NYYM Governance Issues

Why a Quaker would vote for Michael R. Bloomberg

2009-10-31T17:47:00.015-05:00

Dear Friend,

The incumbent New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg convinced enough City Council members to overturn term limits and allow our emerging everyman King, to run for a third term. And His Honor is ahead by almost 20 percent in the polls. Michael Bloomberg has now spent more of his own money (over $100 million in the current election, and almost $250 million for all three mayoral campaigns) than any other individual in United States history in the pursuit of public office.

And, if I weren’t a Quaker, I’d definitely vote – for Mike.

I live in New York City. A vote for Mike would be easier. I would know what life to expect with him in office. We’d most probably continue making the same progress that has been made in the last 8 years. And we would allow him to dole out just enough taxpayer money to quell the law-and-order interests that hold the most leverage, and hear him vanquish all the other special interests vying to take us back to the bad old days with his ubiquitous, confident, plain speaking.

And I’d vote for Mike, because he is simply the antithesis of a paid minister. His mayoral salary is one dollar per year. And he’s got his own money, thank you very much. And he loves New York City. I would imagine when Mike said that “I love this city” in one of his many ads that he paid for out of his own pocket running on TV and the radio that he didn’t mean the agape love that Jesus showed us, but most probably he meant a king-like love. This benevolent kingly vision condescends to those of mortal means and vision, to rule and regulate those same mortals with fallible desires, who if elected themselves, would appropriate other people’s money to themselves and their friends and those who paid to put them in office.

Yes, Quakers are not supposed to vote, because it enables the majority to force its will over the minority creating an environment which nurtures sore losers, later to possibly use violence or force back on the majority. ‘Force’ is the Quaker ‘F’ word.

The Quaker orthodoxy goes like this: all people contain ‘that of God’ or ‘the Seed of God’ or the ‘Light of Christ’ which is good and which grows if the right external conditions nurture this growing of the ‘good’ to continue. We all have the internal choice to do right or wrong or to open ourselves to The Light and come closer to God or use exercise our own will and force, and close ourselves off to The Light and go the other way.

Voting can make one feel mildly empowered yet make one feel dirty at the same time. Politics are dirty. One goes in a little booth behind a curtain and comes out a participant in politics flexing his own little muscles, glowing with endorphins from flipping those little levers and wrist-wrestling that large arm which records the votes, clears the slate and opens the curtain at the end of it all.

Quakers are not supposed to vote (in their religious affairs) or participate in this ‘force’ over the minority, and should feel a clean conscience that they have not forced anyone to do anything. Feeling dirty is because politics is about some winning and others losing - about humans’ base need to dominate others and appropriate resources to themselves and their friends, and those who helped put them in office. In Spanish a derivative of Latin, Vencer means to conquer, Con-vencer means to Convince, or conquer with their permission. Quakers convince, most others conquer.

The definition of politics above comes from our imperfect campaign financing statutes, which enables professional paid politicians (ministers). These ‘public servants’ don’t come to politics unwillingly, to serve for a limited time, and then go back to their lives they had before civil politics or Church hierarchy. Consider General Secretaries of Yearly Meetings who can’t do anything else, who are not in a progression of job opportunity within an organization, and which leads nowhere else outside of that organization, and hence try to hold on to their jobs at all costs, even to the detriment of a Yearly Meeting, like would anyone else who needs a job. Politicians come to politics of their own self-serving desires to line their own and their friend’s pockets with other people’s money while in and after office - if sadly they are ever voted out or removed by some exposed corruption. New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (NYYM) does very much the same thing: where a small group of paid insiders insinuates itself into power by the appropriation of money to itself and its faraway central activities. NYYM, a 1500 member association trying to be a centralized government as it loses even more members at local levels, contains all the trappings of civil politics and big business. NYYM keeps silent about some truths while it churns other truths that will maintain the select few in power. It’s the same spin that happens in civil government by political press officers and in business by corporate communications departments.

One Long Island New York Friend I served with on a committee once called the NYYM insiders ‘the Politburo’ or the ‘Supreme Soviet’ I can’t remember which, but the intent of this central committee comes forth - with succinct reference to those on the farm who are of course – more equal, who’s tyranny reside at the mother of all high-priced dachas of Annual Meetings, held at a summer resort at Lake George in the Adirondack mountains.

In the decentralized model of Quaker Yearly Meetings, all effectively compete and collaborate with each other on the best ways to run a Yearly Meeting. Strangely though, some Yearly Meetings are sadly following the paid minister, big-budget, high-cost, centralized control model of New York Yearly Meeting. NYYM leads other Meetings like a Quaker flagship of dying membership, sailing out into a vast sea of absurdity and irrelevance, and flushing time, talent and money into the bilge head somewhere vaguely out there. This instead of other Yearly Meetings showing the example of a lower-cost, limited government, but full participation, volunteer service, bringing-emphasis-back-to-local-Monthly-Meeting-concerns example - and helping to reform the misled New York (and north New Jersey) Quakers.

It’s not like I agree with everything Mike has tried to do for New York City – the 2012 Olympics, thank God (who overruled Mike on that one), will be held somewhere else, I forget where, and I don’t really care. I prefer we not be a target more than we already are.

Thankfully also, now that I no longer attend Quaker Meeting here, I don’t have to listen to the incessant background psychologically depressed leftist hum of how ‘we deserved 9/11’ in group psychotherapy in or at any social gathering after a New York City Quaker Meeting for Worship. I remember coming to New York City in 1980 and a Dean who helped me get a scholarship at NYU telling me Washington Square Park, on which I lived at that time, the bohemian hub of the past century (still within 5 minutes walk from my apartment) was targeted by the Soviets as Ground Zero for their first-strike atom bomb. I always thought that was strange, how all the leftist and anarchists pontificating on soap boxes and strumming their guitars would be evaporated first by our former nemesis, the former communist Soviet Union.

I sometimes think about George Fox railing against the paid ministers and professors, and I then think about how Quakerism is now rife with the same ‘professional politicians’ and ‘professors’ which plague our civil governments. I think about how George Fox called Oliver Cromwell, maybe like an historical Michael Bloomberg, his “Lord Protector”. I remember also how royalty freed 700 Quakers who were in prison after Cromwell’s death, when Fox declared (in The Peace Testimony) that the Friends had no reason nor desire to participate in outward wars or strife (like politics and protest marching, etc)

And Mike protects us assuredly from corruption – he himself can’t be bought, and he’s so king-rich, he is not beholden to self-serving minority special interests who are lurking in the shadows, warming their hot little hands to go back into our pockets if Mike’s major challenger (a Democrat) is elected. Mike has a lot to do with trimming size of government if he feels that is what should be done. Period. There is always the whining and crying within serfdom of 9 million people, but that’s all it amounts to, and life goes on according to Mike’s supreme vision.

However, surprisingly, I’m still positively impressed mostly with those I’ve met and spoken to in the Evangelical Friends International who pay ministers in what are known as Friends Churches. It appears mostly EFI Friends don’t tax their membership too heavily to pay their ministers and ministers get paid in amounts that indicate the ministers are truly serving their flocks – not building large budget businesses around themselves and their careers.

Large budget Quaker businesses include such as New York Yearly Meeting, but the real big bucks budgets are maintained by Friends organizations. The top of the list is the now-evolved nakedly politically partisan American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and Friends General Conference (FGC). The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is third on this list, being a legally incorporated partisan political organization which somehow commands respect as 'leaders' of Friends or our 'paid ministers' in the modern Quaker Faith.

