Barry – Convention Chair, Finance Committee Member and Former Trustee and Officer
Jimmy James – Intergroup Rep, RIDH
Beth – OIAA International trustee,
Mark, Technology chair.
Jennifer begins the meeting and starts with the Serenity Prayer. Jennifer brings the Agenda on the screen and asks if anyone would like to add to the Agenda. No one replies so she starts the Attendance by introducing herself as the OIAA Treasurer. Kevin is a member of the Finance Committee. Felix introduces himself as the OIAA Alternate Treasurer. Nicky is the Secretary. Barry introduces himself as the Convention Chair, Long time member of the Finance Committee and former Trustee and Officer. Jimmy James introduces himself as an OIAA Intergroup Rep. for Recovery in da House. Beth is the OIAA International Trustee and Mark is the Technology Chair.
Approval of Minutes
Jennifer brings up the Agenda on the screen and asks if anyone has anything to add to the Agenda. No one answers. She moves on to the Approval of Minutes. She begins by sharing the December minutes and informs Nicky that she would like to go over some edits she found in the Minutes. She noticed some numbers were not correct, so Barry double checked, and the number was corrected. Including the changes, she asks if anyone has any questions. Felix moves to accept the Minutes and Kevin seconds. Unanimous vote.
December Minutes Accepted
Review of Financial Statements.
Jennifer reports that January marked the third month in a row of record-breaking contributions, totaling over $12,800. She states that General Liability Insurance was cancelled so there was a refund of $95.00. Organizational fees are exclusively legal fees, and she has sent out an email which was a letter from the Board talking about these fees. She believes there were many fees that should not have been incurred. They also put some new controls in place for communication with the lawyers. PayPal and Stripe fees are directly related to the Revenue. Professional fees are for the 1099s that were sent out to anyone who made over $600.00. Mark would like to ask how many were sent out and Jennifer answers that they were both sent to his special workers and the fee was $10. Barry would like to know why they decided to cancel General Liability and Jennfer answers that after reading all 59 pages, it doesn’t cover what is needed for OIAA. The Board decided to cancel, and they are now looking into a more suitable option which focuses on cyber or data breach.
Jennifer says the Convention has incurred some extra costs for Administrative work. Tech Special Worker is $750 for the month. Translation for the Board and Assemblies is $355.00. She also adds that this Budget will be needing to go back to the Assembly as there was a miscalculation in the Budget. They will also be needing more money for Board Meetings and for the Quarterly Combined Committee Meetings. She explains that to replenish this year’s Budget she will need to ask for an additional $3100 of legal fees. Unfortunately they also paid for 2024 legal expenses in 2025. Translation for the IGR forum was $275 and Translation for the Unity meeting was $664. She explains that ASL wasn’t able to provide for them, so a more expensive option was procured, so Unity may have to ask for more funds from the Assembly later on in the year. Under Other Technology is $483 and is the expenses dedicated to Translating the website. The Video Conferencing is our Zoom account for $50.00. Website Hosting and Management is our account. She ends with the Net Profit of $5,476.00 at the end of the month. She asks if anybody has any other questions on the Budget Variance Report. No questions. She stops sharing the Budget Variance.
NO QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK
Jennifer shares the Balance Sheet. There is just under $150,000 in the bank with $5,500 dedicated to the convention in Vancouver. Available funds are a little over $144,000. She asks if there are any questions concerning the Balance Sheet. Barry has a question about the Balance Sheet, he reiterates that there is $69,000 for Prudent Reserves. She agrees and explains that it is half of the expenses in the current Budget. However, if they get passed for additional funds from the Assembly, then that will add to the Prudent reserve 50% of the additional expenses. Kevin would like to add that he has seen a Central Office that has about $450,000 in their Prudent Reserve and has also seen another meeting do a preserve reserve at $100,000.00 so he appreciates the way OIAA is using a more accurate historical calculation. Jennifer agrees that this is why they uniquely do it in a more distinguished way between Prudent Reserves and Operating Expenses.
Jennifer brings up the final report on Contributions. She says that OIAA continues to get new groups and thinks it’s exciting when new Groups ask how they can contribute. She says there’s been a lot of interaction that she has had with Groups and Individuals about the Finances and that the Contributions are very robust. There was $1,500.00 donated from the No Matter What Club. Stepping Stones has been an amazing contributor even though they were a new group in 2024. They contribute monthly and this month is just under $1100.00. She continues that there were 76 different groups contributing in January for a total of $12,800 this month. She asks if anyone has any questions about the Contributions sheet. Barry says the Individuals amount continue to go down. Jennifer explains that he shouldn’t compare to prior she took over as the numbers were not accurate. Prior years were not always accurately reporting Group versus Individual Contributions. She says they now know how to tell the difference more clearly. Felix says that sometimes when Individuals contribute, they do so on behalf of their group. That’s why they see a decline in the numbers. So, they are putting the numbers in more accurately. Jennifer asks if there are any other questions on the Contributions Sheet. No questions.
