Spring is in the air! Though, as I write this, it was -6F at my house this morning. A good day to be inside writing my Elf report. In this month’s report, you will find the first financial statement for 2021. This includes our new prudent reserve based on the 2021 budget as well as the total of allotted (reserve) funds. The allot-ted funds is a pretty hefty chunk of money but keep in mind it includes two sets of Convention seed money (as there was no disbursement for a 2021 convention), all of the spending motions passed in December including the significant website redesign, and the new Special Projects Fund to be utilized throughout the year. My assembly report in March will detail all these items more thoroughly.
Please note also that this report includes our significant disbursement to the General Service Board as per the December assembly. This sum was the remainder of the avail-able cash from the 2020 budget and with this disbursement we started the year at “zero” available cash. In other words, as is ideal in the world of AA self support, we are starting 2021 from scratch and our budget will be wholly financed by group contributions. As always, we value your support tremendously.
Though not a part of the January Financial Statement, I would also like to report that I have mailed out checks to the General Service Board for our standard delegate contribution for the conference as well as the additional voluntary contribution from the 2020 Convention overage. Along those lines, I do have a couple of questions for the GSB that I have been investigating. Apparently, every year we give an additional voluntary contribution (i.e. convention overage) it goes to the preceding years General Service Conference and not the current year as we thought. Also, as per a January, 2021 letter from Paul K., CFO for GSO, the 2020 conference has already been fully funded by contributions and yet he indicates that our 2021 voluntary contribution will still be put toward the 2020 conference. None of this I believe is of major concern, just a bit of a head scratcher. If I learn anymore on this I will certainly pass it on.
In service,
Christoph, Area 46 Treasurer