But, possibly the most chagrining examples of big Quaker businesses are the (large) Eastern U.S. and British urban elite Friends schools. Some of the most reviling Quakers fancy themselves important Friends School literati, collecting their salaries from the rich patrons of Friends Schools, rich parents who send their children there, and large trust funds set up by formerly alive Quakers. Plain and simple – these are the elite Friends – our modern day ministers paid by the wealthy to interpret the Faith for how the rich would like it and for the rest of us – the declining group of mere mortals who can’t govern ourselves without their expertise and esoteric insight.

One who has read my writings and known me might ask, how then Glenn, can you openly criticize those Quakers who have done the same thing as Mike, by changing the rules when the rules (NYYM has revised its Handbook recently) don’t suit themselves, and continue power for themselves.

Plain and simple is that Mike has his own money, and he’d rather be managing his philanthropic life after politics than continuing in the fray. He does care for the city, he doesn’t need my money or those lesser rich folks’ money who would try to influence him to what they need to make almost as much money as Mike has. NYYM has declined and the top down force of NYYM (where the General Secretary makes 80,000 times what Mike Bloomberg makes, plus a wealth of expense reimbursements) on its constituent Monthly Meetings continues that decline.

But NYC has progressed, become cleaner, better educated, more orderly, possibly in the near future to be funded by taxes generated mostly by tourists only after Wall Street dissipates into an electronic trading cloud in the sky. (Because none of the candidates talks about how to bring back NYC as actually making anything that the rest of the world would buy.) In both cases, NYYM and NYC may be past being able to govern themselves primarily at local levels and then upward – it is just very hard work that people would rather not do. People are happier to be told what to think, believe and do from somewhere on high because it is easier than doing the hard work of organic, bottom up, grass roots government.

Some have our own lives to improve. As much as NYYM and NYC and possibly the U.S. are Rome repeating itself, individuals, hopefully including myself, are doing what we do to address closer priorities and our personal relationship with God, without preoccupation with New York Yearly Meeting, New York City, United States or world politics.

In Friendship,

Glenn R.

* New York and New Jersey politics are more prone to corruption than other states due to the transient nature of voters who come to the commercial center to make money and then leave. This voter apathy allows special interest groups to get something in return for money paid to politicians. Combine that with way too many towns, school districts, authorities and commissions, and with lax laws on holding more than one public job, and you have made-for-corruption states.

What Friends Should Know about NYYM Finances before Silver Bay 2008

2008-07-17T02:21:00.009-05:00

Comparison of 3 Yearly Meeting Finances 2008

Dear Friend,

I just read the Treasurer’s Report, the Audit Committee Report, and the Financial Services Report in the Advance Reports for this year’s Silver Bay Annual Sessions. These three committees are none too sexy, yet they are the power centers which determine whether New York Yearly Meeting (NYYM) practices good governance.

Some observations:

The Treasurer’s report for 2007 compared with the Operating Budget for 2007 is a sham. This sham is nothing new, yet it continues because a dying organization needs deception, especially around money, to keep itself in business, and maintain the facade of legitimacy.
The newly reconstituted Financial Services Committee will be preparing the 2009 budget at the Annual Sessions at Silver Bay in July 2008. Will you be there? The sham continues with the names changed, but the fact is that the NYYM Treasurer and Clerk of General Services have been and still are clearly in power and in collusion to misrepresent both the Operating Budget and the Treasurer’s report. (The new NYYM Treasurer and the Clerk of General Services [a former NYYM Treasurer and current Treasurer of the NYYM Trustees] are members of the same Monthly Meeting)

The NYYM budget numbers have been manipulated / padded for at least 20 years such that even when Meetings did not give what was asked, the Yearly Meeting still made a profit to add to its bank balance and carry forward.
NYYM has been in substantial budget deficit for 3 out of the last 4 years and its total cash on hand from operations has only fallen by $1,000. The beginning balance on 1/1/2004, the year the General Secretary was hired was $204,000. The ending balance of cash on hand in 2007 was $203,000
Money is being spent ‘cross’ budget lines, not accountable to the populous.

The rank and file members of the Financial Services Committee, a committee with no authority to reduce expenses when they have not been presented with due evidence for such funding requests, are literal nothings in decision making. Finance meetings are held as far away as possible from the most Friends, in with purposeful intent to limit participation by committee members and regional Treasurers.
The Clerk of the Financial Services Committee usually has to be the third leg of the stool of malfeasance, part and parcel to the sham carried on by the other two power brokers named above. The former Clerk of Financial Services conveniently left town, was originally a dedicated NYYM team player. He was a made man who asked me to resign multiple times when I made what were objectively helpful observations about the insular nature of NYYM and what could be done to cure it. Nothing that was new about the insularity, but the what to do about it, was simply heresy to those who feel that the yearly meeting should exist without any mandate or covenant, bottom-up, financing from Monthly Meetings, which New York Quarterly Meeting Friends and I began in September 2004. (A covenant contribution is something that a Monthly Meeting agrees in advance to contribute to the Yearly Meeting as simply one of the Monthly Meeting’s expenses, as part of grass roots authority to the Yearly Meeting wider body.) The struggle with me and with the groundswell that began in September 2004, began to turn the former Clerk of Financial Services toward the right order of Quaker authority and mandate, from bottom up, which will eventually heal the malfeasance of governance that still exists. So I say, convenient for him to be off the hook as he has moved to be closer to family.

The Clerk of Financial Services is a member of the same Monthly Meeting as the Clerk of the Nurture Coordinating Committee. The latter is a rah-rah NYYM devotee who refuses to see malfeasance of NYYM that cuts her own Nurture budget in most of the recent years to support office salaries, office expenses and other centralized costs.

The current new Clerk of Financial Services has yet to be proven as a made-man. We’ll see if he has the ‘cojones’ to stand up to the other two thirds of the power triumvirate. He’ll also contend with the General Secretary who is ‘thankful’ for his $80,000 and going up salary and undefined job description according to the first sentence of the General Secretary's Report in the Advance Reports. Will the new Clerk of Financial Services be an agent for positive change, or will he be able to suppress any further dissent which is trying to bring NYYM back to good governance?
The Audit Committee says it hires a CPA for $3,000 per year budgeted ($3,075 actual in 2007). What CPA will audit thoroughly for that low amount? Ask to have a copy of the Audit Report filed by the Auditor. Not to see a copy, to have a copy. The Clerk of the Audit Committee, also in the manner of NYYM, Clerk equals Captain mentality, is too much a same-old same old, a paid professional Quaker with the mentality of continuing institutions as ends in themselves, and should not be nominated again for any central power position. It’s amazing what churches can hide because they don’t have to file public statements with the IRS and hence be truly accountable to the public let alone the Church’s own members. While you’re at it, ask to have a copy of the Financial Management Guidelines which will surely expose the scam $30,000 per year Bookkeeping service hired by a former Treasurer, now the Clerk of General Services Committee. If NYYM has less than 50 transactions per month, why shouldn’t it hire a $5,000 per year bookkeeper? Where is the other $25,000?

My advice to any Friends who read this: Go to the Financial Services Meeting(s) at Silver Bay. Take time out from sailing, windsurfing, swimming, shuffleboarding, chasing fireflies or whatever and go sweat a little bit with those who are trying to help NYYM achieve vitality. Does the Financial Services Committee offer teleconferencing into the Finance Meetings at Silver Bay? Why not? Silver Bay a conference center isn’t it?

Ask the hard questions that have to be asked in order for NYYM to come clean and achieve accountability and truth in what it really is.

Here is the forensic evidence of the continuing sham of Operating Budget and Treasurer’s Report:

Expense

General Services Section – The Non-Sexy, but Powerful and Critical to Good Governance Section

Audit – already mentioned. It’s a joke.
Junior Yearly Meeting – could the Silver Bay portion of this actual cost of be funny money or money that does not get spent, just applied as an expense if Silver Bay Association ‘gives’ NYYM rooms? NYYM is Silver Bay’s biggest customer, there is some kind of bartering going on, rest assured, where money is not changing hands where it should.

