Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- Archives Financing 7th Archives Workshop
- Speaker
- Leann M. and Charlie W. and Cliff L
- Date
- 2002-09-01
Transcript
Source: Leann M. and Charlie W. and Cliff L – Archives Financing 7th Archives Workshop – 2002-09-01.mp3 File: leann-m-and-charlie-w-and-cliff-l-archives-financing-7th-archives-workshop-2002-09-01.mp3 Duration: 00:47:55
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Good morning, everyone. My name is Cliff. I'm an alcoholic. Hi. This is the multi-track session. The title is Archives Financing. As I said, my name is Cliff. I'm an alcoholic. There are two other presenters here. Leanna M. is here from St. Louis, and Charlie W. from Pasadena. I want to start with the Serenity Prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Amen. Yeah, I want to thank Tom for asking me to present here, and it's really been a learning experience for me. When I was asked to present on Archives financing, I knew very little about it, and that was about a week ago. And I learned a lot off research sites on the internet and talking to people in archives, and I've also learned a lot just in the last couple days here at this workshop. It's now my privilege and honor to introduce Leanna M. from St. Louis. Good morning. My name is Leanna Miller.
I'm an alcoholic. I am privileged to be the archivist for the Eastern Area of Missouri. I can't tell you exactly when that happened because I'm not good at dates, and that's not a good attribute for an archivist. But anyway, it's been several years, ten or twelve or something like that, you know. After Tom called me and asked me to make this presentation, And I had said yes. My second thought was, how do I stretch into 20 minutes the fact that our area has always supported our archives?
You know, my first thought had been, What are you doing now, woman? You know. So I thought, now that you know that our area does support our archives and have done so for a good number of years, I thought I would give you a little bit of history about our archives. Excuse me. Our archives were established in 1974. They appointed a lady named Blanche as the archivist. She had just finished her tour of duty as recording secretary for the area, and in that position she realized that she didn't have previous notes and stuff and had made that suggestion. Now, Blanche at that time was an executive secretary.
That was before we started calling them administrative assistants. And with that knowledge, she was very well qualified to do this. And the area supported her and bought her a two-drawer file cabinet to store in her second bedroom of her home. Since then, they had to go to a second two-drawer, you know. And in 1985, we found a repository. There's a building in our area. It's in a town called Maplewood that is sort of central in our St.
Louis metro area. And it's above a Ford dealership. This sounds like I'm going astray, but I'm not. In the second floor above that dealership, we have the central services office, and they have probably three rooms up there. We have the Al-Anon office, and I think they have two rooms. Eastern Area has a suite of two rooms. The archives, my little home, has two rooms that are 12 feet by 20 feet, okay? And our monthly rent for those two rooms is $125 a month.
Both. Both. They did an article in the newspaper recently about this dealership and the family, and we have no idea why they have been so kind to us. We haven't found a connection where one of them were alcoholics or not, but the central
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services office has been there for well over 25 years, and this
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is the kind of rent that we're paying. In this second floor, I think the family that owns this building, they lease one office out to a civil engineer. One of the boys became a lawyer, and he has a suite of two offices up there. But, you know, we're grateful for these blessings, and we don't question. You know, this is the going rate they ask us, and we pay for that. We don't negotiate the rent, but we certainly consider it a blessing to have.
People that we have no idea why they support us this way, but we go with that, you know. Bottom line is that the eastern area of Missouri has always taken care of us. They, in addition to the rent, they allow us a budget, and it has grown over the years. This year it's $500. Now, I think with my making this trip out here, we're going to go over that. But as my chairman told me, a budget is a budget is a budget.
And when I get back to the area assembly in October, I'll submit my expenses, and if there's any controversy, we'll settle it then, you know. I don't worry about those things anymore. I figure things work out as they should. But back to Blanche, you know, I was so privileged to know her. She was a lovely lady of Irish heritage. She had the most beautiful white hair I've ever seen in my life. Her complexion was just smooth as silk, even at her age, and she was in her 80s when I met her. And I had known her just through the fellowship, and I had been out of service work for a few couple years. I had been in my new early sobriety.
