Illowa Intergroup Business Meeting Minutes – Sept. 12, 2011

The Illowa Intergroup meeting was called to order at 7:00p.m.Roll call was -Chairperson Susan F.-present; Co-Chair-absent; Office Manager-Lisa W.-present; Secretary-Joni K.-present; Newsletter-Michelle present; telephone chairperson-Bob S. present; District 9-Kevin K.- liaison-present  The minutes for August were voted on and passed as written. The reports of officers are as follows: Office manager-Things are going well at the office. August was a little cooler than July which helped. Sales are steady and contributions increased this month a little. We are in need of volunteers to man the office one morning a week and occasional afternoons a week! Sobriety requirement is six months. Please call the intergroup office at phone number309-764-1016, if you are interested in keeping intergroup going and would like to do some service work. Remember-our primary purpose is to carry the message and help other alcoholics to recover from alcoholism! We need people for a back-up list as well, and we could also use more people on the phone rotation list as well. Call counts for August were:8 twelve step;163 informational;45 visitors; and 1 Alanon/Alateen. In love and service, Lisa W  Newsletter Report: The Newsletter went out on August 25th,before all the business meetings. Again we had many announcements. This month the 80 newsletters cost $92.45 to print and $34.40 to mail($1.79 per newsletter).Remember that each flyer pays $7 to be in the issue. After this is subtracted it is $0.85 per newsletter. All groups receive a complementary copy and we have approximately 58 subscriptions at$13/yr or $1.08/month. As always, if you would like to submit an article, please e-mail it to shell@mchsi.com.  Group reports received as follows:  Dewitt: Dewitt group helped support the Intergroup golf tournament. Members of the Dewitt group have been 12th stepping others at the Maquoketa group, by sharing their stories. Also, members worked at the Western central Forum, by registering guests and bringing food to the hospitality room and attending workshops. Submitted Bill M. Bettendorf Group:   All is well at the Bettendorf Group. The meetings are well attended. We voted to redirect our funds from District (at the last business meeting) to go to the Intergroup for the next quarter. We will readdress this at our next business meeting in September, to see how the Intergroup funds are. We had our picnic in August. A lot of food and games and fun, that was well attended. In love and service, Karen K.  Courage to Change: Attendance is steady. We are looking forward to our group's picnic September 24th. Pam S. Under Unfinished Business: Susan-chairperson-stated she had a call into landlord of the Intergroup, asking to have rent reduced. She did ,however talk to his secretary, who reported that he was willing to break rent payment into two payments per month. Susan said she will call him again to further discuss this matter with him. At that time will bring up who is responsible for lawn mowing and snow, also if these are included in rent.  Discussion of passing of basket at Intergroup meetings was held. Motion made to do so, it was seconded, voted on and passed.  Opposing 1 person who was given opportunity to voice reasons. No one in majority changed their vote; Motion passed.  Also discussed were subscriptions to Newsletter-how to get subscriptions up.  Faithful fiver contributions were discussed. Each group attending were given contribution forms to take back to groups and told to inform their groups on this. The question of getting a committee to work up a budget for Intergroup was brought up. This was tabled for more discussion for next month's meeting.  Discussed was aspects on moving Intergroup office to Iowa as government is cracking down on nonprofit organizations. We may need legal advice on the question of getting tax exemption in Iowa. Under other new business was a report of the AD HOC Committee’s final report on Intergroup office's expenditure and income, in it's entirety on the next page.  Discussion of said report followed. Some of the topics included: cutting expenses or to find ways of raising revenue; what is the actual prudent reserve and cash in hand; is the prudent reserve a separate asset from cash in hand (total immediate assets);what is inventory priced at and can that be turned into  cash value? Motion was made to table further discussion until next meeting.  A motion was made to adjourn meeting, due to overtime of meeting. Motion was seconded, and passed Chair Susan L. adjourned the meeting, after leading the Lord’s Prayer. Respectively submitted in love and service,

Joni K. secretary

AD HOC EXPENSES COMMITTEE FINAL REPORT:  The committee realizes that given the economic times decision such as these are necessary and difficult.   Please remember that the Ad Hoc committee is formed to gather and report information only.  No motions can come from the committee but only from the Intergroup officers and group representatives.  Background information:  Income and expense reports show a continuing deficit.  Last month the chair distributed income and expense analysis statements from 2007 through 2010.  The reports showed the percentage of decreased income and percentage of increased expenses. Bottom line, each year Intergroup is showing an increasing deficit (2007 income of $1090.91, 2008 loss of $919.64, 2009 loss of $2377.26, 2010 loss of $1442.16).  A forecast based on our past and the outlook for the economy dictates that the continuing trend for less income is likely.  Thus, the chair asked for a committee to look at how expenses may be reduced to result in a more long term solvency than what we are currently experiencing.    Conclusions:  The largest expenses for the office are staff and facilities expenses.  To that end, reductions on these two expenses would have the greatest impact on the overall financial stability of the office.    As the office may have considerable assets, the assets are not easily liquidated and will not assist in the current trend of increasing annual deficit as shown by the analysis distributed last month.  

Recommendations:

 1.  Reduce rent and facilities maintenance by moving to a suitable but possibly smaller lower costs location.  The committee did a brief search and found that there are suitable properties available in both Illinois and Iowa.  As an example, a reduction in rent and maintenance from current costs of $575 to $300 would yield a savings of $3,300.00 per year.

Note:  Nothing in our bylaws or charter prohibit us from moving to Iowa.  It would necessitate reapplying for a tax exemption under Iowa law which should not have any costs associated with it. 

Note 2:  Members suggested looking at moving within one of the two alano clubs in the area. 

2.  Reduce staff costs.  This can include several options A. Go to an entirely volunteer office with no paid staff.  In our history we have always had a paid office manager.  Our research suggests that most intergroup offices in the Midwest have a paid employee to coordinate volunteers and services  B. Reduce current employee hours.  A reduction by two days would save the group $87.50 per week and $4,550 per year in wages and a federal tax reduction of $347.98 a year for a total of $4897.98 per year.  A three day reduction would result in a savings of $131.25 per week and $6,825 per year in wages and a federal tax reduction of $521.97 a year for a total of $7,346.97 per year.  C.  Obviously this can include many configurations, which are well beyond the scope of this committee, including going from 5 days a week to 2 or 3 days or closing the entire office 1 day a week.  A job audit would be recommended before taking action on this option.   (Thank you Kevin for crunching the numbers!)

3. Other miscellaneous reductions  A.  Our accounting fees.  If we have a competent accountant among us that could prepare our quarterly and yearly tax reports, it could save us 528.00 per year.   B. Decrease the amount of cash tied up in unsold items (inventory) and eliminate office manager training fund of $965.57.  Place these funds in operating expenses or prudent reserve. This is a one time value added option and is not a long term solution.   C.  Revise how the newsletter is produced by either printing it in house (savings of approximately $840 per year less paper costs if possible on our printer), eliminate newsletter entirely cost savings of approximately only $50 per year, or go to an on-line newsletter with no subscription resulting in no income and no publication costs.  Many, many areas, districts and intergroups have moved to this last option. 

It is necessary for a motion by the body to implement any of these options and a specific purpose committee formed. 

Note 3: The committee did not address income producing measures as that was outside the limited scope of this committee 

Thank you for allowing us to privilege to serve,

Your ad hoc expense committee,

Michelle, Kevin, Susan and Rhonda