CA WORLD SERVICE World Service Board of Trustees and World Service Office Board MEETING MINUTES
May 26, 2010
Milwaukee, WI
APPROVED
Since this report is a confidential CA document, for members only, it may contain members’ full names. This usage to facilitate communication within the fellowship was approved by the 1990 WS Conference. Such confidential use does not, of course, violate in any way our Tradition on anonymity in public communications media (press, radio, TV, etc).
**Sufficient and suitable time was given to review minutes** When there is a __________, that indicates that the transcriber could not understand, or hear the speaker. Opportunity was given to edit those occurrences.
Page 1 of 13
WSBT Board and WSOB Board Meeting
Moment of Silence, followed by Serenity Prayer.
Roll Call:
Willie B., World Service Office Trustee
Randy G., Southwest Regional Trustee
Richard S., Trustee at Large, Acting World Service Trustee
Elizabeth S., World Service Volunteer Director at Large
Nicholas L., European Regional Trustee, WSBT Vice-Chair
Lawrence M., Atlantic South Regional Trustee
Robert L., Atlantic North Regional Trustee
Barry J., World Service Board Treasurer
Joy H., Pacific South Regional Trustee
Kim S.. Midwest Regional Trustee, WSBT Secretary
Tom P., World Service Office Board Chair
Yvette L., World Service Director of Operations
Trevor S., Pacific North Regional Trustee, WSBT Chair
MISSING FROM RECORDED MINUTES: Due to equipment/technical issues, portions of the minutes were either corrupt or not recorded. The following are the notes/minutes of the WSBT Secretary reflecting the discussion.
- Open/Serenity Prayer: Done
- Opening remarks by WSBT Chair & WSOB Chair: Done
- Supplemental reports, if any, from WSOB and questions from WSBT: Done
WSOB Chair: Tom P. – No additional comments
WSOB Treasurer: Barry J. – Reports have been forwarded, missing some…need them quarterly. Nicholas questioned figures on the 7th tradition report… unknown may be WCP.
WSOB Paid Director: Yvette L. – Phones and computers are working.
- Items for Discussion:
Page 2 of 13
- Conventions
CAWS 2010 – Kim, concerns about H&I, and money transfer, Area is ready…we will
have a great party… PROBLEM with memorabilia. Richard: Motion to NOT restrict the sale of the shirts that were delivered to the host city. Out of order… “to allow the shirts for sale.” Tom: second. Discussion ensued. Richard withdraws the motion.
Nicholas: Motion, to return all the incorrect shirts, get new ones, as many as we can…super rush… Joy, second, motion passed.
CAWS 2011 – Randy, fundraising at @50 percent, broadcast is exciting. H&I movement…website is ready…”regonline” will be ready within a week.
CAWS 2012 – Nicholas, chair is indisposed, , first fundraiser did very well…has questions fro the CAWS forum…steering committee is strong and sub committees are good. Concerns about the hotel liaison…Russell and Richard are involved…we have a contract…modifications have been made, and there are still some concerns, but they do things different in the UK. Cancellation by the hotel should be in writing. Cancellation policy by the hotel is TERRIBLE.
- AA permission – TABLED 2/27 – DONE –REMOVE from agenda
- Training requirements for WSO Staff – TABLED 2/27 – need to find the money and time to send Yvette to the two day Quikbook class. – UPDATE in August.
- Status of Webservant – Steve for Colorado has submitted his resume, and it has been accepted…Tom will be forwarding a letter of acceptance. – REMOVE from agenda
Recorded minutes:
Trevor: Where we left off on the agenda was item number 5, which was HFC 2 storage, shipping fees, shipping the books, HFC and HFC2 outside the US. For the record, Tom and I had a brief discussion last night regarding our motion to drop the price of HFC2 and when did that take effect, and we are pretty much are selling the books at the discounted rate, so if you have a problem with that, it’s Tom’s fault.
Randy: Can we have the office put together a flier that represents this book drive so it is broadcasted to our Yahoo groups the same?
Tom: Can we do it at our next meeting and get it out to you?
Page 3 of 13
Randy: I am concerned about getting nine messages…
Trevor: I saw Yvette first.
Yvette: We can ask Mike to put something on the website and change the online store prices, once we change the price, as soon as they go onto the store, as soon as they know the price has dropped then they’ll buy the books.