I was GSR and IR, and I was on the steering committee at our North County Zone office, and I was on the Alano board down at Central Services. And during that time, I'd always worked with CPC. And as luck has it, you know, I got into a bad marriage after I was sober. Can you imagine that, you know? And so I had started to drop out of things as far as service work. I kept going to my meetings. I needed them.
And a newcomer called me one day and said, I'm the new GSR for the group. And I said, Yeah, I know. You know, you'll enjoy it. Well, this is first assembly coming up. What do they do out there? So I said to her, When is it? And she said, This Saturday. And I said, I'll go with you. Yeah. And I went out and I walked into our area assembly, and they had tables, service tables, you know, CPC and PI and Grapevine and all this all over.
And I wasn't looking at the signs, but I saw Blanche sitting at a table with a couple of other people that I knew, and it wasn't crowded, so I walked over and sat down. Then when the meeting started, this was the archives table. This was their committee meeting. And before that meeting was over, I was saying to Blanche, Please, please, please let me help you. And that's the way it's been ever since.
You know, God does for us what we can't do for ourselves. He puts us in places and gives us the opportunity to serve. And from the very beginning, it was a beautiful friendship and just great service training. That lady was just something else again. One of the things that she impressed upon me was the confidentiality of our records, that we, you know, we had to be careful who we allowed in to see them.
And she was so confident of this that she bought a rubber stamp to mark files confidential, and she wanted this to be well known. And the stamp she bought was too big for any of the paper we had. She was also very frugal. And as I looked at our traveling archives that we had at that time that one of the fellow members had made for us, and they were well constructed. They were of wood. Each section was like this big, you know, so it made this big, and it was piano hinge, wood, glass that was, you know, framed in and bolted, so it took forever if you wanted to change those displays. And they were heavy, let me tell you.
But those are what we used, you know.
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And that had been a contribution from a fellow AA member, and we have been able to accept contributions from fellow AA members. Blanche saved the backs of the daily reminders, you know, the plastic backs, the bolt, whatever they are, and she used those as backings for pictures for her display. Out of her own pocket, she bought copies of Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, and she cut the pictures out to make her first displays, you know.
So she was frugal, and she loved these big fat accordion folders. And this just cracks me up, but to bind those together, I discovered I don't know how many tops that she had cut off from her pantyhose to hold them together for the elastic, you know. So in establishing an archives, I suggest that you choose someone that's very frugal, you know. And every time I come across, and there's still a few around, every time I come across one, I think of Blanche with loving kindness and the legacy she left us, because it was at her doing that we have our archives today.
And like I said, we are now in a two-room suite. The front room is our display and reading area. We have managed to put up blackout drapes on the window so the sun doesn't damage as much. We have put the—there are tubes that you can get to put over fluorescent lights that cuts down the UV rays. And so far, you know, God does for us, again, what we can't do for ourselves. And I keep waiting for this person to come along that's really interested in preservation.
That hasn't happened, but God did do for me what I couldn't do for myself. And a gentleman that had retired and loved the history of AA goes down once a week on Wednesday and keeps the archives open from ten till two. Again, God does for us what we don't do, can't do for ourselves. He had to have surgery. I was forced into retirement. And so now I can just step in and keep it open on Wednesdays. I go down another day a week just to do, you know, filing.
And our archives committee is small, but I have a gentleman that's worked on our archives committee for, I think we're going into his fifth or sixth year on the committee. He was chairman, then he stepped down just to be a committee, and he's a retired engineer. Now, if any of you are retired engineers or know any retired engineers, and I've worked for them all my life and was married to one, they like to be organized. And this gentleman labels the shelves, and that's where they sit, you know. And he puts this in order and this in order, and he went through and cleaned out our supply cabinet, and everything is in its place, you know. And when you get someone like that, you just stand aside and let them whirl and do their thing, you know.
