Service Matters • January 2020

Welcome to the First Issue of SERVICE MATTERS in 2020!

Welcome to the first issue of Service Matters in 2020 – May our vision benefit not only from hindsight, which they say is 20-20, but also from clear, abstinent and grateful eyes! We don’t need to celebrate the new year with re-solutions, because we already have a solution that works!!

The Structure Committee

Purpose: to make recommendations for GSA service structure and to document current board policies, procedures, job descriptions and standard practices and to present them for approval at the World Service Conference.

The Structure Committee is hard at work preparing for the next GreySheet World Service Conference by drafting procedures to be included in our Service Manual and Conference Charter. To be assigned to a committee, please contact your ISR or e-mail Structure@greysheet.org

Town Hall Meeting

The next Board of Trustees Town Hall meeting will be on Sunday, January 26 at 11:00 AM ET, on the following link: https://zoom.us/j/717731799. All are welcome!!The phone link for this meeting is: +1 669 900 6833, and when prompted please use the meeting ID, 717 731 799 # to join. Any questions for the board may be sent through the Communications Committee at communication@greysheet.org or submitted directly to the Board at president@greysheet.org.
 
The next Committees Connecting Meeting is scheduled for Sunday, January 12, at 12:00 noon ET at the following link: https://zoom.us/j/663470166.  The Finance Committee and the Conference Committee are presenting the work of their committees and opportunities for new people to volunteer. You may also use the phone link: +14086380968, 663470166# US (San Jose) and then when prompted use the meeting ID: 663 470 166. All are welcome!

Concept 3 meeting:  Sunday, January 19 from 1:00 – 1:30 PM ET, at this link: https://zoom.us/j/791453380.
 
Tradition 3 meeting – Sunday, January 26 from 1:00 – 1:30 PM ET, at this link: https://zoom.us/j/791453380.

January 2020 - Monthly Board of Trustees Column

Joyce S. - Treasurer

Hello!  I’m honored to write this column to introduce myself as the newly elected Treasurer of our fellowship.  First, I am a grateful member of GSA and I have enjoyed 22 years of back-to-back abstinence, one day at a time, since March 24, 1997.  I live in Overland Park, KS, the wife of a retired CPA, the mother of three adult sons, the grandmother of 5 grandchildren and one on the way.  I’m a retired accountant having spent time in my career as a tax auditor for the IRS, as an auditor with the inspector general’s office of the USDA, as the accountant for our parish, and bookkeeper for a small non-profit organization for 11 years.  I’ve been the treasurer of our local Kansas City GreySheet community for many years. I like to live a quiet life of simple pleasures. I enjoy bookkeeping and find it very relaxing, somewhat like the order and peace I find in weighing and measuring my food.  These days, I find myself very busy in my role as GSAWS Treasurer.

Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge my predecessor, Nicole, and thank her for her years of service.  She has left a legacy of good and accurate financial records and has generously helped me transition into this position.  She’s a wonderful role model as a leader and as a trusted servant. Thank you, Nicole!  

To give you an idea of what the GSAWS treasurer is involved in, let me describe last week.  My days were filled with many things to do. I attended a Finance Committee meeting, recorded donations received via PayPal and our P. O. Box, reconciled bank accounts, paid a couple of bills, presented the budget to the Board of Trustees, responded to an email from our external auditor, and began preparing the financial statements for the end of the month.  The monthly treasury reports are published each month and you can find them at https://www.greysheet.org/world-services/board-of-trustees/treasury-reports.  

Because of my background as an auditor and as a Church accountant (we’ve all heard about embezzlements from churches), I have a special interest in maintaining good internal controls.  Many good practices are already in place, and I’ve been asked to help put these policies and procedures into writing. Now that the budget for 2020 has been prepared and approved, written procedures will be my next priority.  As a tax auditor, I was trained to look for fraud and unreported income. In order to protect GSAWS cash, we have policies established to separate the duties of those connected with money. Some examples of this are having a policy where the person preparing a check does not sign the check.  No bill gets paid without the approval of a committee chairperson or the Board president. The bank accounts are reconciled every month and a second person reviews them. We have an external auditor reviewing our financial records right now. This is very expensive ($2,000 and this is a discount rate), so in future years, if we don’t have the ability to pay for an external audit, we will have an internal audit by independent members of our fellowship.  There are other measures we can take to safeguard the assets of our fellowship. Do you have any suggestions?  

One other area of interest of mine is related to the particular moment we find ourselves in the history of GSAWS as a twelve-step fellowship.  I’ve read the introduction of the AA Service Manual written by Bill W. where he discussed the need to grow AA from a small group of individuals to a larger organization which would survive after the original people were gone and continue to reach more and more people suffering from alcoholism.  There were growing pains, and that is where GSAWS is now. What is the best direction to take? How can we carry the message to other compulsive eaters? As Treasurer, I ask, how are we going to fund the necessary projects? Bill W. focused on writing the Big Book, and sales of the Big Book helped fuel the growth of the AA fellowship. 

At the last World Service Conference, we voted to publish more literature and redesign our website to reach more people. These projects require money. The World Service Conference itself requires money. We have two revenue streams, seventh tradition donations and sales of literature. We all need to keep a close watch to make sure that we can continue our primary purpose to carry the message to other compulsive eaters.  Can you help? Can you donate an extra $10 or more directly to GSAWS this year? If you don’t already contribute directly to GSAWS, you can do so via the donation tab at https://www.greysheet.org/donations.  (Beginning this month, you will receive a written acknowledgment of each donation.)  Every entity in our fellowship is self-supporting, including GSAWS. Therefore, GSAWS does not automatically get a portion of the seventh tradition that individuals, like you, put in the basket at their local meetings.  GSAWS needs to have seventh tradition donations sent directly to it. Here is a pie chart that shows various donations received in 2019.  
 
