Iowa City Intergroup Meeting Minutes June 6, 2015 May 30, 2015 Emergency Meeting ATTENDANCE: CHAIR (Eric R), SECRETARY (Margaret F), TREASURER (Nora H), WEBMASTER (Joe M), DISTRICT LIAISON (Geri), GROUP REPRESENTATIVES: Misfits (Nora H), Midwest (Margaret F), Living Room Group (Eric R), Commone Solutions (Chris J) TREASURER S REPORT: Beginning balance $814.17 misreported $1112.32 Deposits: Payments: Group Donations $160.00 Windstream $147.13 Uptown Bills $25.00 Total Deposits: $160.00 Total Payments: $172.13 Ending balance: $1100.19 CO-CHAIR REPORT: There is currently no co-chair. TELEPHONE CHAIR: Nora H. is the interim telephone chair. Given the last minute change in switching officers, we should switch to the new answering service now. People have had trouble transferring the phone to the next person on the schedule. They were getting an error message when they called to transfer the phone over. When Nora called the Intergroup number trying to troubleshoot, she got a busy signal. It eventually worked, but this is problematic. WEBMASTER: Joe is doing everything he can to keep the website current. He is having a bit of trouble with the web service we use to change the look of the page, but it will likely be taken care of quickly. They have been quick to fix problems in the past. DISTRICT LIASON: Geri was not able to attend the Sunday district meeting last week. She has been out of town. She will send a report to the secretary to have the report attached to these minutes. Eric went out the district meeting. He reports that the hospitality room for the Area 24 Conference on June 12-14 has $310 to spend now, which is above the target ($300), and there is more expected to come in. Contributions now would add extra food to the provided snacks, but they now have the necessary funds to run the hospitality room as hoped. Terry (DCM) The Area 24 Conference needs hospitality room, greeters and registration volunteers. Jenny T (Treatment Chair) The Monday treatment meeting is now covered for June. Geri and Eric do not remember any updates for the Wednesday treatment meeting. GROUP REPRESENTATIVE REPORTS: Nora H. (Misfits) - Things are going well. Meetings are not going as long as previously reported. Things have calmed down a bit since our last Intergroup meeting. Margaret F. (Midwest) - Eric R. (Living Room Group) - Meetings remain fairly large, around 40 people. There are a few new home group members, some of whom are newcomers, which is great. Numbers are stronger than usual, 12-14 people. Some newcomers have joined, which is unusual and great for the meeting.
Chris J. (Common Solutions) - Numbers have been low in the past few weeks, possibly because of graduations. They could use some newcomers to the meeting. The new format (alternating step meeting) is working well. Joe M. (Wed Men s Group) - This is a new meeting, with fewer than 10 people. It is a men s meeting, with a guest 10- min speaker. Jason R. has put it together. He wants to start acknowledging people who have made it through the 12 steps in addition to recognizing sobriety milestones. - unofficial report (not an official representative) Note: We decided as a group to note in the minutes if an Intergroup member is reporting unofficially on a group s activities without being elected that group s Intergroup representative. SPECIAL BUSINESS: This meeting was called because the telephone chair has resigned from his position, and Intergroup needed to make decisions about moving forward with the phone line. Nora H. has offered to take over the telephone chair position for the remainder of the year, and Eric R. has agreed to cover both the Chair position and the Treasurer position for the remainder of the year. The new service, Sound Telecom, will cost $45 per month for the necessary amount of minutes. We would have to decide how much information we want the answering service operators to provide for people calling. We also need to decide how we want the 12-step list to work. The service can t do mass texts, so they will call down the list to find a person to respond to the caller. They could also text one person at a time going down the list. We would need a large enough number of people to make this work. We would possibly need a recruitment campaign. We would like 10 people on each day if possible. We would have people specify which days they could not cover the phone line and then they would be on call on all other days. The service would call the first number on the 12-step list. If that person did not answer, they would leave a voicemail. Then, they would call the next person on the list and leave a voicemail, and so on, until someone calls them back. They would then transfer the AA member to talk to the caller. They would reinforce the caller every few minutes saying that they were still working on finding a respondent. Then, if no one calls back by the time the operator gets to the bottom of the list, everyone would start getting text messages. At that point, the respondent would know that no one has yet answered the call. Intergroup members would like a small blurb about the new service to say at the meetings to get volunteers. This would ensure that everyone is saying the same thing and expectations are clear for recruiting new people for the 12-step list. Suggested starting date: Nora will call Windstream and ask them about cancelling to find out when we can do it. Eric suggests we vote next month on switching to the new service by August 1. We would need to switch our phone number on all our signs and schedules and everything. Another option would be to buy a phone from another service and forward the calls to our original AA hotline number to the new answering service. Geri and Joe will help call around to figure out what plan to make for transferring to the new service. Voting: Should we switch to Sound Telecom from Windstream before the contract is up with Windstream yes We can revisit this as new information comes out. We will vote on things as necessary over email. A full explanation of how the new answering service will work has been provided by Nora and has been appended to these minutes. OLD BUSINESS: Banquet checklist: Geri will send the revised version and will discuss it next meeting if necessary NEW BUSINESS: When we send out minutes to Intergroup representatives, let s encourage them to attend the meetings.