Elizabeth: I know we talked about this at the World Service Office Board meeting, and it was to be a conference decision, I would like a little bit of information about the amount, is it just for the books with the stickers, or what kind of the intent, just so I have clarity in case people ask questions.
Trevor: The motion was that we are depleted the stickered inventory of HFC2…
Elizabeth: So that’s the softbound…
Trevor: That’s the softbound and the hardbound, 18 pallets of soft and four pallets of hard, approximately.
Elizabeth: And the amount of those are?
Joy: $4.75 and $7.75, plus 15%, which makes it $5.50 and $8.50.
Elizabeth: Does that cover our cost of what we actually put into the book?
Joy: Yes, and then some.
Elizabeth: Obviously, as we sell this, it has to go back into the reserve so we can…
Joy: Can we make sure the fellowship knows that these are stickered books? Like you said, they were stickered when you said they weren’t stickered, but hopefully with the price drop and we let them know that they are stickered books without How it Works in them, this is the price.
Barry: This is a sale only, it is a book drive price, a promotion. We need to inform larger vendors as well. Are we considering a small printing of something to satisfy them?
Trevor: We do not currently have the new HFC2 with the revisions ready, so no. We are currently investigating that with LCF and working on getting that done as quickly as we can, as of now it is not ready.
Elizabeth: Cause I am really conscious of how we communicate with the fellowship, I think it would be great, because if you’re just here at the convention, you’re going to get the word maybe
Page 4 of 13
before other people, so maybe if you are all a part of this, maybe if the regional trustees could send out an email so they will know, that just because you’re not at the world convention means you don’t get the information until later. Maybe it should be executed all at the same time.
Trevor: We’re here, we can all go on our Yahoo groups and blast it out as soon as we ______, if that is the case, we will have the official announcement.
Randy: Even if we put together a flier the next day, it needs to look the same for each regional group.
Trevor: As far as a flier, yes, but if we asked our secretary really nicely to basically come up with an email as what it is and what we’re doing and forward it to all of us, we can forward it to our newsgroups and they’re getting exactly the same thing.
Randy: My only concern is that the message goes out to everybody the same way.
Kim: Please give me the prices. Okay, thank you, $10. $4.75 plus 15% s&h, no matter where it goes…
Elizabeth: I just think from a marketing standpoint, if you put $10.06, including shipping and handling, customers won’t have to try to figure it out. $10.00 even, from a marketing standpoint.
Trevor: $5.50 and $10.00
Elizabeth: We should try to keep it simple.
Kim: One price, including shipping and handling.
Yvette: It’s a minimum of $7.00 or 15%, whichever is higher, so if you put 15%, you are changing our whole shipping what we have set up…
Trevor: Put the price, put an asterisk and at the bottom, put does not include shipping and handling.
Trevor: Did we talk about the French Translations?
Elizabeth: I’m sorry, I just want to go back, I know you’re going to send the same information to every member and delegate you have on your list. I also think that somehow in there if you all would include your motion and why you’re doing this now, I think “we are changing the price of the book because of”…whatever that is, I think what happens is that people will ask questions. If you answer the questions before they ask the questions, it is more clear.
Page 5 of 13
Richard: I will help draft the flyer re book drive, current inventory, stickered. A little artistic…As long as it says “current inventory of books, stickered.” Putting the motion on there is…
Elizabeth: Putting the information on there as to why…
Richard: I think the information should be disseminated appropriately throughout the Yahoo groups by all of us, the flyer and promotion on the table and look enticing.
Kim: Book drive to liquidate current stickered copies of HFC2, limited copies, get them now.
Richard: Joy brought in book drive, I really like it.
Joy: That is because Dwight from Las Vegas came up with the idea for the book drive.
Nicholas: Do we need to say why the stickers are there?
Trevor: If they don’t know, they can ask. There have been more than enough announcements.
Elizabeth: Every question is a good question.
Trevor: They can ask their delegates, if they don’t know, they can come to us.
Nicholas: I think most people are aware, I was just…
Tom: The French Translations. Where we are with that is, I talked with Robert, we need, Yvette and I, when we get back, we have to go into Quickbooks and find who the most recent publisher was, it hasn’t been any of our standard publishers, it was a special order. It might have been Macmillan Publishing, somebody we don’t normally use, it’s in our inventory records, we have to go through them to find out. We are also getting quotes….
