CoDA Announcements: Board Call Summary for January 2012

From: "CoDA Announcements" <codalist@codependents.org>
Subject: CoDA Announcements: Board Call Summary for January 2012
Date: Wed May 16 13:53:28 2012

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CoDA World Board Meeting Summary for January 2012

MEMBERS PRESENT: Evie S.-Chair, Barbara D.-Treasurer, Lisa B.- Vice Chair, Dagmar M.-Trustee , Mercedes M.-Trustee, Julie B.-Trustee, Florence F.-Secretary,

OBSERVER: Steve R.

Hello Fellowship,

Happy New Year from all of us! Our January Board Meeting started with an establishment of round robin order and a moment of silence followed by the Serenity Prayer.

We approved the December minutes with a minor amendment. We reviewed the treasurer's report. We also reviewed the CoRe royalty report.

There was a question as to how the Board Summary and the Board Minutes are available to the Fellowship. The Board Summary is sent out to the Fellowship via email blast and made publicly available. The Board Minutes are posted in our Committee Work Area which is available to World Service members via password.

We passed a motion to raise the bookkeeper's hourly rate.

We finalized our QSR submission and accepted it as amended via email.

The Board held a mini face to face meeting on January 7th and 8th held on the west coast. All the west coast members attended, these members were Evie S., Lisa B., Barbara D., and Julie B. One international member was included who was Dagmar.

During the f2f meeting issues concerning the website were discussed. They spent time with Leo, the new webmaster and David, potential contractor for the website. Currently, we do not think that the current meeting search is fixable. We are looking for a search that works and makes sense. We would like to combine the ability to search per city and zip code. David will look into options and give us some quotes. The west coast team developed a rough draft of what a web front page should look like. This will eventually be distributed among the committees for feedback. We are sending an email to the previous web contractor to ask for turnover of ownership to the Board of the www.codaworldfellowship.org website until we decide what we are going to use. Finally, we made the decision for Roy to remain webmaster throughout January to complete Leo's training.

During the f2f meeting, there was some discussion about Translation agreements and Publication and Distribution (P and D) contracts. It was clarified that a translation agreement has to be with a person, while a P and D is with a country/VE. Lisa and Evie are working on the status of all existing contracts. During our con call the issue of memorandum of understanding was brought up as an alternative to P and D contracts. We will research this issue further.

Dagmar asked for assistance for revising the Expense Reimbursement Policy during the mini F2F. Barbara and Evie volunteered and they all continue to work on this endeavor. It will be sent to Finance and other committees for feedback before the end of March.

Lisa and Julie spent some time looking at our VE Issues. Most of them were submitted by Missouri. There has been quite a bit of work already done by our lawyers on the revision of our bylaws. We believe we need to come to a middle ground concerning the relationship between Committees and the Board. It is noted that the Service Structure Committee (SSC) was assigned the VEI concerning chair term limits of world committees. We have heard from SSC and there is some discussion taking place about this issue.

We believe healthy communication is essential to our recovery. We are looking at ways of increasing communication between the committees, the Board and Voting Entities (VEs). We are acknowledging that VE's do not have any direct way to present motions at CoDA Service Conference (CSC). It is noted that more participation by delegates on world committees would improve communication and give them more say in the motions presented at CSC.

There was a suggestion that electing committee members of certain world committees may be desired. The reasoning for this is that some committees require special skill sets to perform their job. During the con call, this was discussed further. Another view presented is that volunteers who are not interested in the job of the committee and/or do not have the skill sets for that committee most likely would not join that particular committee. Requiring election of committee members may be viewed as an attempt at controlling the outcome of our committee membership.

We are discussing the need for a glossary of terms; currently we do not have one in the Fellowship Service Manual (FSM). A board member also brought up the need to include a glossary of abbreviations i.e. CWA stands for Committee Work Area.

We discussed the status of our delegate list. Currently we do not have a complete delegate list. We encourage members reading this summary to send in any information they have on their VE delegates or if you are a delegate yourself, please send your information to board@coda.org to help us in this process. It is the Board Secretary's job to maintain this list.

During the Con call, we discussed the status of the FSM. We have heard from the chair of Service Structure Committee, SSC and a 4th Quarter QSR has been submitted by SSC. SSC hopes to have the FSM and MSP ready for publication by the end of the 1st Quarter.

We also discussed the issue of a Spanish translation of the FSM. We acknowledge that this is a complicated issue in view of the fact that the FSM is a living document that changes almost every year and will need to continue to be updated in all languages that it may be translated. We also need to research the best way to update our Spanish website.

During the mini F2F, it was discussed that the FSM should be put in the second list of priorities of TMC, this was a change from our previous group conscience in December. In the discussion on the con call we decided we needed more time and discussion on this issue over the next month.

We discussed other legal issues involving contracts completed or in process.

Barbara gave the Ad Hoc Committee update. They are currently working on a simplification of the Twelve Service Concepts. It was noted that the draft should be sent to SSC for review and to submit as a motion for CSC 2012. There is agreement around the questions to be put to the committees and Board. The Ad hoc Committee is to agree how these questions might be circulated to everyone.

We discussed the status of other open items. Of note, Natasha, chair of IMC, has updated us that they will have information about our disputes available for our March meeting. It was noted that we may need a separate con call to discuss the outcome of these disputes.

Our next con call is Sunday, February 12. Our proposed March meeting is Sunday, March 11th. We are planning a f2f meeting right before the CoDA Service Conference, CSC. It was noted that CSC is scheduled for the second week of July. The dates are now posted on our website.

Guidelines for Participation in Board con calls- (Board Meetings)

These guidelines are to facilitate the observation of interested members of the Fellowship in the Board of Trustee conference calls. The Board's use of teleconferencing on a monthly basis to conduct the business of CoDA is not intended to close the meetings, nor to conduct CoDA business in secret; it is intended as a money and time saving use of technology. The Board feels that its meetings should be open to the Fellowship and welcomes the interest and appropriate participation offered.

1. The CoDA Board will announce the date and time for their next scheduled monthly conference call as part of each meeting or con call summary that is sent out via email blast and posted on the CoDA website.
2. Members interested in joining the call must notify the board in advance since a limited number of people may join each call.
3. It is at the discretion of the Board as to whether or not participants will have a "voice" during the call. This is based on the time constraints that we have and whether or not a participant has specific information or expertise on a subject under consideration.
4. Certain con calls (for example, those that involve personnel discussions) will be closed to non board members.
5. Those members agreeing to the above conditions and wishing to be notified and given access to the Board conference call should send Email to: board@coda.org The Board would like to receive requests for participation seven days in advance of the conference call if possible.

board@coda.org

If you have a general question about CoDA (as opposed to the specific content of this email), please email outreach@coda.org

For questions in Spanish, please email espanol@coda.org

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