Proposal 7: GROW will create a working group to address the Alternatives to Address Vacancies. The working group will take a closer look at the issues to identify ways in which we can focus on supporting our online AA women’s meeting while hopefully still providing support to individual GROW members.
Rationale: Much of our October 2022 business meeting has been devoted to covering duties that will not be performed due to vacancies the GSR, Secretary, and Business Meeting Chair Trusted Servant positions. The subject is broad and complex, and we are not able to find solutions and propose those solutions in the timeframe of the October business meeting. With the Secretary and Chair positions vacant, it will be difficult to address filling and rotating Trusted Servant positions and set up and execute the April 2023 business meeting. In order that GROW makes progress on the issues, the Chair is recommending that a working group be established to come up with some viable solutions.
To support effective action, this proposal includes several measures to facilitate communication and maximum participation in the working group. These include:
- keep grow-business active for at least six months (until the next scheduled business meeting), during which all current Trusted Servants would be subscribed automatically,
- issue a call to current Trusted Servants for volunteers to form a working group that would identify the priorities and major issues and propose alternatives for changes to “the way GROW operates,”
- invite interested GROW members who are not Trusted Servants to subscribe to the business-grow mailing list to participate in the working group,
- temporarily suspend some GROW Business Guidelines to allow the working group to make specific proposals that would be discussed and voted on grow-business outside of our scheduled business meeting process (while still adhering to the existing Business Meeting Guidelines process for proposals – reaching Group Conscience decisions), and
- offer specific issue areas to be addressed based on the comments made to date.
Summary of Comments
Nine women commented on the proposal. All of the comments supported the Working Group, and several of them included a commitment to join the Working Group.
Results of Voting
Eight women voted “I agree” on Proposal 7, and no one voted “I disagree.” Therefore, the proposal is adopted as a Group Conscience Decision.