And I'm grateful for that. Today or yesterday, I brought with me half of the traveling archives that we have today. The other half, I thought getting on board with one was enough, but it's over in the display area, and it's a big trifold bulletin board, so to speak, and it slips into a case, and it's very portable. And that one, well, each of them were donated by one of the districts in our area. So we have been supported not only by the area assembly, but the districts have supported us.
You know, these boards run, I guess at that time, about four hundred dollars, and we had two districts, you know, contribute each one. And they're easy to portable. They're attractive, I think. They can be set up on a table or they can be stacked, and, but they were a gift from two of the districts. With our activity at the assembly, Several of the districts have started their own archives, and I think that's what.
their own archives. And I think that's what archives are all about.
[00:15:01]
We're the area archivist, and I've, you know, I believe that each district should have their own history, you know, as well as continue to send your minutes to me and your flyers and your group histories so that we can keep them in one place. And I think we're, Aaron, I think we're probably following your filing system just by a matter of being logical. You know, we have the area minutes, the district minutes, rather. We have the district group histories, and we have the district where and whens, and we have the district flyers, because I find that the flyers, especially if they'll take time after the event to write on the back how many attended, what the weather was, da da da, you know, that gives us a history of that district in particular, you know.
And I find that when people do come into the archives, they're not really interested in a lot of things. They want to know what happened in their district before they got there. We just keep doing this, you know, and hoping for more interest in the archives. And I'm seeing it grow for a little bit. But my presentation simply is that we have been blessed that our area supports the archives and have.
They allow us to accept contributions, and that was a matter for discussion at several assemblies. But there were people that were dear to our area that passed away, and other people that loved them enough that wanted and knew their interest in the archives, wanted to make a donation to our archives in their memory. And like I said, we discussed this for at least two assemblies, if not three, and we have four a year.
So, you know, the debate went back and forth, and some people felt that because the area supported us, those donations should go to the area to be dispensed as they saw fit. Well, the majority blessed them, voted that yes, we could accept those kind of contributions. And over the years, we've accepted contributions like a desk and a couple file cabinets and a TV VCR so that we could show our videos in the display room, the video collection that we have. And someone donated us a boombox so we could play the audio histories that we have.
And I think I'm allowed this much pride to say that we have a very nice archives and a very nice reading room. And in fact, Saturday the 12th, I'm meeting a group down there just on a special, and I've offered this always, that if they wanted to come down and see our archives, you know, I would be available to them at a convenient time. So I don't know how many we'll have, but there are some coming down on that Saturday morning to see our archives, and some of them for the very first time, you know, and some of them have not been down there since we have made the improvements we have. Other contributions.
A couple years back, this place was just really looking shabby and dull, and I go to a Sunday morning group where I'm the old lady of the group, and most of them call me Mom. But when Mom begs, I said, you know, we really need to paint the archives, and those are 12-foot ceilings, and I can't see me climbing up on a ladder, you know. And so one Saturday we had a crew of five guys show up, and they moved everything out of the workroom.
And, you know, alcoholics being alcoholics, they thought, we can wipe out those two rooms in one day, you know. No, not with all the stuff we had in there to move. So they came down one Saturday and we got the workroom done, and then they came down about two Saturdays later and did the display room. And so those are all contributions, and those all helped finance our archives. You know, work from people, you know, contributions of equipment.
And the only thing I object to is when we get handed down, the
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Eastern Area got a new computer, and so they gave us our old computer. And that old computer is a dinosaur. You know, you give it a command and you get up and you go over and make a pot of coffee, and then you go back and give it another command, and you go pour yourself a cup of coffee, and you go back and give another command, and you drink the coffee, and then you go back and give it a command, and you take time to go to the ladies' room.
You know, that's how slow it is. But at least we have it, and we can do a little bit on it, you know. I'm hoping that too will change, but— Right. Yes. Yeah. We accept contributions from living or dead members, but the memorials on an AA who has passed away, that contribution has to come from another AA. We do not accept outside contributions. We've tried to hold to that tradition very, very tightly, you know, because we don't want that to interfere with anything.
