[Businessmtg] 7h Tradition - Passing Those Baskets!/Prudent Reserve

[Marilyn Joiner]

Good morning BM,

Tradition 1. Our common welfare should come first;

Tradition 4. Each group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting
another group or Al-Anon or AA as a whole.

Hello everyone,

I appreciate everyone's input into this discussion.  I learn more, and
stretch my beliefs when I hear others' opinions.

When I apply Traditions ol1 & 4 to this topic, I had the following ideas.
T1 applied to ASP- Because we're already falling short on donations,  every
penny counts. $15 dollars a month wouldn't sound like much to a person who
is comfortable or wealthy,  For someone in poverty,  it could be 3 extra
meals at the end of the month.  And right now, it appears ASP is struggling
to keep adequate donations to maintain a prudent reserve. If donations
continue to fall short our actual reserve will continue to gradually
dwindle.

T4 speaks of affecting Al-Anon as a whole. And while our quarterly
donations are the right thing to do when we're able, I wonder how much they
affect the grand scheme of things. Especially WSO, a huge entity that
receives donations from numerous groups, areas and districts all over the
world.

For these reasons,  I feel our first goal needs to focus on increasing
donations to meet our expenses and prudent reserve.  Passing the virtual
basket every 2 weeks or monthly sounds like a good start, because as Steve
mentioned,  most donations come in response to this. I don't think this is
an unreasonable demand on the treasurer because it can be a form letter
copied, pasted and sent. Some email services even offer the option of
scheduling this in advance to go out on a specified date.

Adding an explanation of ASP's expenses to the basket-passing email may
help. I have to wonder how many active members (those who share or read
routinely) have an understanding that even an email group has expenses of
server, Zoom, P.O. Box, etc.

I do think raising our prudent reserve to $2000 is reasonable. With the
recent increase in prices, we're really not that far off from needing it.
And saving $15 a month would pay for Zoom, for example.

But I think that savings in secondary to a focus on increasing donations.
I would like to hear any other ideas the BM has for raising donations from
the recovery meeting.  Having recovery meeting topics on T7 would be
wonderful,  but we can't dictate what the chairperson on Wednesday, or any
other day of the week,  choses as a topic. By definition, the recovery
meeting is meant to be about our personal growth,  not the health of the
group.  Regularly scheduled interruptions by the Treasurer (or even
rotating among the SC if Treaasurer is unable), are how most meeting handle
this. In person meetings often mention that the basket will be passed in
accordance with T7.

In summary,  our most pressing concern in my interpretation is increasing
donations.  A secondary concern (that could be addressed at a later time/BM
meeting) would be increasing our reserve to meet the bank's minimum
balance.

Thanks for reading my ramblings!

Hugs,
Marilyn

On Sun, Apr 26, 2026, 1:55 AM steve--- via Businessmtg <
businessmtg at asp-afg.org> wrote:

> Hi Jerry,
>
> I have a different perspective regarding your comment ". . . but at the
> same
> time we'd be moving further away from an ability to support our service
> arms."
>
> We need to look at what happens if ASP raises our Prudent Reserve from
> $1600
> to $2000.
>      a. the threshold for calculating excess funds over the Prudent Reserve
> increases from $1600 to $2000. This is a one-time adjustment.
>      b. ASP saves $15/month, or $180/year. . . or $45/quarter.
> That's it.  Nothing else is applicable in this particular question.
>
> In other words, if ASP set aside an extra $400 once, and as a direct result
> our expenses would decrease by $45 every quarter.
> That means ASP would have an extra $45 every quarter to donate to D53, the
> GEA and WSO.
>
> But what about your comment "Fine and good until it grows to a point where
> donations fall short - the point where we become unable to show excesses
> which allow us to donate to service arms"?
>
> ASP's ability to donate to our Al-Anon service arms is dependent on ASP
> having healthy surplus cash flows.
> It is not dependent on ASP increasing, or decreasing our Prudent Reserve.
> If ASP increases its Prudent Reserve, there will be a temporary one-time
> decrease in our donations.  This is no different than if ASP decided to
> reduce its Prudent Reserve; there would be a temporary one-time increase in
> our donations equal to the reduction in the Prudent Reserve.
>
> Love and SERENITY,
> Steve
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Businessmtg <businessmtg-bounces+steve=serenitysys.com at asp-afg.org>
> On
> Behalf Of logmark--- via Businessmtg
> Sent: Friday, April 24, 2026 9:27 PM
> To: steve at serenitysys.com
> Cc: ASP Business <businessmtg at asp-afg.org>
> Subject: [Businessmtg] 7h Tradition - Passing Those Baskets!/Prudent
> Reserve
>
> Biz-Pals,
>
> The 7th Tradition basket:
>
> I think there's little question that reminding our members that we have
> group operating exp,enses and service arms to support which need member
> donations. Like Steve, I, too, as treasurer saw the correlation between
> making announcements and the money coming in.
>
> Regular 7th Tradition announcements in the topic meeting is essential.
> Every
> two weeks should do the trick.
>
> The Prudent Reserve:
>
> A bit of a sticky wicket.
>
> On the one hand we're not to have dues or fees. On the other we gotta have
> money. As expenses rise up goes the amount we set as our Prudent Reserve
> (PR).
>
> Fine and good until it grows to a point where donations fall short - the
> point where we become unable to show excesses which allow us to donate to
> service arms.
>
> In theory raising our PR to $2,000 to save money on bank fees sounds
> prudent, but at the same time we'd be moving further away from an ability
> to
> support our service arms.
>
> I'd suggest some cheerful notes of encouragement along with our bi-monthly
> basket passing to get our balances regularly above the $2,000 mark before
> we
> set a higher PR level.
>
> In service,
> Jerry
> -
>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________
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>
>
> ____________________________
> To Unsubscribe, go to: http://www.asp-afg.org/mailman/listinfo/asp
> The ASP web site with all kinds of info for ASP members is
> http://asp-afg.org/members/
> For assistance with other ASP issues, contact Tammy, the List
> Administrator of ASP, at la at asp-afg.org
>