Duplicating effort wastes resources
John Arnold asks why Area Meetings are duplicating their efforts.
The article by John Lewis (30 October) chimes loudly with me; its application should be nationwide, to include the relation between national and area hard-working Friends. A particular example is the area charity registration process, which is certainly taking up a large amount of human resource in my Area Meeting (AM). Also, we have already incurred an amount of legal fees that seems disproportionate to our membership numbers, and we know of other AMs having their own legal advice.
The issues involved are quite clear, and must arise in every AM. Those AMs who need particular advice should be able to consult the appropriate Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) desk, at least on matters of general principle. In setting up the charity registration process, surely Quaker Stewardship Committee and BYM will have taken proper legal advice. Yet, when conferring with BYM trustees, we were told they have no budget for advice to AMs. So AMs take their own, with multiplication of costs, and likelihood of incongruent results.
We know of an AM that is seeking to limit its legal liabilities by means of a company limited by guarantee. This seems to imply that its assets and liabilities would be ring-fenced. But, if it were unable to meet its legal liabilities, would not the national body, BYM, have to come to the rescue, both morally and because legally pursuable?
When working in Madagascar I learned about the baobab tree, a splendid structure and store of life-giving water, which can collapse overnight into a heap of dust. This local ‘hard-working Friend’ asks whether our national Religious Society of Friends structure is in danger of going the same way.