Could money be changing hands toward NYYM members, possibly illegally, on the Sessions Committee for keeping the conference at this facility, so far away, and so un-competitively priced compared with other Yearly Meeting annual sessions?
Has anyone determined which (powerful) NYYM Friends own property or houses near Silver Bay?

Administrative Expenses – what are these $13,847, almost $2,000 over budget, broken down into? This is a very vague category which should be specified out in future budgets and reports.

Did any committee have to approve this over budget spending or was this done behind the scenes?

Rent and Utilities at 15^th St. $23,800 Budget 2007, $23,800 Actual 2007. When I was on the Finance Committee I obtained a document from the office landlord, New York Quarterly Meeting, which stated in June of 2005, that the office rent for NYYM would not change in 2006 from the 2005 rent of $25,800, however electric charges would be metered and paid directly by NYYM to the utility in 2006. The rent number on the line in 2005 was misrepresented as $23,800 and inconsequential Friends objected that the wrong number was on the budget line. But the budget line stayed the same because of the power triumvirate, and General Secretary, named above who simply authorized the wrong number to stay on the budget and hence the Treasurer's Report. Is NYYM saying that rent has not gone up since 2005 (even when the rent was misrepresented low purposely in 2005 to deflect concern over paying so much money for rent when much cheaper and more central space is surely to be had?) The General Secretary, salary is around $80,000, although hired to live in NYC and did not, does not attend the office much. He is not called a Field Secretary, which would normally work out of his home like he does, and is not paid like one ($45,000) Why can’t the office be moved closer to this Rock Star where he can be in the office to supervise those under him who, like him, are accountable to no time and task specific job descriptions?

A round and even actual number for rent plus utilities is highly suspect here and is most probably purposely misrepresented.
Considering the utilities component of this actual cost which is obviously being paid from some other budget line, an actual number that equals the budget number to the dollar and cent in the Treasurer's Report is also even more suspect in being inaccurate at best and purposely misrepresented at worst.

These two coincidences together represent an absurdity to any reasonable person.

Salary and Wage Related Expenses – Budget $43,000. Actual $36,299. That Budget has stayed flat for at least 3 years (2005 Budget was $42,275) when salaries have risen by 3-5% per year indicates a blatant misrepresentation of budget expectations.

An employer is required to pay an additional 1/2 of the Social Security payment, or 7.5% of an employee’s salary to Social Security. So if salaries for the 3 full-time employees rise, as they have over the last 3 years, so do the employers Wage Related Expenses.
Hourly employee wages have stayed more or less flat since 2005
Add to this that the actual numbers in the Treasurer’s report have also stayed flat when they should have grown (2005 Actual was $36,457) and we have a likely pattern of deception, in rerouting other budget lines to pay what should look like wage related expenses without showing the truth.
Rationale was used in 2005 to say that two of the three employees are not taking their full time health insurance benefits and if new employees were to be hired the money to pay the new people is needed in the budget. This phantom budget bubble money was supposedly taken out of the budget to help alleviate previous budget deficits, again out of view of the inconsequential people, years ago. So don't buy it when they feed the same song and dance to you again this year.

Office Staff Travel – was the actual vs. budget 15% overage approved by the Financial Services Committee at some point?
Office Equipment – again an even number $1,800 budget and $1,800 actual that is equal to the dollar and cents to the budgeted number for office equipment? Guess again.
Computer Consultation – Budget $1,000. Actual $0 How many years has this actual been zero? Who has been paid as a computer consultant and what did they do? Get rid of this bogus budget line.
Hourly Staff – what do these people do? Who are these people? Need Job descriptions, accountability.$21,000 Budget. $21,315 Actual.
Volunteer Support – $500 Budget. $264 Actual. What can NYYM Friends do to volunteer? What kind of work is needed and when? Who is chosen for this work and what is this money spent on? Do these volunteers get special favors in any other way?
Bookkeeping Service – $28,200 Budget. $28,200 Actual. is there a conflict of interest here where an important NYYM person is familiar with a principal of the bookkeeping service, where budgeted number equals the actual number spent? Does the ‘independent’ vendor raise prices and the Yearly Meeting simply concede, or do the owner of the ‘independent’ bookkeeping service collude with someone at NYYM to make the actual cost equal the budget number? Are there not any busier periods when the costs of bookkeeping would go up or down as per the amount of work? Isn’t this cost astronomically high which could also suggest potentially illegal kickbacks or other importune activity?

Who are the principals of this firm?
What is the name of the firm?
Do the principals of this obviously overpaid firm have any personal or family relationships with important NYYM Friends?

Nurture Section

Advancement Committee - $7,000 Budget. $7,000 Actual. Again, any kind of reimbursement for Silver Bay is done in uneven numbers based on what Monthly Meetings give. Reimbursements for travel for the ‘approved ministers’ to travel to Monthly Meetings would be in odd numbers.

For the actual in dollars and cents to be a round number is odd
money is to be spent from the trust fund associated with this budget line before the operating funds are spent
for both a + b to be true is an inaccurate reportage

That other actual numbers which normally should be odd, but are even round numbers, indicates a pattern of deception.

Low numbers for FWCC, FUM and FGC Budget and Actual indicate that the Yearly Meeting is out of control and does not fund its ‘wider bodies’ sufficiently to support good Quaker governance at wider levels.

Wouldn’t the current ‘gay crisis’ of FUM have been staved off if NYYM would have represented itself better in the past with concomitant funding and representation to the levels of at least NEYM or BaltYM?
These low amounts are a joke and allow NYYM to retain money which is inherently money given by Monthly Meetings to wider bodies, that should be passed on to such. But the money is diverted instead to fund NYYM’s unaccountable internal operations.
There is no committee to set these donation amounts, there are only those power players in the behind the scenes closed door negotiations which set these numbers.

One Friend, a member of one of these three ‘wider bodies’ told me once, “We are not a governing body (of Yearly Meetings), per se. We just hold meetings to allow Friends to get together and discuss what’s on their minds. If we relied on money from Yearly Meetings for all of our funding, we’d be out of business.”
Eric Hoffer once said, “Every good cause starts as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Can NYYM stop itself from becoming in business (possibly even a racket) to provide a nice church vacation for the elect, the elite few who have broken into the pantheon of ‘higher’ Friends?

Powell House - $67,020 Budget. $67.018.33 Actual This is a strange twist in that a donation to Powell House budgeted number should be a round number. What is the $20 in the budget added to $67,000? What is the odd number as the actual, when a large round number given to Powell House is what the Meeting should have mandated?

Something is amiss here and should be investigated.
Powell House should receive less funding each year until it’s subsidy is zero.

Income

Registration Fees fell short of budget by 25%. Could this money have been stolen or misappropriated? Again, there are not many or any objective people in the position to see details of what is going on in the NYYM office.
Meeting Receipts: All Friends and Purchase Quarters are paying way under what they should pay according indices tied to median incomes in their zip codes (these zip codes have much higher median incomes and home prices than New York City, for example)

Many powerful or ‘made’ NYYM Friends come from these two regions.
The Clerk of General Services and the NYYM Treasurer come from All Friends, as well as the same Monthly Meeting

What more can be said? Does the inurement of vacation dull your intellect and reason, and the understanding of right and wrong?

In Friendship,

Glenn R.

Comparison of 3 Yearly Meeting Finances 2008

What Happened: Inside a Culture of Deception

2008-06-01T13:31:00.021-05:00

A Cost Comparison
Three Annual Sessions

Dear Friend,

Should New England Quakers be worried?

