THE URANTIA BOOK FELLOWSHIP
ADMINISTRATION WEBSITE

As faith-enlightened and spirit-liberated sons of the kingdom of heaven, you face a double responsibility ofduty to man and duty to God while you voluntarily assume a third and sacred obligation: service to the brotherhood of God-knowing believers. [178:1.5]

 

August 20, 2003

Minutes from the Oklahama City “529” Administrative Procedures meeting.

The committee met in order to establish a single standard of guidelines for
operating procedures within the Executive Committee.

The goal is to offset uncertainty and change and help committee chairs to focus
attention on their objectives while eliminating the waste of time in duplication
and unproductive action. Our present “Procedures Manual” will be reviewed and
revised to accommodate our growing organization.

The meeting took place at the offices of Alliance at 3333 S. Council Rd. in
Oklahoma City , Oklahoma , on August 15th and 16th.

Members present: Bob Bruyn, Robert Burns, Avi Dogim, Steve Dreier, John Hales,
Doreen Heyne, David Kantor, Harry McMullan. Also present were Adrienne Greer,
Lisa Stewart, employees at Alliance , Michael Challis, General Councilor.

The meeting began informally on Friday afternoon at the office of Lisa Stewart,
Accountant, to discuss our accounting system. Robert Burns arrived after the
meeting on Friday, but was informed of the details before the Saturday meeting
resumed at the Alliance offices.

Accounting Procedure:
The Secretary General receives all mail from our New York City mail service.
The Secretary General will identify and scan checks and envelopes, and e-mail
the PDF file to the Resident Director (John Hales), the Finance Chair (Robert
Burns), Treasurer (Harry McMullan), and forward the original to the accounting
office.
New donor entries will be assigned a code number by the Resident Director and
forwarded by e-mail to the accounting office.
The Resident Director and the Accountant will work out a system charting the
accounts.
The Accountant will delete accounts that have not been used in the last twenty
months.
The Accountant will purchase a credit card machine.
All bills will be scanned to Resident Director and Alliance , and sent to the
accounting department for recording and timely payment.
The Resident Director will continue to oversee and approve all committee
expenses, then fax this to the Treasurer for a signature. The President
needs to approve any expenditure that exceeds the limitations of the
committee’s budget.
A procedure will be put into place for each committee’s expenditures.
The Accountant will provide the Committee Chairs with a summary of their
budget before each Executive Committee meeting.

Book Orders:
All Urantia Books will be stored at Alliance in Oklahoma City .
Adrienne Greer will scan all Urantia Book orders received.
3. Adrienne will ship half cases (5 books) and up from Alliance . Under five
(5) books we will order them on Amazon.com (via The Fellowship website) link.
4. Adrienne will contact Amazon.com in order to establish how to obtain the
customer information from their credit cards.
5. The Paramony can be ordered on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

Database:
A dedicated computer will be set up at Alliance for back up and storage of
information.
The Database and our Accounting system will be backed up in two places.
Resident Director does a weekly electronic back up on his system and stores
this at his home office.
David Kantor and Michael Challis will write a procedure for a formal back up
schedule.
David suggested the Administrative on-line Database needs to be put into use
so we can work out any problems that may exist.
Within one week David will send the committee and Adrienne a password so that
we may update our own information and test the system.
A small committee consisting of John Hales, Robert Burns, Steve Dreier and
David Kantor will help to monitor the database.

Website:
David Kantor suggested Larry Watkins be his back up if he is unavailable, in
order to keep the website information e-mails and database operating.
Access to the database needs to be obtained from the Executive Committee or
the Resident Director.
David Kantor will confirm this with Larry Watkins and he will write a back up
procedure.
David has around nine (9) people who input the content that goes into our
website.

Documents:
Bob Bruyn suggested a procedure for maintaining our documents.
All Committee Chairs will be required to forward their files to their
successors.
All Committee Chairs will put their information into a CD file and transfer
this every year to the central organization.
A central server will be set up to hold all committee files in our official
Archives.
Avi will call John Lange to get the former Judicial Committee Chair, Dan
Massey’s files.
All official documents, land transfers, property sales, committee minutes,
etc.
will be archived in this server.

