-point format eliminates the excess text of prose and gets right down to the nitty gritty. It closes with just a few simple suggestions.

“Just for Today” M-12

The classic Al-Anon bookmark that has helped so many of us get through a tough day. 

“Getting Started” S-15R

An abbreviated CAL order form featuring nine hardcover books. 

A fantastic collection of informative pamphlets (mostly) that face-to-face meeting routinely give to their newcomers. 

Why don’t we do the same? 

Unfortunately, that’s not so easy to do.

See, online meetings are not permitted to reproduce or quote CAL other than the 1 single paragraph included in a share. No exceptions. 

While there is some CAL available online that members can download, the pamphlets in the Newcomers packet is not included. So, we really can’t even provide a link to somewhere in the WSO site where an online member can read what the face-to-face meeting give away to new members. 

A few years ago on 3/10/2008, Emee, a member of ASP back then, made the following Motion #7 <http://asp-afg.org/members/motions-made/> :

“It is moved that ASP send Newcomers Packets to new members that are – new to ASP, new to Al-Anon and who request it.  Fulfillment expenses to come out of the ASP treasury budget.”

I seconded the motion and passed 17 for; 1 against and 1 abstain.

The April 2008 financial report shows expenditures for Newcomers packets and postage for the first and last time. In other words, that process seems to have disappeared at some time since April 2008. I know we modified our welcome to newcomers to include an OPTION that gave them an opportunity to provide a snail mail address so we could mail them a Newcomers packet just like they’d get in a face-to-face meeting. I don’t know when that faded away, except that I know it wasn’t included in the recent updates made to the Welcome letter sent to newcomers by the Greeters. 

It seems to me that the appropriate course of action at this point is to request the Steering Committee comply with Motion #7 by including this option in the Welcome Letters sent out by the Greeters. If the members of ASP feel that trying to snail mail the Newcomers packet to newcomers isn’t something we want to do, then we need to discuss that at a future Business Meeting, and if we reach a consensus and group conscience to rescind Motion #7, then that is the new group conscience of ASP. 

NOTE: this is not intended to be a reflection on the current Steering Committee - the Newcomer packet ball was dropped years ago. However, this kind of thing would be much harder to fall in the cracks in the future if the Steering Committee made regular reports to the Business Meeting.

One last thing . . . something that we could do for every newcomer to ASP. Develop our own Newcomers packet. We could use the face-to-face newcomers packet as our example and go from there. 

Hugs,

Steve

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