New York Yearly Meeting (NYYM) and New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM) of the of the Religious Society of Friends are talking at ‘high levels’ such as at a recent retreat in Connecticut. The Clerk of NYYM is the featured guest at NEYM’s annual sessions in summer 2008.

Should NEYM be worried that NYYM is exporting its malfeasance of finances and of governance? (Hint: Yes.)

Scott McLellan, a former United States White House Press Secretary was criticized today for staying in his high-paying job and reaping the benefits of the luxe-life of a presidential administration, quietly leaving, then coming out later and making another fortune writing a kiss-and-tell book named – “What Happened”.

At least I publicly quit and didn’t continue to receive scholarships to go on boondoggle vacations to New York Yearly Meeting’s 20% more expensive annual sessions location, rotate off my committee service then tell all. I quit when it was obvious that reasoning and cajoling in New York Yearly Meeting Financial Services Committee didn’t work and when I was finally uninvited from a critical budget meeting for asking the Treasurer a serious question regarding a perpetually recurring large expense.*

I quit after a year earlier enduring a gang-banging by goons who stood against me and by those who enabled them without my presence in any clearness, for a financial position in the big-time dollars arena of New York (City) Quarterly Meeting. I was gang-banged a third time at the local level when I was asked to audit the books, and would not let go of evidence of theft that came forth in my own Monthly Meeting. But I did begin, with other Friends' support, the bottom-up financing that will be NYYM’s savior, if the movement back to the manner of Friends is not crushed in the near future by the self-serving elite who care not a bit for the governed in local communities. The ministers care about the money that the locals send them, however.

Lies are endemic within NYYM, and to this Friend, they are not unlike those by the current presidential administration. Granted, people died and continue to die as a result of lies in the U.S. government. But lies are lies, the lack of integrity shown in both NYYM, a Quaker organization, for God's sake, and the lies from the U.S. government - grow up from simple lies - later into big lies.

So, consider this: We’ve been told again this week what we already knew – every centralized government administration is insular, seeking only to protect itself, and lies to the people through what is called a press secretary. CEO’s of big corporations lie to the public through their public relations or ‘corporate communications’ chief. Do you think lying stops with civil government and big business? Look at the stakes (the money) for any organization and you’ll see the reasons to lie no matter if they are a church or not. NYYM’s modicum of lies is via paid employees.

How about the lies by church governments, non-profit and religious organizations who want to maintain high-paying, unaccountable undefined, sometimes no-show jobs? Some of these are paid positions which the holders also serve on committees (in an obvious conflict of interest) which make decisions to distribute other people’s money? Why do these inured people continue to maintain themselves even when they no longer or poorly serve the public or their constituency? This instead of waking up one day and realizing to themselves “Gee, our group or organization is just not relevant anymore, let’s go our separate ways, join other groups that are managed better and are relevant.” and lay themselves down? (Or at least find another annual meeting site where it costs less to arrive, costs less to spend time there and there are more places to camp?)

The prophet George Carlin said this little more bluntly:

"In the bullshit department, a businessman can’t hold a candle to a clergyman [religious government]. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of religion.

…. religion takes in billions or dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more – you talk about a good bullshit story – holy shit."

The reasons New York Yearly Meeting lies (or maybe just gives out bullshit) is that the insular self-serving elite that run it and who are engineering its demise – whom the employees truly work for – is propped up by a vacation and a retreat center where there will always be wealthy folks who will get a good deal on a cheap vacation, get a chance to sail, swim, or sit on the front porch looking out over Lake George with their kids and grandkids and get the added bonus of feeling religious at the same time. But the hard truth is that lies have to be told in order to maintain NYYM as a religious government. The declining and apathetic constituency mostly still continues to send in its money, based on what a committee of a few decides.

NYYM and NEYM are talking at ‘high levels’ such as at the recent retreat in Connecticut. The Clerk of NYYM is the featured speaker at NEYM’s annual sessions this summer. Should NEYM be worried that NYYM is exporting its malfeasance to NEYM? (Hint: Yes.)

* And that question I asked in order to be uninvited to the NYYM budget meeting in September 2006? It has to do with the bookkeeping service, part of the waste in government, that NEYM has contemplated or has hired on recommendation by the head honcho string-puller at NYYM. See all the questions including this big question.

Eric Hoffer had something to say about propaganda that we’re fed by U.S. Presidents and high-minded, powerful Quakers - “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”

In Friendship,

Glenn R.

A Cost Comparison
Three Annual Sessions

The Quaker Culture, the Quaker Community and the Quaker Faith

2008-05-03T12:12:00.053-05:00

Dear Friend,

This is to draw your attention to a feature recently published in the New York Times. Here we find a quote about the mutual exclusivity of one's professed Quaker Faith, with that person's Jewish culture and community. By the public speech in a venerable journal, and the quoted person in control of the keys to an historic meetinghouse - there is the insinuation that the quoted knows something about the Quaker Faith. What might be more absurd (than to believe everything you read in the NYTimes) is the clear quote that her membership is solely in the Jewish community.

Some know, at the same time, she has been appointed with her own consent, and continues to be appointed as a Quaker minister to positions of authority (once as the head Quaker Minister) in the New York Quaker community. When one is quoted unmistakably to say they are of one community only, but are in reality of two, what should a reasonable person think? Which community takes higher precedence in one's mind and action? Can one always be true to both?

We know that humans form groups or communities mainly for self-protection. What differentiates Quakers or any group who form a community from devolving into a gang or a an illegitimate government which unfairly enforces ways of life and ways of action, and which protects and controls resources? The answer is force - whether or not it is physical or implied in the threat of punishment or disownment for speaking critically of the group.

The Jewish person quoted in the New York Times below is a official Quaker member of the local Flushing Meeting in New York City, and is now also a member of the General Secretary’s Committee, one of a few powerful, and central New York Yearly Meeting Committees. To refresh your memory - New York Yearly Meeting (NYYM) is a Quaker regional body and (New York State, North New Jersey, Southern CT) is supposed to be a religious governing body in grass roots style. However, NYYM has devolved into group of unconnected Quaker elite who get together for a nice vacation/expensive governing session each summer in the Adirondacks. NYYM insinuates in some false manner, that it speaks morally for the whole declining Quaker population within its geographic turf. (Membership most likely now is at about 1,500 actual members, down from 6,500 in 1955.)

This clearly quoted Jewish person quoted by the first-class newspaper was the Clerk (a position of high esteem and authority) of Ministry and Counsel (the Ministers) for New York Quarterly Meeting (of New York City) when she stood against two Quaker Friends (something rarely done against one, let alone two, in Friends' Society) in a public Friends meeting for business in 10^th Month 2005. She must have felt she was important enough to do so, even as New York Quarterly Meeting Nominating Committee most probably still sits around wringing its hands and going over the handful of same-old potential nominees for the same-old open positions it can’t fill. (The author was once a member of the New York Quarterly Meeting Nominating Committee.)

In fact there was evidence the person who has publicly denied her membership in the Quaker community (most would believe one's faith is private, but one's membership in community is not) in the New York Times this past week, premeditatedly contemplated standing against the two Quaker Friends, whom she finally stood against in that fateful public meeting in 2005. The weighty members of New York Quarterly Meeting who did not question her accusation at that moment of standing against, must have believed they understood good Quaker order. And later, those same ministers who did not permit the accused or ‘stood-against’ to hear the accuser's (mentioned in the news article below) concerns face-to-face, about their ability to serve on the New York Quarterly Meeting Audit Committee and New York Quarterly Meeting Trustees - believed they still understood Friendly practice. Maybe the ministers did believe it (because she was the 'head' minister)?