Is it 2000, Erin? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. But that's the way we have supported our archives, and we've been established since 1974. And I think it's, yeah, like I say, I think we have a neat archives. And I was going to open it up to discussion at this time, but you've got two more speakers, and I'm sure we'll get questions along the way. So that's all I have, and thank you very much for your attention.
That was a great presentation. My name is Charlie Williams, and I'm a grateful alcoholic and privileged to serve as the Area Chair for Area 05, Southern California. I like to always give my sobriety date, because a lot of people mistake me for an old-timer in AA. I'm not. I'm just old. My sobriety date is July the 13th, 1989. I've got a little over 13 years, and the best years and best days of my life since I came to AA.
When Tom asked me to do this presentation, my first instinct was that I don't want to do that. I don't really know that much about archives. Morning, Jeannie. Good morning. I just started. But I still don't turn down an AA request. Then he gave me all these choices of all these topics that I could do on, and I don't like making decisions either. I says, Well, which one do you want me to do it on? And he wouldn't make the decision. So we've been having—we're a new Area 5. You know, we've been around forever, but we split a couple years ago, and this is our second year as the new Area 05, and we're having some problems with our archives, and we're having some problems with our finances.
So I figured, well, that would probably be a good topic. Maybe I could find out something that might help our area. And I called New York. I figured, geez, they already know something up there about these finances. And I didn't get a call back. I understand Judas was out of town and has been traveling. But anyway, I decided to check the other areas to see what they were doing and see how they finance their archives.
And so I emailed the other area chairs. Well, I haven't kept my email up to date with the other area chairs because I've never had to email all of them. You know, I figured I never would have to email all of them. So about half of my emails were demons, you know, they wasn't correct. They were no longer there. They changed or something. But I got some answers back, and I also sat in on the archives
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roundtable in process, and so we found out a little bit about how the other people were doing things there too. Now, some of the emails I got back was Area 72 has a repository that they pay $550 a month for it. And they also spent about $1,500 on supplies for desiccation. And, you know, so they must be financially pretty in pretty good shape. We still are kind of tight with our finances to be in a new area.
And, you know, Area 9 has had a great display at Colton, and I thought when I went to see their display, it was just almost an ideal thing. Gee, I said everybody should have one of these. All the archives should. And they paid, I think, about $550 a month. Well, we can't afford that. Our area can't afford that now. And they lost their place, and they're looking for another one now. Some of the other areas I talked to, like 93, they still have their archives in a storage place like we do.
And Michael, their archivist here, is trying to do what he wanted to do in Area 5 before we split. He was trying to get them to get a room where they could display the archives, where they could store their literature displays, they could store their Grapevine displays, and anything else of value that the area had, they could store in this one place and have the archives displayed there too. And maybe it would be kind of financially sound.
I don't know if this is going to happen or not, and I don't know how their finances are in 93. Most of the areas I talked to, the areas finance their archives. And our archivist here is Jeannie, and she's here this weekend. And the area is paying for her trip up here. And she's been involved in the planning meetings, and I've been visiting with her to all the planning meetings, hoping that, you know, that we can find out some more stuff that might help us with our archives. We finally have got ours documented, the stuff that we have, and we only have a small amount of stuff because most of our stuff is in central office in Los Angeles.
And a little bit about our history, we used to have, well, we used to have a computer in central office, and at one time we were— Putting where all this stuff was in central office on disks and going through all the files and stuff. And then they had a few problems with the personality, as I think, and they locked our stuff down in central office, and we just kind of gained back access to it. But we, my delegate, Mary and I were talking about it, that our stuff really should probably be there in central office in Los Angeles, because our area now, since we've split, is kind of one of the smallest areas in AA.
It don't seem small to us in the way it does, in the way it does, and we have a lot of groups, and our area is from Los Angeles and the surrounding towns, kind of. But, you know, our Los Angeles office has some great AA history. You know, they talked about Sybil, and I met Sybil, and I see her husband almost every week at a meeting, Bob C., and she was a wonderful person. And I'll never forget when I first met her and I first heard about her, that she was the first woman that got sober out here in Los Angeles, and she may have been the oldest sober woman when she died at 56 years.
