|
Prepared for the December 2024 F.W.S. Newsletter
Hello S.L.A.A. Friends!
The last few months have been very busy for the Board since the September 2024 edition.
I’m happy to announce that we have contracted with Dave Crawford from San Antonio to be our IT Contractor. Dave has been working with our F.W.S. office on an as needed capacity for over a decade and knows our systems better than anyone. Any update or change requests for the slaafws.org website can be sent to webmaster@slaafws.org. A big welcome to Dave!
I also want to give an update on our finances. Our Treasurer, Jeff R., and the Board Finance Committee did a great job of preparing a presentation to the Board on the final 2023-2024 fiscal year and a 2024-2025 fiscal year budget. We held a Special Meeting on October 26, 2024, to review them, in addition to our regular three-hour monthly meeting. Those have been approved and the Profit and Loss, Balanced Fund and our new budget are in this edition. I can now confirm that the 2023-2024 fiscal year contributions did total $91.7K, a 25% decrease from the prior year and an almost 40% decrease over the last two years. But I want to send a big thank you to those Intergroups, Groups, and Individuals who positively responded to our information sharing about the status of donations over the last several months.
Fortunately, our Board 7th Tradition Committee has started a campaign to help us celebrate S.L.A.A.’s 50th anniversary in 2026 (our first official meeting was 1976)! You can see from the flyer that they’re asking us to contribute 19.76 each month to F.W.S. in our own currency. A big thank you to the that Committee for creating such a great flyer!
As a reminder, there are several ways to make F.W.S. contributions. We can make a one-time or monthly contribution on our website: https://slaafws.org/donate/. Venmo (newly available! @slaafws-official) and PayPal are also options on the same site. Checks can be mailed to Fellowship-Wide Services, 2411 NE Loop 410, Suite 122, San Antonio TX 78217, USA or donations can be made by phone to 1-210-828-7900.
After much discussion, the Board voted to authorize the Conference Charter Committee to schedule the 2025 virtual Annual Business Meeting over four days instead of three days to allow more items on our agenda to be addressed. The Board Annual Business Meeting Planning Committee met on November 21, 2024, and determined possible 2025 ABM dates to recommend to the Board.
We’re slowly making progress on getting Board meeting minutes ready for posting on our website. Until recently, the last ones posted were November 2023, so we’re definitely behind. Meanwhile, the 2024 ABM Minutes Review Workgroup has been meeting weekly over the last several weeks since receiving the minutes to edit and prepare them for finalization.
Because of some fraudulent activity with our checking account at Frost Bank, we opened another account with Wells Fargo. We’re in the process of moving all our funds there and will close our Frost Bank account. The fraudulently obtained funds should be completely refunded to us by the end of November 2024.
The Treasurer, Jeff R., and I flew to San Antonio (no expense to F.W.S.) at the beginning of October to participate in the fiscal year-end F.W.S. office inventory. The inventory all went well and Jeff and I had a blast spending time with the F.W.S. team (I’ve just about lost the Tex-Mex weight gain). Speaking of the team, I want to extend continued thanks to our Executive Director, Pam, our Logistics Manager, Hector, our Administrative Assistant, Christina, and now Dave, our IT Contractor.
We approved the Service Superstar Brochure to be added to the Webstore as a free pamphlet and has also been printed and will be placed into literature orders for six months.
The Board is now listing our meetings using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) because that time never changes and using UTC more accurately reflects our international fellowship. We find https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ is helpful.
I want to express my appreciation to our 2024-2025 trustees for their energy and service. This is a list of them and their Board Committee Chair positions:
Copyright Translation – Rick B. (FL)
Development – Chris D. (CA)
Finance – Jeff R. (WA)
HR/Personnel – John S. (CA)
Outreach – Jack F. (AUS)
Publishing & Distribution – Patrick D. (UK)
BABMPC – Ari F. (NJ)
BTC /Technology – Rick B. (Interim) (FL)
7th Tradition – Phoenix G. (TX)
If you’re interested in joining one of the Board Committees as a non-Board member, please complete the application form, policy prohibiting harassment, mutual confidentiality and conflicts of interest forms found here:
| 