But the sound judgment of the other weighty Friends or 'ministers' around the 'head minister' quoted below in the New York Times, was evidently suspended, to ignore the ultimate absurdity - the ‘elephant in the room’ - in order keep up their morally superior appearance. In other words, the New York City Quaker heavyweights went along silently with the avoidance of potentially explosive exposure of the truth of financial impropriety hidden within the New York Quaker government. The 'accused' Friends who were stood against would have surely not tolerated such - so they were effectively disowned - or forced out. There it is, the 'F' word which indicates a gang.

The truth is that this political jockeying was done for money - to perpetuate what Samuel Caldwell called – The Quaker Culture. Although Caldwell spoke of the Philadelphia Friends, his concept applies to New York Friends also. The common factor in Quaker Culture between these two Societies is expressed in the fine art of the dance - around the big pot of other people’s money each has at its disposal. So in effect, the quoted person below was apparently acting as a hatchet lady with authority from the defective mind of a debilitated body. But, somehow her 'Community' is not the Quaker Community? Maybe it is easier to be a hatchet person when one is not truly a part of a given community?

Take this feature story below as reason number ..... hmmm, has anyone counted all the reasons? – why New York Quakers are sadly but obviously corrupt and dying, a mere remembrance of an historically remarkable group. Yet now, New York Quakers are simply a few affected, vain, politically correct, elitist, not-for-profit, do-nothings, who maintain their once meaningful private schools and service organizations, turned political action groups as thinly-veiled money-making businesses. Notice how most of the focus of any mention about Quakers, including this one is 1) it is not a news report, because nothing is actually going on, and 1a.) the feature mentions leverage of Quaker integrity in some past time.

Long live the Quaker Community. When is the next ‘diversity’ discussion ad infinitum, where they decide certain people in our community are more equal because of their skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or religious background?

Long live the Quaker Culture, co-opted by United for Peace and Justice, and moveon.org. When is the next protest march?

Long live the Quaker Faith.

In Friendship,

Glenn R.

-------

Quaker History / Flushing Meeting///Weekend Explorer: The Melting Pot on a High Boil in Flushing/ New York Times/New York/NY/USA/2-May-08/

…Naomi Paz Greenberg showed me the main meeting room, which looks much as it did in 1694, from the hand-cut nails in the plank floor to the wavy glass in the windows. The sturdy wooden benches date from the 1780s; British soldiers used the originals for firewood.

On a typical Sunday 18 to 25 Friends meet there, Ms. Greenberg said, adding: "Ours is an unprogrammed meeting, which means there are no prescribed prayers that must be said. There is no prepared sermon. There's no paid minister. We listen for the divine, and when there is a message that is irresistible to share, to deliver to the Friends in the meeting, we stand up and deliver the message."

Many members, like Ms. Greenberg, were drawn to Quakerism from other religious backgrounds.

"I was raised Jewish," she said. "I have never stopped being a Jew. That is my community. That is my culture. But my religion is Quakerism." ……

Continue on this topic with the following essay

The New Stimulus Package - Your Money

2008-02-11T15:25:00.000-05:00

News Flash:
The NYYM Emergency Stimulus Package

Dear Friends,

Over the last year, I’ve published observations about a dying Quaker Yearly Meeting, New York Yearly Meeting. I’ve made these almost in a clinical way, observing scientifically, measuring the evidence – from the outside. This viewpoint is sometimes called ‘objective’.

I’ve was on the ‘inside’ yet felt like an ‘outsider’ when a participant. I was the wrong age (my 30’s and 40’s when Quakers are mostly in their 50’s – 70’s ), asked the wrong (maybe the right) questions and I asked Friends to actually do something, and to change and to grow.

In essence, I’ve asked Friends to let their lives speak, in selfless individual acts, measured by money. This as opposed to speaking in a self-centered manner, throwing oneself into large, faraway faceless causes - by giving messages - politically-correct mealy-mouthed mumbo jumbo ad nauseum - in Meeting for Worship, holding up signs in loud protest marches, and sending other people’s money to dead, disconnected ‘higher’ and ‘wider’ bodies.

Instead of giving messages, how much of your money do YOU give to your Monthly Meeting?

Your money is important. It represents life right here and right now, and it represents the connection to a Quaker Faith, which is both physical and spiritual, no matter how much many Friends want to excise anything physical from the Religious Society of Friends. You see, money represents and can measure what Friends actually do.

We Friends are not hostile to the scientific process, and to observable facts, are we? We constantly test the Truth, in Meeting for Worship, and we can similarly test our integrity of spirit and physical existence with how we use money. It is the real, sometimes brutal mirror on the wall. It can tell us to comb our hair when we forget before we go out, or tells us we aren’t the fairest of them all.

So, what Friends, and as have many others in today’s world have done, have relied on other people’s money to finance our Church. And we turn our attention away from this brutal fact by focusing on politically correct things that our paid ‘ministers’ suggest. It is much easier then.

We can go gentle, right into that cold dark night, co-opted by the Democratic party and Moveon.org, even the American Friends Service Committee, large wealthy Friends Schools, as elite proxies for our dead and gone Society - all the while we think we are alive. Our meetinghouses and our Faith will become curious historical niceties and quirky things kids will hear in school - and then forget.

Great. Let’s send our 'ministers' to more conferences, travel the world to FWCC which has, we’ve heard of late, found wealthy donors to finance itself. Now our widest of wide bodies no longer has any reason to be connected to our Yearly Meetings (whew, NYYM only gives a little, therefore it can now keep more money for itself) all the way back down the line to the Monthly Meetings and the local churches – the grass roots of the Quaker Faith.

So Friends, think about money. I know you don’t want to, and most of you won’t. My words are like that creaky uncomfortable bench you’re sitting on in Meeting for Worship. My words are your Stimulus Package. My words represent the one standing up and saying the emperor has no clothes and these Quaker ‘institutions’ have outrun their Guide. My words are your best chance to want to get off your rear, stop listening to false ministers living with the largesse of wider, disconnected Friends ‘institutions’.

In essence, what I’m saying is go to your Monthly Meeting, the grass roots, re-create each year what the Spirit calls Friends to create. Compare that to the Rule of Thirds. Stop your Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Meetings living on other people’s money, get to work, and let your money and your lives speak.

Time, Talent and Money: Beware of the Ides of March

2008-01-30T23:17:00.000-05:00

Dear Friend,

Now that it is February, you can all forget about the January 08 Spark (The Censored House Organ for NYYM).

Honest Friends' Governmental issues are below:

Monthly Meetings are being asked to send even more time, talent and money, to a called meeting on March 15 at Rochester Meeting. (If somehow it is not snowed out.)

Important points to remember:

1. The Transition Working Group which spawned this meeting, is a fully top-down Silver Bay hierarchal creation

You must have been a Silver Bay Friend to have been a part of the decision to create this Working Group and also to be part of the process to decide to call this meeting on March 15, 2008

Silver Bay can only be attended by, at most 1/5, of the published 3,500 Friends

an exclusive, persnickety clique reigns at this exclusive destination

Silver Bay is too expensive and too long

a comparison has been made between other Yearly Meetings' annual sessions

This called Meeting is what Yearly meetings orignially did (only) without standing committees. So,

2. Why doesn't NYYM live up to its name and have just one meeting a year? .. and lay down NYYM standing committees and allow the limited resources of money, time and talent of the small number of Friends over 64 Monthly Meetings who actually exist, to reside closer to home in Monthly Meetings, in the true spirit of Quakerism?