I don't know. Somebody said Morty Mann might have relapsed or something, and she was supposed to be the oldest one. But anyway, she came into the program, and I think the second day she was sober, they handed her a bunch of names and addresses and had her go out to visit these people to help them get sober with two days of sobriety. A lot of great things have happened to our program with people with a very small amount of sobriety.
I know that H and I has some great history, and Jack P., he just died, and I used to love to hear him share. He talked about how. I used to love hearing Cher. He talked about how H and I got started, and it was started by a woman
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that had a few days of sobriety. She went to a nuthouse to visit someone, and she was all excited about AA, and she was telling this woman all about AA. And when she left, the nurses asked her if she would come back, and she says, Why do you want me to come back? And they says, We've never saw the patients calm down like that, like they did when you started talking to your friend. And would you come back and maybe even talk to the patients?
And so she got contacted Jack Pro, who had about a year of sobriety, and they started taking a panel into that nuthouse, and then they started going to all the other hospitals and started trying to get into the prisons and jails. That's how H and I got started in California. And, you know, I went through a hospital program, and I didn't know it at the time that I went through there, but it's—and I didn't know it until I read the autobiography of Sister Ignatia.
And it's patterned after the program that they started, her and Dr. Bob started, when AA first was getting off the ground, you know. We have an alumni. When we go through the program, when we're going through the program, we help the new people. When they come into detox, we go and share with them. And when we're fresh out of the hospital, we go back to share with the new patients, and we drive them to meetings, to outside AA meetings and stuff.
And that's kind of what Sister Ignatia had the patients do that went through there. The ones that wasn't working, they'd come back and hung out there a lot during the day. The ones that was working, they would come back at night and share with the other patients, you know, share their stories. And that's the magic of AA, is when AA talk to another. So our history is really important, and our archives should contain all that stuff.
One of the greatest stories that Jack Poe tells is about—I broke his anonymity, but I hope it's all right. Somebody said it's all right since he's dead. I don't know. I don't like to break anonymity. Anyway, he shares about going into one of those nuthouses one night, him and another guy, and then he asked him to talk to this guy that was tied down in restraints. And they said this guy's been in and out of the hospital, and he's a great guy when he's not drinking, but he's crazy when he's drunk.
And Jack said, Well, I don't know if he's going to hear anything or not. So this guy, he was mumbling and foaming at the mouth, and they says, Well, would you talk to him? And so he got on one side of the bed, and this other guy got on the other side, and they told the guy his story, you know. And 25 years later, he was asked to speak at a meeting, and this stranger walked up to him and says, Would you give me my cake?
And he said, Well, sure I will, but why don't you have one of your friends, somebody that you know, give you your cake? He said, I want you to give me my cake. And after Jack gave him his cake, the guy got up and says, You know, the reason I wanted Jack P. to give me my cake, he says, 25 years ago I was in restraints in a nuthouse for I don't know how many times he'd been there, and he says two guys came in and talked to me, and one of them was Jack Poe.
And he says, I haven't found it necessary to have a drink since that night. And, you know, those kind of stories, to me, that's really rich. AA history, and we should keep that stuff around. I hope they have tapes of Jack's talks where he talks about how it got started. And I hope they have tapes of Sybil's talks and stuff where they got this, where the central office got started. And what I'd really like to see is a display.
Hopefully, the ideal place would be for it to be at Central Office, where they would have one display with H&I stuff in it, one display with Central Office history in it, and one with the area in it. And we've had some loving discussions between H&I and General Service and Central Office, the intergroups, since I've been in service, and I've found out about them going on for a long period of time. When H&I got started, they wanted to do some things, and New York said they shouldn't do them. And I don't know if it was Bill or who it was that told them they shouldn't do those things. And they wanted to do them, so they did them anyway. And so they've got H&I started on their own, I guess.
And those little resentments and stuff has been carried on through the years. And I'd like to see us communicate with each other. We're all doing the same thing. We're all trying to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers, and we could all help each other out doing this 12-step work.