Yvette: I got a quote and Yves (White) sent a quote as well.
Trevor: Any other questions? Item number 6, Conference.
Kim: This was on the last board-to-board?
Trevor: We have instructed Richard to make certain we have a real room, not a closet. Concerns or comments re the conference.
Yvette: The redacted minutes, I’ve gotten calls from delegates, so I don’t know.
Page 6 of 13
Kim: What don’t you know?
Yvette: When does everybody get them?
Kim: Susan Calkins does them, I have them.
Richard: I never received notification that they were finished, if they are, she sent them to you directly.
Trevor: We will research that.
Richard: The request should come from you to Susan, from the office for the redacted minutes.
Yvette: Ok.
Richard: The summary of motions was received, never the dailies.
Kim: Dailies are different than redacted minutes.
Trevor: Item 7, removal of the CA logo, it has been done, we have not received notification from the legal team. Yvette knows as soon as she gets it, we need to get it. It is just a matter of waiting for the actual paper trail to be completed.
Randy: I have also received from Denise, the logo from the office to have our logo, my local contact slide that ® inside so we can get an official acceptable response for that. I got that already, so thank you.
Joy: As soon as we get notification, I would love a PDF copy of it, so when I do the legal report for conference I have that to attach.
Trevor: Next item, Financial and trustee budgets.
Joy: To put it on the record, we are just a little…the administrative expenses are overbudget by $25,994.08, kind of scary. We might want to find out why and where that all came from, that is a lot of money to be overbudget. Can you please double check the petty cash because you have more checks going into that than you have recorded in the reconciliation for petty cash. That is a huge issue. Can we put the employee loan on the balance sheet please? That would be Yvette’s travel. It needs to be shown going out and coming back in. Can we get our bank statements every month, not just every…
Page 7 of 13
Barry: I’ve discussed that with Richard, now it’s going to be on our second meeting of the month, I will have the balances and the basic banking information. That was requested by Richard, I started doing that a few months ago.
Joy: Taxes for the business, they are up 3000%, is that because of the new office?
Tom: I’m going to have to research that.
Joy: Line item 500571, taxes/business, last year at this time they were $30, this year they are $938.40, that is 3000%.
Barry: It must be something to do with when we moved…
Joy: That is why I’m asking.
Barry: I will check into it.
Joy: This other account, it appears someone said “I don’t know where to put this, let me put it here,” then it was forgotten about.
Barry: [unintelligible] I am going to bring Joy, and Elizabeth, I will utilize both of them, with Yvette and Tom we will sit down and fix this.
Joy: There is one other line item I would like you to look at, 600648, outside professional, it is up 1500%.
Barry: A lot of that has to do with our consultant.
Joy: Is that where the salary went?
Barry: No.
Barry: Probably part of it is miscoded and part of it was the consultant that got utilized earlier in the fiscal year.
Joy: Outside professional budget was $2,400 in admin and $6,750 in program services, we may need to move.
Barry: It needs to be divided correctly. A lot of these needs to be audited…
Joy: I like to see this unaudited, I believe the entire board prefers the unaudited financials, we got tired of waiting for audited financial statements, we want rough drafts. We got financials where things were moved to different places, and we could not track…
Page 8 of 13
Tom: Thank you Joy for your review. One of the items it is important to note, overall expenses are substantially below…admin is overbudget, but program services is substantially below, it is a____ that takes place in finance committee. We don’t get the budgets in the right spot. That change is primarily a result of paying off the ex-employee.
Joy: I know it is way below…
Tom: I just want it put on the record.
Joy: I understand salary is down a lot, I love it. I know why.
Barry: We are also taxing our employees that are there right now .
Trevor: For the purpose of it being on the record, we discussed the trustee budgets for regional travel, it is highly…we are going for our standard raise again. One of the things that is of ultimate importance is that travel that is not regional travel, such as convention travel, this does not go in regional travel, it goes as a separate line item. It has nothing to do with our regional budgets, it is unfair to penalize the region because we have a convention and the trustee would not be able to go to as many places as they’re needed.