- answers:

this would not support jobs in the NYYM office

(for those who actually show up at the office)

this would not support a 'higher' platform or stage for vain ministers,

who also go to wider wider meetings (for what?) at your expense
btw, NYYM takes Monthly Meeting money and squanders it while it grossly undergives to the wider bodies of FUM, FGC and FWCC

this would not support the annual cheap vacation

(or if you prefer) the expensive and long annual sessions at Silver Bay

3. the 'steering' committee of this March 15 meeting, is actually the Liaison Committee, or the NYYM shadow 'executive committee' which overrules committee decisions (see names at bottom of page)

Liaison is a non-transparent decision-making core of NYYM (see William Penn's quote below)

the main goal of this committee is to perpetuate the status quo (jobs and more-equal ministers).

The Liaison Committee comprises approximately half of those same-old same old, more-equal Friends, who should resign and never be appointed to a nyym committee again. (see the full list here).

Watch these Friends 'steer' messages away from discussion which do not work toward perpetuation of jobs at the NYYM office or the detached hierarchy of vain ministers (the status quo).

This steering committee says it welcomes non-appointed, freelance Friends to attend, however, they do not, rest assured

4. NYYM is in budget deficit in the 3rd out of 4 straight years.

(see the details)

Asking Monthly Meetings to send a represenative to another meeting aside from the two 'Represenative Meetings' is simply an irresponsible, selfish drawing of more limited resources (not to mention a degradation of the environment with travel to such distant destination) toward a dead hierarchy which serves itself.

See why the general public is also in debt up to the eyballs. NYT Article Why don't Friends lead the way in living within our means? Maybe living within our means is not that sexy.

5. This March 15, 2008 NYYM meeting is a continuation of its pandering to the Farmington-Scipio region

by all rights, FS Regional Meeting should detach from NYYM and form its own Yearly Meeting

(and keep its limited resources of time, talent, and money closer to home where true Quakerism will benefit and grow)

6. If you go to this meeting, ask these questions the hierarchy does not want your Monthly Meeting to ask. (Hint: The money talks) Financial and other malfeasance of governance provide the occasion for a continuation of a lack of peace in the 64 meetings of NYYM)

7. If you don't go to this meeting, go to your Monthly meeting and ask it to determine its financial contribution to NYYM for 2009 - do this sooner, rather than later

consider resources of time, talent and money that could or should stay at home, to grow Quakerism by sending out more roots, in your local community.

In Friendship,
Glenn R.

--
Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
- William Penn

- an essay on giving to your Monthly Meeting:
What the Quaker Faith Costs YOU

- a reasonable five year financial plan for NYYM

MLK Day 2008 Message

2008-01-20T23:39:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,

Some surely felt that my spoof last week of the well-known ‘Friends institutions’ was over the top. Many others surely understand that my substantial criticism is meant to ‘wake up’ those who have ‘fallen deeply asleep’ without realizing it. Socrates said, something to the effect that "we are not normally in a good mood upon waking". Are we?

So, in essence, my criticism is meant to revive vigilance in internal Quaker affairs where complacence has entered during membership decline. It is easier for an organization or a person to focus vigilance outward, rather than inward to the hard work of honesty, integrity and growth, self-governance and living within one’s means.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Message

Upon being reminded today at the Riverside Church in New York City, at the Memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr., that “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend” – my messages have been such. Many have misinterpreted them as harsh, when in fact they have been of honesty and ‘tough’ love. When did Friends become a warm-and-fuzzy, touchy-feely, universal, distant-looking, dishonest religion? When did Friends begin to rely on the wealthy or others to pull our weight in larger budgets than should have been approved in the first place? MLK as a Christian, elegantly did not mince words, as he was first and foremost – a minister.

NYYM Deficit in 2008

Friends in New York Yearly Meeting, and extending to wider Quaker bodies, as I’ve pointed out for the past year, have mostly forsaken their grass-roots duties to themselves and have run the risk of becoming a hierarchy of meditation and discussion groups - not the Church. When this happens, paid persons begin to consider their jobs life-long, and the positions they fill – never ending – no matter what the constituent Friends’ bodies would have become or decided in a bottom-up model of decentralized finance and governance.

This malfeasance has begun to change. The balance is still precarious, and could easily revert back to a dead hierarchy. But this is what the eternal hard work of self government is all about. NYYM Monthly Meetings have begun to understand that the financing of the local community is the top priority in the continuing vitality and longevity of Quakerism.

New York Yearly Meeting has again approved a deficit budget for 2008, the 3^rd in 4 years. The 2008 deficit is approximately 2% of the total budget, thanks to the hard work that Long Island Quarter has done in determining its covenant, bottom-up Yearly Meeting contributions. The NYYM shadow government was again unable to switch gears between 9^th Month 2007 and 11^th Month 2007 and cut expenses. This even while the budget is still padded, and with advance notice of Long Island Quarter’s substantially reduced contribution in 2008 versus 2007. So we might say – the ‘leadership’ of NYYM is somehow still detached and out of touch with the constituency in living within the means of the body.

Freedom to speak

I was not able to speak freely when I was a member of NYYM. This is similar to the U.S. government’s top NASA climate scientist who spoke tonight on ’CBS 60 Minutes’ who has not previously been allowed to speak by the current executive administration in the United States. Does anyone understand that malfeasance of governance is the same whether the government is civil or religious?

And indeed, even before I spoke out publicly as I have in the past one year, I was forced out of the Yearly and Monthly Meetings in 9^th through 12^th Month 2006. This happened after I brought up uncomfortable evidence of financial and religious government malfeasance to the ‘leadership’ within the context of my appointment to the Financial Services Committee of NYYM. See the 4 Year Timeline of Malfeasance.

The way I see it, the NYYM ministers felt I threatened their financial interests and their own egos, by questioning an unaccountable and non-transparent religious government. This complacence was encouraged by the culture of NYYM in providing a perennial cheap summer vacation at a lake resort in the mountains as the reason-to-be ever since the reconstituted Yearly Meeting began again in 1955. Two of my own Quaker ancestors left the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1701 to follow George Keith’s disownment, when Keith was thrown out for speaking up about the too powerful ministers, the wrongness of slavery, and the need for Friends to confess one’s faith regularly.

Manhattan Monthly Meeting

Some may feel that my ‘ministry’ over the last year, has been without religious overtone. If anyone is interested, I have made religious messages in my former Monthly Meeting, which are available to be read even now.

- 8/22/2005 (with basis on John 15, and Matthew 20)

- 5/15/2005 (with emphasis on an epistle of John Woolman’s, Howard Brinton’s Quaker Doctrine of Inward Peace)

(Manhattan Meeting has not updated this website in the past 18 months)

Each Friend is called to be a minister and support the Church financially when and where there is a need. If this is not being made clear upon membership approval of new Friends, what has gone wrong?

Unfortunately, Manhattan Meeting, of New York Yearly Meeting is apparently faced with corruption issues of financial and governmental malfeasance. On this day of Martin Luther King’s Birthday celebration, I can say also that racism - however twisted its whole concept – more likely translated to ‘entitlement based on skin-color’ - played a role in the actions of those who forced me out. I stood witness to financial malfeasance in both the Yearly Meeting and Manhattan Meeting. The Pastor of Manhattan Meeting is a prominent member and recorded minister of New York Yearly Meeting.

I cite one example here of how Manhattan Meeting has most probably misrepresented its membership size in its report of 10/28/2007 after refusing to transfer me in 12/2006, and instead releasing me and another Friend that meeting. There are still many examples of misrepresentation of membership numbers by other Monthly Meetings in NYYM, or in tandem with New York Yearly Meeting as it admitted again its membership declined slightly in the latest Yearbook,. After visiting over 20 meetings in NYYM in 2006, I personally believe there are only approximately 1500 Quakers within New York Yearly Meeting, not 3500 as they have stated in the latest Yearbook. The lights are on, but there are very few at home.