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And I don't know if that'll ever happen or not either. But maybe if we had a mutual place where we had our archives and our history, that would kind of help start things off. And I don't know about the financing things. I was talking to Erin, and she… Suggested the guidelines and gave me one, and they don't have much on finance in this. It says, In keeping with Tradition Seven, the archives ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contribution. It is better that when funding for the archives is derived from an overall budget of the AA entity it serves, rather than through separate AA contributors contributions.
In this way, archival activity can better reflect the support of the membership and maintain the perspective of the entire range of Twelve Step activity. And they only got a little thing in the archives workbook on it. They don't have much. And they have a little pamphlet here, AA Archives, and it don't have much about financing either. And, you know, if you talk to the other areas, I guess mainly they, some of the areas are struggling like we are, and they can't afford a repository.
And I think the ideal thing would be for us to have one. I know in talking to Charles here in Area Nine, when I went over to see their archives, they have a little book there where you sign in, and we signed the book, and I got to looking at it, and there was months, there was not very many people in there all these months that that little book had been there. And I says, Is this all the people that come to see this thing?
And he says, Yeah. He says, they only open one day a month or one day a week or whatever it was. And he would open it up for people to come see it, but they'd have to call him, and he'd have to take off an hour or two from work and come down and show it to them. So it wasn't available as it should be. And that's another reason I'd like to see it in central office, especially in Los Angeles, because they're open 24 hours a day.
And they're one of the few central offices that are open 24 hours a day. And people could go in and look at the stuff. Any time they went to central office to get literature or stuff, they could go in and look at archives. And another thing, I don't know if you're aware of it or not, there's a great article in here on archives, a couple of them, in the 52nd Annual General Service Conference Report on page 16.
And I'm not going to read it to you because it's too long. One guy shares about the archives, and Judith has a great article here on the tradition. So you might read that if you haven't. It's really worth reading. I think I've talked about long enough. I love the old-timers. I really enjoyed this workshop. I got into it just to see if I couldn't learn something that might help our area. And I've learned a lot of stuff that's helped me.
I knew that the Oxford Group was pretty much dominant in where we got a lot of our spiritual part of our program. And I listened to Jay yesterday, and I found out they were even more dominant than I thought they was. I read a book by Shoemaker, and my first thought, did he get this stuff from us or did we get it from him? Because it was just our program. And now I realize that we got it from him. And it was a great experience to listen to one of his pitches yesterday.
And I've known him for a long time, didn't know that he knew that much about our history and about the history of the Oxford Group. I've had a wonderful time talking to the old-timers. I love the old-timers. They've been important to me in my sobriety, and the old-timers in AA and the old-timers too, because we old guys kind of got to stick together. There was a… the old-timers are always telling jokes and stuff.
And there was a little lady one time that had 81 years of sobriety that I heard at a convention in San Diego, and she says that our program is just like having sex. She says if you're not enjoying it, you ain't doing it right. So I hope all of you are enjoying it this weekend.
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And if you have any questions for me, we'll answer them later. We've got another presenter, and I don't know if I can answer them. Maybe we can look for the answers together. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Cliff Levinson. I'm an alcoholic. Hi. Yeah, and my qualifications to give this presentation are that I spent 27 years demonstrating that I have absolutely no clue about how to manage finances at all. And then my sobriety date is October 11th of 2000, so I am not an old-timer, nor am I ever mistaken for an old-timer.
And I really, you know, this is all new to me, and it's wonderful. I really, I thank Tom for asking me to give this presentation. I'm glad to hear from the other two, and… Yeah, I basically, when I was asked to talk about archives and financing, my service position is Archives Committee Chair for District, District 5 in Area 9. And our archives are embryonic, to say the least. Basically, we are at the stage of AA archives background 1947, I think. It's pretty much boxes in the corner of someone's office.