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Do you have any suggestions?  Please feel free to contact me at treasurer@greysheet.org.

It’s the New Year and as I write this column, I think about all the commercials and ads about the latest diet.  It’s a time of the year when I’m keenly aware of my gratitude that the solution was given to me from those that came before.  Let’s work together to make our fellowship financially sound so we can continue to do the work of service and reach others who are suffering.

Thanks and NMW!

Seventh Tradition

As our Board Treasurer, Joyce, so clearly told us, we have much to be grateful for and more reasons than ever to donate to GSAWS directly, either by check, or through monthly deductions from our bank account via Paypal. Any amount, whether $1, $5, $10 or more, adds up when it happens every month.  Please go to the Donation page on our website at https://greysheet.org/donations. Imagine if every GreySheeter did this today!

Audio Links

December 8 Committees Connecting meeting:
https://zoom.us/recording/play/lSmLH2ZuVYMtwLp8DvYC-S_1R4ufXKvGSVs1w4r-5hRTgsgEUfPj_K3rFe_HLZrV?autoplay=true
 
December 15 Tradition 2 meeting: ttps://zoohm.us/recording/play/uROW5bxavXykqHc10V7cN4yNnaKE0TLP-WKLNZXlljs_6BWcJAHdyFBR8o5Vw7Wo?autoplay=true
 
December 22 Concept 2 meeting:
https://zoom.us/recording/play/-zFsYaFy7rhWnEU4ywiVsDxk_So97_JJFdSbrrZtiEHMmziMq4g0quTUHdeAzfAZ?autoplay=true
 
YouTube Audio recording of Service Matters December issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyf59agwkFs&t=7s

Question & Answer

Q: What kind of participation in GSA works best for me?

A: When we come into the rooms of GreySheeters Anonymous, whether those rooms are face-to-face meetings, retreats and round-ups, phone meetings, or video meetings, we come with severe deficiencies in the ‘living happy, joyous and free’ department. We are greeted with a solution to our food problem – that being GreySheet abstinence. It takes all we have to weigh and measure our food, shop for it, chop it up and cook it in a way that leaves us feeling nourished, nurtured, and well-fed.
 
We are encouraged to grow a network around us, by making phone calls, both to our sponsors and to other GreySheeters, and by accepting those phone calls. That is our first experience of participation.
 
Soon, we realize that in order for meetings to keep happening, service is required. Someone needs to book a room or a zoom platform or a phone meeting; someone needs to book speakers; someone needs to collect 7^th tradition money and be responsible for its distribution to pay rent and support our intergroups and world services. Someone needs to qualify; someone needs to be spiritual timekeeper; someone needs to step up as our group service representative.
 
With a little more time in the program, we gain a wider perspective. Someone needs to work on committees, show up at intergroup meetings; serve on the Board of Trustees, come to the world service conferences and vote as a representative of a larger group of us. Someone needs to get Service Matters published monthly, and write literature and keep the accounts clear and transparent,  plan for the next conference and make decisions about how our fellowship is structured.  Someone needs to keep the phone list relevant with names of GreySheeters who are still abstinent and willing to talk to newcomers.
 
The luxury problem many of us have is that the longer we’re abstinent, the better our lives get, the busier our lives get. We find we don’t have as much down time as we used to have when we were wondering how to get from breakfast to lunch without eating. The temptation is to attend fewer meetings, have fewer sponsees, do less service than we used to.
 
But who will do these things if we don’t? Have we defined self-care as saying no to service? Or are we willing to look at our lives to see the changes we need to make, both to make our dreams come true and to pay our debt forward in GreySheeters Anonymous?
 
Where do we see ourselves as most needed? Most useful? What interests us? Will we be one of the many people needed to give of their time, energy and talents? Let us talk to our sponsors, our Higher Power, and other people involved in the kind of service we want to participate in. We commit to doing  it for our abstinence, doing it for the compulsive eater still suffering, and doing it for the future of GSA.

WSC Registration Packet - Now Available

As our Board Treasurer, Joyce, so clearly told us, we have much to be grateful for and more reasons than ever to donate to GSAWS directly, either by check, or through monthly deductions from our bank account via Paypal. Any amount, whether $1, $5, $10 or more, adds up when it happens every month.  Please go to the Donation page on our website at https://greysheet.org/donations. Imagine if every GreySheeter did this today!

Call for Writings

Help us create the first GSA Reflection Book!

The Literature Committee is creating a book of Daily Reflections. I am honored to have the opportunity to help create a resource that other GreySheeters may be using for many decades to come! And you, too, can contribute to the project!

The Daily Reflections Book will be divided into two parts. The first one will consist of 3 short writings for breakfast, lunch and dinner for every day of the year. These will be 60 to 80-word reflections designed to be food for thought accompanying each meal that nourishes our bodies.

The second part of the Daily Reflections Book consists of longer (250 to 300-word) reflections on the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions for each month of the year.
 
You are welcome to contribute to the project with your experience, strength, and hope! Writers need to have at least 90 days of back-to-back GS abstinence. All writings in the book will be anonymous. You can submit more than one writing, and you are free to draw on your older writings/posts/reflections as long as you fit them into the format of this book.
For more information please contact: Reflections@greysheet.org or
+359 896 33 26 97 (What's App)

Note to GSR and ISRs

Has your group or intergroup voted in new officers? Please make sure you notify the Structure Committee with any new changes at structure@greysheet.org or notify your ISR to update the spreadsheet on google drive. Every ISR has access to this spreadsheet on Google Drive.

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