Again the shirking of bottom up duty to ministry and self-governance during membership decline – given over centrally to those who are continuously paid - goes against what the Friends should and do stand for.

The ‘Spoof’ of one week ago

Do my satirical observations of one week ago signal the impending death of Quakerism, or is it already dead? The rich paid the ministers throughout religious history, and they in turn interpreted religion to please those who paid them. This is almost the case in many Friends meetings if we looked, potentially - where 10% or less of the membership pays 90% or more of the costs of the Church operating budget?

Does anyone believe that Friends are becoming anything different than other hierarchal (Christian) religions today? Does the world need one more hierarchal religion? Isn’t this the same as the deterioration in our civil government, which we say should be ‘by, of, and for the people’, where we have public or private fantasies about electing those who have become career politicians to fix everything for us?

The Truth is in the Numbers

I have left a somewhat comprehensive numerical description of how New York Yearly Meeting can re-make the connection – described in the numbers in a five-year plan. Special interests in NYYM did not allow this vision of integrity of living with the means of the Monthly Meetings to come to life. NYYM Friends refuse to believe that paid positions are ‘overpaid’ or have gone on too long for individual Friends to return to productive work in their own lives. But is the honesty of making a real connection, or making a real difference in individual cases for each of us, just too hard to do for those Friends who are left?

Assumptions

My messages describing how one Yearly Meeting has gone wrong were meant to educate all others not to follow these mistakes. I’ve written my previous epistles over the last year to all Friends that I know, based on the assumption that Friends are different than the rest of the world – we are a breed apart. I’ve based my commentary on the assumption that those Friends who are not working up to their potential really do have a sense of duty to their internal condition before they look outward to try and change others. I have made my statements based on the assumption that change in oneself often makes others change more easily than some legislation or ‘minutes’ we can envision and approve? Have I been incorrect in my assumptions?

In Friendship,

Glenn R.

See the ‘spoof’ on Quaker ‘Institutions’

See the list of recommended NYYM resignations

The Fair State of NYYM

2007-11-05T21:33:00.000-05:00

I saw the film American Gangster recently. What a great flick! Somehow it reminded me of the propensity for marginalized groups to form gangs, or mafia. Even Quakers form these, especially when the apathetic and declining populous allows it. In the movie, the gang found a direct source of pure heroin and could sell a ‘better product’ for less. New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) also ‘sells’ a vacation for much less than it would cost someone to go on one’s own. (Although now NYYM has been exposed as costing much more than NEYM or BaltYM Annual Sessions, where most Friends go to do Quaker business.)

Would you as a Friend, prefer to be an invisible part of a relevant, living and growing organization, or an visible part of an irrelevant, dying organization? If you answered in the former, you are a true Quaker. The latter are the vain, the false ministers, and or have some special interest in maintaining the sad status quo of NYYM. Some of the latter are listed below, I’m afraid.

If one looks carefully at past and current NYYM Yearbooks, there are about 10 or 15 names, which keep appearing in power positions in NYYM. It would be out of the manner of Friends to name names, however, I would like to submit a list of power positions, for which the person in these positions – should resign and not be nominated to a NYYM Committee or position again – ever.

I can say what everyone else is thinking. I can say this because I’m now on the outside, having already been forced out. Although, on par, I'm the guy speaking Spanish in the first scene of American Gangster. I might as well be speaking Spanish here, since only a few understand me, and I got what he gets in the movie.

These people below, are the people who make a mockery of true Quaker governance, as mafia make a mockery of the Law, by making up their own rules as needed as they go along. Again, these 'gangsters' can only do this because of the complacency of the declining constituency. These below are those who feel that NYYM should exist with a life of its own even without a mandate from Monthly Meetings. These are the persons who have shown that they are not objective, who may have some egoistical interest and or even some financial interest in continuing to pull resources to NYYM and out of Monthly Meetings. This, so that the NYYM hierarchy would ostensibly survive – like would temporarily, the heart and brain of a stranded hiker dying of hypothermia on the side of a mountain – by shutting off the blood flow to the extremities and appendages. (But then die later anyway)

This is not a non-personal, clinical phenomenon. These are people who have created and maintained a gang of trusted insiders, possibly for fear of preservation of something that might already be dead. They are not necessarily ‘bad’ people. But, these are the same old same-olds, who are still in power since the debacle of the Friends World College divestiture in 1991. What a dynasty! If Friends really want the Quaker Faith to grow, and have the elitist NYYM humbled, and brought under authority of the rightful mandate of cohesive, independent local communities - the Monthly Meetings – it is time for this NYYM dynasty to end.

Here is the list of those previously appointed to NYYM who should resign or be removed immediately:

The Clerk of General Services Coordinating Committee
The Treasurer of the Trustees
The Treasurer of NYYM
The Clerk and most recent former Clerk of the Personnel Committee
The entire current and most recent Personnel Committee
The most recent former Clerk of the Trustees
The Clerk and the most recent former Clerk of the Audit Committee
The Clerk of the Nurture Coordinating Committee
The Clerk of the Ministry Coordinating Committee
The Clerk and the most recent former Clerk of the Advancement Committee
The Clerk and the most recent former Clerk of the Conflict Transformation Committee

All of you, please step down. (Multiple positions above are sometimes filled by the same person, making even more clear, the problem.)

These are the ‘Friends’ who were threatened by a return to bottom up financing – which supports the mandate of Monthly Meetings to the Yearly Meeting. What were they afraid of? That money actually talks? And the b.s. walks? And money, no matter how scarce or controversial the discussion and application might be, is the consummate link between faith and practice in the true Quaker faith? Yes. This is what they were and are so afraid of.

If you care about Quakerism in the region of New York, North New Jersey, and Southwestern Connecticut, go to the next NYYM Fall Sessions (was Representative Meeting)

Do the following things:

Ask the above persons to ask for release.
Ask the Financial Services Committee to reduce the 2008 proposed budget by a large percentage, to somewhere around the 2003 numbers ~$400,000, all the while increasing the donations to a resonable level, NYYM makes on behalf of members to the wider wider bodies - FGC, FUM, and FWCC.

Is a sabbatical salary paid at full pay?
Why is the NYYM office expense not correct for many years in a row?
Why can’t staff take an across-the-board salary cut until the membership rises?
Why can’t Powell House become self-sufficient? Why does it get a perennial stipend from the NYYM operating budget each year?
Why can’t registration fees for Silver Bay go up severely so that those who go there for a vacation, pay for it?
Why can’t the NYYM office be moved to a place more central and less expensive? (Hint: this goes partially to the ‘gang related’ statement at the beginning of this letter)
Why hasn’t’ the NYYM Financial Services Committee published the proposed contributions from Regions?
Why is the All Friends Quarterly Meeting Treasurer, no longer a participating member of a Monthly Meeting?

Ask the other questions which still linger, in addition ask these:

Why are there no published job descriptions for the office staff?
Why is the General Secretary’s vague job description unfair to him and to NYYM?
How can the General Secretary do his job without being in the office more than one day per week?
Why does NYYM have to have 3 meetings per year?
Why does NYYM have to be anything more than the planning and implementation of one meeting per year?
Why does NYYM have to be anything more than what the Monthly Meetings say it is – simply to come together and inter-visit and see what they all have in common?
When will Annual Sessions be moved to a less expensive (where Friends can camp on site) and potentially transient location to be moved every year or five years?

i. This is when more people who go to Annual Sessions will actually go and serve on Yearly Meeting Committees.

When will the Monthly Meetings begin the process of dismantling the NYYM Coordinating Committee (hierarchy) structure?
Who says that ‘Racism’ will be the topic of the January 2008 Spark? This is another example of top-down decision making, I’m afraid.

i. Will everyone, no matter what skin color or ethnic background they are, be considered potentially ‘racist’?