Tom: Are you comfortable enough, I know you’ve been doing your expenses for a while, to code them yourselves. You know what they are, you can see those number line items are, for example, Pacific South Region travel, Joy. Then, we write the check and put it right in ____________.
Joy: We could…
Tom: We get airline tickets, writing a lot of checks, there are a lot of things going on, sometimes, when we review it, we get it in the right place.
Trevor: Perhaps Joy can teach those of us who don’t know. More than an internal thing, as individual trustees, we should be keeping, we know Kim is, but we should all be keeping that number on an excel sheet like, this is what we spent, this is what we have left. I know personally, I have about $____.
Elizabeth: When you all do your travel outside of the conference and convention, do you have a specific number of places you want to visit when you’re putting your budgets together?
Trevor: When we put our budgets together, it is more a projection of where we might go or need to go.
Joy: It used to be that way. When I was treasurer of World Services…
Page 9 of 13
Trevor: I figure out where I need to go during the year, then I figure out what that’s going to cost me roughly…
Joy: You’re stuck with the number that was covered on the conference floor.
Elizabeth: I would like you all to think about in your orientation, when you orient your new trustees, think about, especially the regional trustees, when you’re putting together your budget to submit to finance, to really think about where you want to go, it’s really, really necessary, because I think sometimes we forget its’ a dollar that’s going in the basket, and yes we want to outreach, and yes we want to support, but can we do it in different ways that might not necessarily mean to travel. Just because I think we’re not out of…Tom talks about, we’re doing fine right now, but if we have a full staff at the office, it might not look like that, we just have to think over our ____________, what would that look like. Regional trustees, we used to say they would get two major trips and then some car trips, but it depends…
Trevor: It very much depends, myself, I have really only one area I can effectively travel to in a car, everywhere else is a minimum 12 hours…
Elizabeth: I think it depends on who the trustee is.
Trevor: I think my pass it on from Cynthia was “to visit every area in the region.” That was my goal, I’ve done it, now I have no budget left. We’ve shown in the past that when the trustees visit areas, donations go up, so it’s kind of a cause-and-effect thing. We as a board have done our best to keep the numbers down, however; it is still part of our job to visit the people in our region.
Elizabeth: I completely agree, I’m just saying be mindful.
Randy: I was told, I got that message in orientation, and literally took historical documentation from both Bobbie and Steve and said everywhere in my area, it would cost this for a three day visit, workshop, trip. I get this much every year. I can barely make it to each one of those.
Oklahoma is a little more expensive than Kansas, it gets mixed so I can make it. For some trustees, that regional travel, I get to two places a year; that’s going to be my eight areas in four years and that’s just it.
Kim: When I put in my budget, I know I might be working with $2,000 but I actually put down my assembly, I want to go to these particular areas, and we already do that, regardless. That is how Earl taught me.
Barry: Thank you, to all of the trustees, when you are sending in the expenses, I am seeing more receipts and more documentation, which makes my life easier. If you’re sending in your expenses in, I want to be as transparent to the fellowship. More documentation is, if you don’t
Page 10 of 13
have the actual receipt, if you have a credit card bill, photocopy, something that I can attach to it; that will be welcome. I appreciate it.
Nicholas: The fellowship is aware, it is a double sided sword, my position is slightly unique, because I usually travel borders, so do I get an airplane at 9:00 that is $90 or 5 in the morning and save $20. The fellowship does appreciate that, I go through per diems, but I don’t do hotels now, I stay in members’ homes now when possible. They can send the money to the office, the fellowship says “we will put you up.” I couldn’t do it at the assembly, cause the person I always stay with was going to be away, so I took a hotel. They are aware, so they say “do you want to be put up, or shall I send this $90 to the office.” Times have changed with Paypal, I actually come in under budget, I’m not boasting, I just do. Trevor has only questioned me once, “is this a benefit, do you think this needs to go?” My experience is, if you go, it’s more than the money, it’s the shaking hands and kissing the babies. Be mindful each time you make it. Earl came to me and said “if you go for 10%, you have to explain it to all those people.” “Can we get away with 5%?” I said “well I don’t know at the moment because of the recession it’s gone up, I’ll try my best. I believe I’m still about $700 under my budget.” Thank you for reminding us to try even harder. We don’t see many questions, even as a hard time budget on the floor, because we are mindful.