We need to get more people to attend. Maybe we could have people attend other regular AA meetings and mention that they can send an Intergroup representative if they are interested. ANNOUNCEMENTS: None The next meeting will be held on July 11
THE NEW ANSWERING SERVICE (Nora H.): ABOUT SOUND TELECOM: Sound Telecom is an answering service based in Seattle, WA. The owner is a member of AA, and they have worked with AA services before. COST: We would pay $45/month, or $52.50/month if that month includes a major holiday (there are six major holidays). This gets us 30 minutes per month. We average way less than this through Windstream (we only received two calls on the last invoice I opened). If we exceed 30 minutes, the overage fee is $1.16/minutes. Our plan is month-to-month with no contract, so we could add minutes anytime if we wanted. In comparison, our current company, Windstream, charges $147/month with a 5-year contract. HOW CALLS ARE ANSWERED: All calls are answered "Thank you for calling [Iowa City Alcoholics Anonymous or the Iowa City Alcoholics Anonymous answering service?]. How may I help you?" HOW CALLS ARE HANDLED: Sound Telecom's other AA city intergroup gives them a meeting schedule and has them handle "routine calls" like people asking for a meeting's time/address. They transfer any call where the person actually wants to talk to an AA member. We can do the same thing, or we can just have them transfer everything to us. My personal view is that if the caller has a specific question about meeting information, Sound Telecom could attempt to answer that specific question and then say, "Would you like to speak with a member of AA in Iowa City?" I think anything other than a specific request for information should be transferred to one of us. And when in doubt, they should transfer to us. TRANSFERRING CALLS: Before they attempt a transfer, the agent will get the caller's gender and what town they're in (or whatever else we want). The agent will then put the caller on hold and start dialing numbers on our "on-call list". (This will just be the men's and women's 12-step list.) When an AA member answers the phone, the agent will say, "We have a female caller in Iowa City who is looking for a ride to a meeting. Are you available to talk to her?" If yes, they will transfer. If no, they will try the next person on the list. If the agent calls an AA member and gets their voicemail, they will leave a message with a call-back number for Sound Telecom. Our call-back number is an 800 number specific to Iowa City AA, so if one of our members dials that number, the agent who answers will be able to automatically pull our group's account up and see what we're responding to. BACKUP METHOD: If no one answers, the agent will tell the caller, "We've contacted some local members of AA. You should receive a call back in minutes. If you don't, please call us back." We specify the time frame for a receiving a call back. The agent will get the caller's phone number and let them go. Then they will start our backup method, which is texting. They will text the first person on our on-call list, wait a few minutes, then try the next person. (They do not have the capacity to send a mass text.) In addition to texting our contacts, Sound Telecom will also email the phone chair (and also co-chair, if we want) to notify us. We will have to decide what we want the phone chair to do (if anything) once they've been notified. SCHEDULING WITH SOUND TELECOM: Sound Telecom has an online system that the phone chair can regularly update showing the availability of all AA members on our list. It is apparently easy to use and we can update as frequently as we want. If we sign up for Sound Telecom, a customer support rep would call me and walk me through the process. Using this online system, we would give them a list of contacts and specify what order to use in calling people. If we want the order to rotate, the phone chair would need to enter that into the system. SCHEDULING WITH VOLUNTEERS:
I see several options of collecting volunteers' availability: -Option 1: We collect days of the week, which seems simplest: on Mondays, Sound Telecom will only attempt to reach Monday people. Potential issues are that some volunteers have inconsistent schedules week-to-week, and also that we need to block off time when people are on vacation. -Option 2 (I think this is the better option): We ask volunteers which specific dates during the month they could be available for Sound Telecom to call/text them. They don't actually need to be available all day; if Sound Telecom calls them, they can choose to accept or decline the transfer. Maybe the best way to frame this with volunteers is to give them a blank calendar for June and say, "Please cross off any dates in June where you know you cannot respond to any calls." For any dates they leave open, Sound Telecom will be free to call them and ask if they're actually available or not. So each day would ideally have a list of 10-15 people for Sound Telecom to try. -Option 3: We present Sound Telecom with a monthly calendar that has one male and one female on-call person for each day. I don't like this option, because it doesn't further our goals of reducing the phone chair's workload, or alleviating the pressure on our volunteers of having to commit to be available for 24 hours. REVISING OUR 12-STEP LISTS: We will need to decide what the agent should do if the caller asks for something specific from an AA member. For instance, a guy needs a ride to a Wednesday meeting, and the agent goes through our men's list and the first person who answers says, "I can't take him to that meeting, but I can accept the call and talk to him". My thought is that we would still want the agent to transfer it to anyone who is willing to accept the call, even if they can't fulfill that specific need. Then the caller can at least speak to an AA member right away. If the caller insists that they need a ride to some specific Wednesday meeting or whatnot, the AA member can decide how to handle it (either trying to offer them other solutions or looking for another person in AA who can offer a ride). IN A CRISIS SITUATION: If a caller discloses that they intend to harm themselves or others, the agent will notify their supervisor. If the situation is deemed serious or urgent enough, the agent will stay on the line with the caller while the supervisor calls 911. CALL RECORDING: Sound Telecom normally records calls for quality, but I confirmed we can opt out of this. PHONE NUMBER: Sound Telecom will provide us an 800 phone number. We can begin the process of switching numbers on flyers and websites now, but it would be nice to be able to forward calls from our current 319 number to the new 800 number for awhile, or have a recorded message on our current phone number that tells people to call the 800 number instead. I doubt Windstream will be accommodating about this, but I will see what the options are once we've decided what we're doing.