District 17 Newsletter
February 28, 2006
Our 3rd District (GSR) meeting of 2006 was held in Randville in the church
basement on February 22nd at 6:15pm. We opened with the Serenity Prayer. Steve
S., DCM, and Cliff W., secretary, district 17, attended the meeting along with
one dozen GSR’s or group contacts. I apologize for not naming individuals and
not doing minutes, but this is going to change in the future. For now I will
again touch on the highlights.
The following items were discussed and have had some action taken.
We have received quite a few contact sheets back from the groups and will
start checking them over and making corrections or additions and mailing them to
GSO by the middle of March. This is a service that the district can do and keep
track of all district information. I am working on putting a list together of
all sheets gathered to date and will present it when finished. This is
information that we will update each year to stay current with meetings and
GSR’s. Please see me if you need sheets or go to the following link
http://www.aa.org/en_pdfs/e_group.pdf , and print them yourselves. This is
important so that people searching out meeting and contacts in our area can get
accurate information and get to a meeting or make the phone call. If you are
going to mail them to GSO yourself, make sure you keep a copy. Please mail or
email a copy to the district for our records.
District secretary. Jennifer J. has volunteered to help out with the
secretary work. We will work together on this until a permanent secretary
volunteers. Thank you Jennifer.
We have a website! It has all our meetings and much more. For information
please go to www.area74.org and see district 17 link on Area map. Thanks are
definitely in order for Cliff W. for pulling this one off!
0900 hotline was discussed at some length. Charlie K. is gathering phone
contacts and trying to reach Pete Schlitt to upgrade our phone system. Charlie
has not been able to reach him to make the changes needed. We discussed having
the 0900# moved to a location that we could more easily access. The number one
suggestion was to have it hosted at the Dickinson County Hospital. Barry R. has
volunteered to contact the hospital and find out if they are interested in
providing this service. Of concern was the fact that AA or the hotline must not
become affiliated with the hospital.
District finances were also discussed. Do we need to have a finance
committee to audit the funds of the area, such as Intergroup, district, all
funds spent? Intergroup has always been a separate entity in our area, do we
want it to stay this way? What about the AA picnic? Do we want to form a central
office that administrates all AA functions like most areas of the country? Cliff
has done a great job as district treasurer and we need to help support his work.
Again, we need to save money where possible and make sure all funds spent are
presented to the district and verified with receipts of all district purchases.
Emailing minutes, newsletters, treasurer reports, etc. will save substantial
funds over a year. By building our credibility as a district committee we may
find ourselves with more contributions, especially if we start explaining the
60, 30, 10 split of group funds. All GSR’s should be approaching their groups
with this in mind and explaining that the district is trying to change to better
serve the groups. Please read the service manual, fund raising is addressed. We
need a volunteer to head an audit committee!
Meeting cards were discussed briefly. Of concern at the last district
meeting was adding other groups to the cards. Alanon has decided to print their
meeting cards themselves, so this issue has been resolved. It was brought up at
the current meeting that it would be beneficial for NA to be listed on the cards
also. Discussion on this was tabled and may be discussed at a later time.
Perhaps NA will also print their cards.
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