Trevor: The fellowship does put us up, I’ve slept on many couches, and floors of bedrooms. Any more questions? Okay, item 9, trustee questions to WSO, that was Joy.
Joy: I would like for the office to be a little bit more mindful when we make our requests regarding our regional stuff, that we get an email response saying “we’re really working on this, sorry it’s taking so long,” instead of feeling ignored. I made four requests of a map of Nevada. I have still not received.
Yvette: We did speak, I told you I searched high and low for that map, I couldn’t find it, so when you requested it I looked for it, I called you back and told you I couldn’t find it. Andrew tried to give you a map that was what we thought you needed. I didn’t understand completely, so when you requested it initially, we did try to give you something, I didn’t understand.
Joy: I got nothing from Andrew.
Yvette: Yeah, because it wasn’t the correct map.
Joy: I literally got nothing from Andrew.
Yvette: We did speak…
Joy: Yes, finally just before I got here.
Page 11 of 13
Yvette: We spoke, twice, I gave you the information that I found one map that was just the world map, then I told you that…
Joy: That was last week…
Tom: We still haven’t found the damn map, it’s not that we’re ignoring you, it’s just that we don’t have a response. And you’re right. We need to get back to you and let you know we haven’t found it.
Joy: That’s all I’m asking for. I just want it on record, I was willing to let it go because we all talked about it. Just please respond.
Tom: We need to find all of the old maps.
Joy: Yes, we do need to find the maps. We need to get with Mr. Lemon on that.
Willie: I would just like to be included on the initial request.
Joy: On regional stuff? Okay.
Willie: Because then I could actually remind or be part of the loop, but when I come in afterwards, we get “well we talked, and I talked, and this happened,” and so please include me.
Tom: Does anyone know the year that map was done?
Elizabeth: I think it was around 1988. Willie, I think that’s a really good idea.
Trevor: I think this goes hand-in-hand with the next item of business, which is the email forwarding process. Anything that we’re sending to the office should be a cc to Willie, any time the office gets anything that needs to go out to a regional trustee, if it is a starter kit, that can go directly to the trustee. If it’s anything else, it should automatically go to the WSBT at the yahoo address, so the secretary of our board gets it, and he/she can disseminate it to whoever should get it. That way there is no problem.
Richard: I stopped getting the emails again about two months ago regarding new areas, starter kits going out. Shannon was sending them out, I haven’t had any.
Yvette: I will call Denise and ask why.
Richard: Thank you.
Joy: Can we have someone double-check to find where all of the contribution program items…
Page 12 of 13
Tom: That came to me so I have that communication open with the office.
Nicholas: The European area, Yvette sent me a starter request from a man in Scotland. Obviously I do not expect the office to know where it is in Scotland exactly_ Actually that is about 20 miles away in a huge area called Glasgow. What I did was I wrote back to the office and said I would speak to the Scottish people. What should have happened is, you send it to me, you copy Richard and Willie, and I sent it back saying I’ve dealt with it. Is that correct? The more people that know what’s going on…Sending a starter kit all the way from LA to Glasgow, is – neither cost effective or in a productive timeline. We will deal with that. The more people that know, the office, the WSOT, the region knows, and the man in Scotland doesn’t get upset. Is that my understanding? We cannot let stuff like that slip through or go missing.
Kim: Something I did my first year as a trustee, a piece I did, listing each area, their area chair, their PI chair, their H&I chair, if they had a hotline and a website, broken down, sent it off at the time to Taffy. She had that so if someone called, she could provide them with a local phone number or a delegate’s phone number. I will update that. Perhaps we will bring that list back, it might be helpful.
Randy: I thought Shannon sent something out to everyone asking for missing pieces. I went back and forth with her for about a week and a half, she was missing three or four pieces of a similar list.
Lawrence: I think Denise might have it, she contacted me last week’
Trevor: Something for us as a board to do for the office to help them help us. It’s going to be easier for them to expedite service if they know who is where and what they are. We will handle this as soon as we can. Next item is tax letters for the contribution program. As long as you guys know what you’re doing with it, and give us a report when you can, that would be great.
Is there any other business? Seeing none, a motion made by Tom to adjourn, second by Yvette. By unanimous consent, we are adjourned at 3:51 middle time. We will close with the serenity prayer.
Page 13 of 13