NO QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK
Kevin’s Internal Financial Review
Jennifer hands it over to Kevin and puts the Review on screen for everyone to see. Kevin begins by giving a little bit of his background. He is a corporate accountant and has worked with CPA firms, as well as working for Deloitte for the last few years in L.A. He says that outside of the Audit itself, the words “review” and “compilation” won’t give the individual much comfort if they’re concerned about treasury reporting or if they’re concerned about segregation of duties.He says he used the A.I.C.P.A. Guidelines called SARS which is the statement on standards on accounting reviews and compilations and he followed their Guidelines. On the first page he says that if he was an outside independent accountant he would give this kind of report. He explains that the AICPA has been battling for 40 years to create a consistent wording in the reports and recent litigation has been initiated to help fix this issue. In other words, looking for consistency with inconsistencies. He goes over the disclaimers which are on his report. He also explains that since they are a smaller entity, we get to bypass a lot of time-consuming auditing due to the internal entities being of such small proportions. The entities are Xero, PayPal, Stripe, Mercury, etc. In these entities, they are also having their internal control audited. That is important to an auditor as they are also being observed. He also notes that having a report like this would be a very expensive bill.
He begins with the Balance Sheet and explains that it shows a moment of time. You have your assets and the liabilities and then we have the equity which is made up of two parts, historical equity or historical monies retained in the business and then the current months operations. He explains that the equity account will be changing every time you produce the balance information in the income statement.
He goes over the Income Statement review. He also would like to say that they want to make sure that it all is consistent with 7th Tradition. He wanted to make sure that the OIAA Guidelines were in order and that the Contributors were Alcoholics. He goes over the companies: Xero is a technology firm based in Wellington, New Zealand and they are audited by Ernst and Young which is one of the big four accounting firms and in which their internal controls technologies are opined upon. Mercury Technologies, he thought was associated with their bank, but it is not. It is a Fin Tech Company which is a Financial Services Company. They provide technology but they don’t have banking operations. So, in that aspect, they use Choice Financials, which is in Fargo, North Dakota. Choice Financial is a financial institution that was founded in 1906, and they are FDIC insured which is important in case of any bank failures. He continues that one of the good things about Choice is they are a part of a network of regulated banks that can put their monies into different banks. So, you could technically be insured for up to 5 million dollars.
Under Sources of Income, PayPal is audited by another big company named PWC, and their internal controls get their blessing. Stripe is out of Ireland and California and is another firm like PayPal where you can transfer money amongst different payers and receivers and Stripe, while not publicly traded yet, they are oversighted by the State regulators in California and have also undergone an Internal control review by an outside party. PCI or pay credit industry whereby Stripe has gotten top ratings or internal control. And last but not least, is Travelling Mailbox out of North Carolina He explains that when OIAA gets a check Contributions, it gets sent to the Traveling Mailbox, the treasurer or alt treasurer electronically deposits it in Mercury who then transfers it over to Choice Financial. Travelling Mailbox is the small startup and when somebody sends in a check they open it, make copies of the checks and then it gets transferred over to Mercury and then to Choice. I asked who these people are. But they have successfully sent over $150,000 to financial institutions, so they are credible.
He points out in his report that after the 6th item down, the procedures that were conducted were not mandatory. He says that since it was his first time going through the company finances, he wanted to go the extra mile to conduct a thorough audit, so he went a bit beyond what was required. He says that he believes that it would be better to pay someone from the inside who is more familiar with OIAA, to do the Internal Financial Review rather than pay someone from outside the organization.
Kevin asks if there are any other questions for him concerning his review. No Questions.
Jennifer stops sharing her screen and asks if anyone has any questions. When no one answers she praises Kevin for his work. She asks for a motion to accept the Review and adds that only Kevin, herself, Barry, Beth, Mark and Nicky are available to vote for this date. Mark puts in a Motion to accept, Beth seconds. All vote Yes.
Jennifer asks if anything else needs to be brought up for this meeting. Beth says that Jennifer should be getting a bill from Tech 12 and so Jennifer replies that it is all budgeted for.
Jennifer Closes the Meeting with the Responsibility Statement.
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