Mail Forwarding:
All incoming mail received will be forwarded to the appropriate persons by the
Secretary General.
When a request is completed, there will be an e-mail response box to check.
A copy is e-mailed to the Resident Director and the Secretary General.
Prison letters are sent to the Outreach Committee Chair and scanned to the
Resident Director.
Hard copies will be stored for one year with the Chair.
Inquiries about The Fellowship will be forwarded to the Secretary.
Written complaints are sent to the Secretary.
Domestic inquiries about The Urantia Book will be sent to the Outreach
Committee.
International inquiries will be sent to the International Committee.

Telephone Inquiries:
The Resident Director responds to phone inquiries.
When the Resident Director is away, the calls will be forwarded to a cellular
phone.
The Secretary or an appointed person on the Executive Committee will be mailed
the temporary cellular phone.
John Hales will report back on the details of a temporary cellular system.

Brochures.
The Fellowship’s Introductory brochure needs to be reprinted.
John will contact Alison Gardner who was making some changes to the brochure,
before reprinting.
Our brochures will be stored by the appropriate corresponding committees.
A discussion about an identifier (Logo) will be looked into further.

Reader Services:
David who is now shipping out requests for the Spanish Urantia Book, will ask
the Outreach Chair, Paula Thompson, if Joanne Weidman committee member, would
be able to take on this work.
Our brochures need to be translated into Portuguese and Spanish and downloaded
into a PDF file for access on our website.
Bob Bruyn will work on converting our organization forms into a PDF file for
our website.
David will follow up on the technical details for the PDF conversions.
Adrienne Greer will research the “Folio Views” version of The Urantia Book for
a CD.

Study Group Directory:
The study group database will be maintained as a separate table.
The Outreach Chair will make all changes into the database.
The Resident Director will be informed by the Outreach Chair of the changes,
so he can correct his database.
If the Chair wants someone else from that committee to do the entries, then
permission from the Executive Committee is required.

Finance:
The Chair (Robert Burns) will continue to explore a personal relationship with
donors.
The Resident Director will send out a “thank you” letters to all donors.
At the discretion of the Finance Chair, the President will send out a personal
letter
of thanks to designated donors.
Automatic monthly donors will be sent a letter of thanks and asked to consider

increasing their contribution for the following year.
The Finance Chair will send a year end tax deduction letter to donors at their

request.

Mailing List:
When a request comes in to be put on our mailing list, the Resident Director
sends them our two brochures, “Come Serve With Us”, and “About the
Fellowship”, with our toll free telephone number.
A letter that is more personable will be enclosed with the brochures.
In order to keep our mailing list updated, a card inserted in our Mighty
Messenger or Herald, will be sent out together, asking if they want to remain
on our mailing list.
Steve Dreier proposed the idea of doing a timely “ message list” on the
internet, from our organization. A Calendar Database Program will be looked
into. The General Council will be put on this list. Steve will enter the
content and try to get group involvement.

Service to Societies:
1. Robert Burns questioned how we can help provide our society officers
update their
membership list.
2. We need to implement a mechanism to pass on to each new officer.
3. John Hales will send Doreen Heyne the part of the Constitution that
describes each officers’ duties and responsibilities.
4. This will be reviewed and Doreen Heyne will send this out to Society
Secretaries.
5. Avi said we should set up an electronic tickler file that will be sent
to the societies periodically to update their information.


Uversa Press:
1. All Uversa Press links will go to The Fellowship Director General for
follow-up inquiries.
2. The Uversa Press text on a CD would cost approximately $18,000 plus
$2,000 per year fee.
3. Michael Challis will look into the research for doing a searchable text
on the internet. We could use this for the “source work” and the “Paramony”
4. Robert Burns will consider using this project as a means of fundraising.
Reader Services:
1. Avi is going to ask some committee chairs to write their own procedures
for their committees. This will be separate from the office procedures.
2. All approved minutes will be sent to David by John Hales. The hard
copies will be put into a book.
3. The General Council minutes final version will have all comments and
votes taken out before it gets put on the website.

General:
1. Bob Bruyn asked to standardize our mailing envelope.
2. For our next General Council Retreat in February, John Hales will
research the areas of Phoenix , Arizona , Dallas , Texas and San Francisco ,
California , for a meeting center.
3. Ad Hoc committee review could take place at the Budget Executive
Committee
meeting once per year in October.


Respectfully Submitted by,

Doreen Heyne, Secretary General