Delegate’s Report to Area Assembly, August 9, 2020
• The July/August General Service Board weekend occurred. Here are some highlights, in no particular order (and many thanks to our regional trustee, Francis, who sent his notes in time for our Assembly, from which I shamelessly cut and pasted):
– The meetings were entirely virtual – that was a first.
– They are already “planning for the likelihood” that next year’s General Service Conference (GSC) will have to be held virtually again. They will incorporate lessons learned from this year and involve delegates in some of the planning.
– All in person regional forums in 2021 have been cancelled, but they may look into doing them virtually. In person should resume in 2022, but may be hybrid, with online participation in addition to being there.
– They are expecting $2.3 – $2.5 million in insurance to cover our International Convention cancelation costs. That is the full amount we asked for.
– Grapevine Store – the number of sales are up 40% – 70%, but the average order has dropped from $80 to around $45. This makes sense as fewer groups, districts, areas, etc are buying in bulk to sell at in person events, and more individuals are buying for themselves.
– GV Subscriptions are up almost 1,000 subscriptions from last year.
– La Viña, however, is showing a reduction in subscriptions (+/-20%) due almost entirely to the cancellation of a large events where attendees usually renew their subscriptions.
– For those looking for a way to perform 12th Step work, via Grapevine’s Carry the Message (CTM) project, members can purchase gift certificates for those in need (such as loners, A.A. members in prisons, treatment or in remote communities). This is very important during this time when face-to-face 12th Step work is increasingly challenging. Since January, 175 CTM gift certificates have been processed.
– Setting up a Grapevine Instagram account is being investigated. Our consultants estimate that an Instagram account would take us from a US/Canada audience of approximately 100 million to a worldwide audience of 800-900 million.
– Google Adwords if implemented, will: instantly increase traffic and sales, and improve our rank for search queries that we do not currently rank for. PI has received several vocal requests to either rescind the decision to proceed with Google Adwords or to engage in a wider discussion with the Fellowship before proceeding any further. As such, there was a discussion about whether to move forward and decided that the 2019 Advisory Actions stating “A.A. World Services, Inc. apply for Google AdWords for the purpose of providing information about A.A. to the public” held the most weight and voted to continue with its implementation. A follow-up subcommittee has been formed to further discuss and formulate a recommendation
– The General Service Office rolled out a Voluntary Retirement Incentive Plan. The reaction has been mixed. Some employees responded immediately, some expressed an interest, while still others plan to continue working.
– The financial report for the virtual GSC showed all 93 Areas sent in their Delegate fees and many sent in extra. Expenses were much less than normal, $282,112. That left a deficit of $14,366. Most of the expenses were for printing the final report, $100,000 (estimated).
– There will be a request coming from the GSO secretary on Corrections for sharing from the Fellowship on how our message is being carried behind the walls during COVID-19. The deadline for stories will likely be mid September in order to have the background completed by October.
– General Service Office 8th Floor Renovation: The work is complete. In addition to working space, it will be used as temporary storage space for archival material that is currently being stored off site at a more expensive venue. Construction has come in under budget with the team doing everything they can to reduce cost by reusing furniture.
– For the first six months of 2020, Gross literature sales were $4,918,121 which was $2,565,863 lower than 2019 and almost $5,000,000 below the original budget. Literature sales have been slowly increasing since the major drop in March.
– Contributions have been amazing. ($670K was the monthly average pre-COVID) The fellowship has really stepped up. June was $900,000 and in July, over $1.1 million.
– Total expenses for the 1st six months of 2020 were $7,645,180. This is $1,908,167 less than 2019. The decrease in expenses compared to 2019 was mainly due to events being cancelled because of COVID-19 (i.e., General Service Conference and Board meetings being held virtually are huge cost savers).
• I, and all GSC members, will attend an online Financial report meeting on August 15th. We’ll hear the final, audited 2019 numbers and the new 2020 budget.
• The electronic final conference report is on our website here http://test.aacny.org/documents_2020/GSC/70th_GSC_Final_Report_(anonymity-protected)_English.pdf. But, because they didn’t want to delay getting that information out, management decided to publish it without the Finance information. The full Finance information will be a separate, secondary report that will be available once the information has been provided, translated, and approved.
• The souvenir book that was going to be sold at the International convention in Detroit is still moving forward. It’s called “A Visual History of Alcoholics Anonymous: An Archival Journey” Order forms will be out in November, and it will be available for sale Feb 14, 2021.
• Due to popular demand, AA.org will keep the International convention videos up thru Aug 31st. (they had 82,000 unique visitors watch them in July)
• The AA.org website was being reworked/redesigned and scheduled to be done this year. Due to finances, the project pushed to next year.
• Please keep Eastern PA in your prayers as their delegate, Ken D, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.
• NERAASA – Pittsburgh was going to host in 2021, then HMB in 2022, and Hershey, PA in 2023. Pittsburgh doesn’t feel it should host an in person event, so they pushed their hotel forward 1 year to avoid losing money, and HMB and Hershey did also. An Ad hoc committee with members from those 3 places was formed to decide what to do in 2021. Should it be virtual or cancelled? The ad hoc committee recommended virtual and formed 2 Options for moving forward. Option 1 was to invite individual Areas to bid on hosting NERAASA 2021. Option 2 would have the NE regional trustee will appoint the Host “Virtual” 2021 NERAASA Planning Committee, consisting of Regional Representation from the six (6) rotating Delegates (i.e., Areas 11, 13, 30, 44, 47, 49) not already hosting a NERAASA. This Planning Committee to be comprised of: Chair, Program, Registration, Secretary, Treasurer, and Technology platform. (Note, immediately following the August Area 4y Area Assembly, the NE delegates met and voted for Option 2 with substantial unanimity)
• NERD 2021 has been cancelled.
• I attended the online NY State Informational Workshop on Aug 1 – 2. Our area chairpersons served us beautifully on the various panels (Public Information, Corrections, etc) – many thanks! There was quite a bit of discussion about how to provide services/outreach during the pandemic. I’ll have a separate report on this event.
