by Hanafi & Levana Fraval, Chair and Vice Chair
Regional & Center Accounts
Amelia Williams, our Regional Finance Office Manager, delivered Statements of Activity for January and February 2023. for the Region, and for each Regional Center and Group. This is a momentous occasion for us, not just for your executive team but for every member in the region. Our financial reporting is now current, and will be current ongoing.
This is because Subud California decided to follow the example of Subud USA and adopt QuickBooks Online (QBO). It is also due to the diligence, competence and expertise of Amelia and our Regional Treasurer, Hamilton Chaffee. We are all indebted to both of them, and to those who have helped to get them to this point. It will help us to make informed decisions, and it will help our members to understand our true financial position at both the Regional and Center/Group levels.
Making Our Region Sustainable
Levana and I have visited all of the centers except Arcata. We got a firsthand look at our strengths and weaknesses – and our buildings! Maintenance has emerged as the main issue we must address. The bottom line is that it comes down to generating more money from our centers. Of course, COVID set us back mightily. Many groups have begun to recover from that blow, but others are struggling. The executive board is working with your councilors, property managers and rental agents to find ways to attract more clients to our centers so that we can cover both operations and maintenance. The industry standard for is to anticipate spending 4% of overall building replacement cost for maintenance each year. We have adopted a figure of 3%, and will increase this as feasible.
Regional Helpers Tour of the Region
We have asked the regional helpers, as part of their planned tour of the region in the summer, to consider doing some testing to help our members understand the inner side of our sustainability initiative. Yes, it does have an inner side. There was some truly illuminating testing done in the UK around ten years ago on this topic. Of course, the regional helpers’ trip will be focused on the kejiwaan generally, but we hope that this component will help everyone understand what is at stake.
Insurance
If you are part of a Subud Group meeting in rented public premises, you may want to know how to go about insurance. Basically, this is up to Church Mutual, our insurers. You can contact Manuel Oliver (manueloliver@gmail.com) and tell him about your latihan space, frequency of use, etc. and ask for a premium amount for the group to pay the region. Monterey and San Joaquin Valley have already done this.
If members meet at a private home, liability would need to be covered by the home insurance of the hosting property owner [per Philip Lindstrom, our National Chair].