Interestingly enough, in the research I did, I found out that archives as a concept, and it says in the workbook that it originated with Bill in the 50s. But in talking to people who work at archives at GSO, it actually, the notion is that it originated with Nell Wing around 1947. You know, she was the one that first got the idea that there might be some valid reason to, you know, preserve some of the documents of what had occurred, how AA started. And in any event, the great thing about AA, from my perspective right now, is that things move pretty glacially in AA.
So, you know, this is really, we're still in the beginning phase of archives in AA as an organization, even though the GSO archives were formally opened in 1975. And now I hear from Leanna that things were started up in her area in 1974. Archives are still just evolving. I mean, archives districts are still setting up archival offices. The areas are still figuring out how to fund it, how to do it, as it's transitioning from, you know, the Nell Wing concept of a box of stuff in the corner to a formal structure, just like as AA grows.
The idea of how to do archives is growing, the sophistication is growing, and I think the expense is growing too. The workbook has the statement of purpose that was developed, and the statement of purpose really says it all. The reason for archives is to receive, classify, and index all relevant material, to hold and preserve such material, and to make it available to, you know, AA members and others who have an interest in it. And that really comes from, I think, the 12th Step, which is to practice these principles in all our affairs and carry the message.
AA archives and AA archives funding is, I think, is based in the Archives Workbook says this and the guidelines say this. It's based on the fifth and seventh traditions. You know, the fifth tradition that, you know, our primary purpose is to carry the message, and the seventh tradition is that we're fully self-supporting through our own contributions. As Charlie pointed out, the AA Archives Workbook and the guidelines from the Central Office, the General Service Office, suggest that it be best to finance archives through the area committee or the district committee, whatever level the archives office is or the archive collection is. In a perfect world, I guess, it'd be funded that way.
As it's happening, though, I did talk to Bob Williams from Little Rock, his district, his area—I'm sorry, Area 4—and their guidelines for their archives, it says that they can accept contributions from AA members, from other AA entities, not just from the committee that they're responsible to. I think, and also in District Area 9 out here in California, there are apparently no guidelines in place yet, but the archivist here has indicated that— They have accepted contributions from other than, you know, other than money from the budget from the committee. They actually will get, they will take contributions from AA members, individual AA members, from other AA entities, you know, young people's AA organization or different AA groups that want to make.
And/or different AA groups that want to make direct contributions to archives on both of money and of things like desks and light tables and so forth.
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So the suggestion is that it come from the committee, and I think that's probably because that increases the accountability. In other words, if you're getting money for the repository or for preservation from the area committee or the district committee, there's accountability, there's a budget, and there's more security that the money is being spent appropriately. However, I think that the beauty in looking over the concepts, Concept Ten, which talks about the fact that we have good service leaders and qualified, able people in service positions with the right of decision, is how this organization is going to evolve.
It seems to me that archivists and archive committee chairs working together can make decisions about how to fund the archives. Really, the neat thing is that in doing those workshops yesterday, it became clear to me that the budget for archives is open. As sophistication grows, and also as districts start to come online with their archival efforts, and areas do too, the documents they're going to be trying to preserve are going to be older and older.
We're going to be looking at newspaper articles from the '50s and '60s and '40s even in some areas, and that's going to require sophisticated preservation techniques. So the budgets could grow. I think what the archivists have to do and what archive committees have to do is make a wish list. Figure out what, you know, how much money they would need or could use, and then, you know, work with the archives committee and with the service area committee, and figure out how much money there is in that particular area.
I know Charlie's mentioning that his area has problems right now with their budget. I know that in my district, we happen to have a surplus right now. We have about $3,000 of a not-so-prudent reserve, I guess, and the archivist in my district and I'm the archives committee chair, we've asked for a total of $200 so far. So there'll be no problem there. But, you know, we haven't organized our archives yet.
We don't know what we've even got yet. So as we, you know, do the work, we may be asking for more money, and we're blessed again with the fact the money's there. AA is a neat organization. I mean, it's the only one I know of that actually the ultimate authority resides in a loving God as we understand Him or Her. And as the, you know, it's neat. I hear stories again and again of how, you know, you get your space for that amazing rent.