1. Are angry and depressed - potentially egoistic or financially ‘interested’ people ‘working’ this issue?

ii. Is it a foregone conclusion that some are going to be ‘more equal’ in this Quaker discussion, simply because of current or past ‘less equal’ status outside of Quaker Society? Wouldn’t this be like feeding marshmallows to bears in a National Park? Or on the Animal Farm? Does this impending discussion go towards individual or Societal improvement? Or is it just a guilt trip going nowhere?

iii. Now, repeat after me, over and over: ”What a waste of time, What a waste of time…”

Trends that are troubling in NYYM Monthly Meetings:

General:

Monthly Meetings are being encouraged by NYYM ‘leadership’ to be touchy-feely, meditation groups, renting out their formerly owned buildings, now owned by whatever Historical Society, which send money to NYYM blindly, without any sense of having a common mission as outlined by their Monthly Meeting operating budget.
Monthly Meetings with trust funds, are being asked to gradually forfeit their large savings account principle balances in order to continue to pay more then their share of NYYM’s operating budget.

When trust funds are used to support most of a Monthly Meeting’s operating budget, there is no incentive for membership growth. In fact, it is a sure way to keep membership low - keep it small - in case somebody we don't know comes in and tries to take 'our money'.

i. a.k.a. Most LIQM meetings, all NYQM meetings, most if not all Purchase QM Meetings

1. Purchase Quarter should pay more of the NYYM budget if somehow it is not cut from its proposed level at Budget Saturday, 2007. It has underpaid for years, due to heavyweights from that region which exert their influence and divert a higher proportion of costs to other regions.

Going in the wrong direction:

Buffalo Monthly Meeting – Buffalo has lost membership, and now its meetinghouse. If Buffalo were just forming, from meeting in living rooms, it would be positive news that it rents space from a common space in the (white) suburbs. But it is not, it is declining, and this is an unequivocal sign of consolidation in decline.
Brooklyn Monthly Meeting – the largest Monthly Meeting in NYYM – did not make its 2006 operating budget. It extended its 2007 operating budget year to 15 months, ending March 30, 2008. What happens the year after that? Has the discussion as to why Brooklyn doesn’t pay a reasonable amount for the use of its meetinghouse happened? Or why Brooklyn pays 57% of its operating budget to NYYM?

Brooklyn Meeting also added its name to a website which is a list of ‘gay friendly’ churches. So, what is so remarkable about Friends? Has not the United Church of Christ done this a number of years ago? What about websites which welcome single-parents? What about Republicans? How about the handi-capped? What about Protest Marchers? What about Atheists? Please.

i. Do Friends know what a parachurch is? Is Brooklyn Meeting or NYYM in fact becoming a parachurch, where you have to be a Democrat, or you have to be gay, or an anarchist, or you have to be a protest marcher to be a member of the Quaker Church in good standing?

Peconic Bay Monthly Meeting – still renting space instead of owning something - membership declining. Is it actually doing something in their own wealthy community, instead of sending their money to NYYM?

Going in the Right Direction:

- Long Island Quarter – for their work in discernment of their Covenant Contributions

- Northeastern Quarter – same as above.

- Farmington-Scipio Half Yearly Meeting – same as above.

a. Orchard Park Monthly Meeting – has a terrific sense of itself as a cohesive, ownership group with commendable witness projects, and a very well preserved meetinghouse, paid by the living members, not by bequests, large wealthy donors, or trust funds.

Most important of all, do not forsake your responsibility in your Monthly Meeting. Discern a covenant contribution to NYYM based on what your Meeting feels it should give, based on what local mission your Monthly Meeting has in an of itself. Minute this amount in advance of Budget Saturday Finance Meeting or if not by then, by Fall Sessions (was Representative Meeting), and send this minute to NYYM. Or work through your regional meeting as LIQM has done. Bravo.

If this does not change the culture of the elite in NYYM, discuss with your Monthly Meeting, the options to affiliate with a better-run Yearly Meeting.

In the Life,
Glenn R.

Previous Post
The Meeting They Don't Want You to Attend

Post which promised to name the NYYM elite:
Evidence of Employee and Financial Fraud at NYYM

The meeting they don't want you to attend - NYYM Budget Saturday

2007-09-20T12:21:00.002-05:00

Dear Friend,

Friends United Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. a worldwide Quaker governing body, has recently been cited in a report for being run by an insulated elite board of insiders. Click here to see the report.

Maybe what I’m ‘on to’ in citing surprisingly similar malfeasance and decline with one regional Quaker governing body, New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (NYYM), doesn’t stop in the New York region? Is there wisdom to glean for all Quaker Friends in seeing a case study of NYYM in how NOT to run a wider religious body?

Compared with its regional Yearly Meeting peers, NYYM also gives very little financially to Friends United Meeting (FUM), to Friends General Conference (FGC) and to Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC). (Three Worldwide Quaker Bodies) Does this practice of under-giving to wider bodies by NYYM, multiplied across many other regional Yearly Meetings allow elitism to occur in these wider bodies? It forces these wider bodies to get financing from sources like trust funds and wealthy individuals, which don’t require much accountability. Many Friends will agree that a lack of financial vigilance in both giving to and spending by the Church, destructively affects the integrity between good Quaker faith and practice.

Quakers were at one time - those who the general public came to trust, those who had nothing to hide - in a world of insulated deceit and poor quality products. Hence the appropriation of the name ‘Quaker’ for the famous oatmeal around 1900. Does the world still trust Quakers in 2007?

Back to our case study. NYYM wants more money in 2008 than it budgeted in 2007. They have invited all NYYM Friends to attend Budget Saturday Financial Services Meeting this coming September 29.

They would prefer you don’t attend however. This is why they put the critical and open meeting at Bulls Head Meetinghouse the farthest from the most NYYM Friends .... where there is no public transportation available.

Have they disallowed again, teleconferencing for regional treasurers, or any interested Friend for that matter, who cannot afford the time or expense to attend this all day, open meeting? Teleconferencing was disallowed twice at the far-off annual sessions in order to keep the details of the financial budgeting process a secret, among a very small in-crowd of rah-rah 'Yearly Meeting Friends' . These are those Friends who are not objective, and are simply staunch supporters of large spending and the stand-alone, reason-to-be existence of NYYM without any authority flowing from Monthly Meetings affiliated with their wider religious government.

The data are clear – showing NYYM as a declining religious body, which has always spent more, and continues to spend 1.5 x more than the governments of nearby growing yearly meetings – NEYM and Baltimore - while providing much less to NYYM ‘taxpayers’.

The point is - Who would have that warm, fuzzy feeling about NYYM if they could witness what is going on at this critical meeting?

And more to the point – in Quakerism, a Yearly Meeting is only what the constituent Monthly Meetings say it is. Period. Why isn’t a Quaker Yearly Meeting simply the planning and implementing one meeting a year of all Monthly Meetings? Why all the bravado? Ego? Elitism? And the money to support the peripheral activities?

Why then does NYYM have three meetings per year and now charge money for members to attend each of them? The answers: Membership decline, Membership decline, and Membership decline.

Membership growth occurs at monthly meetings. Membership decline can occur in both Yearly and Monthly levels.

Bulls Head Meeting is in the middle of nowhere. It is the farthest from the most NYYM members. Bulls Head is the home Meeting of the General Secretary and a growing refuge of the elite corps.

Bulls Head is the perfect place to have the meeting – with those abovementioned who have the interests of an elite but irrelevant organization at heart. What they will try to do over time, mark my words, is to draw more and more resources out of Monthly Meetings, especially those with or are supported in some way by large trust funds, with little or no accountability of how those resources are being used. (And who will care when it is someone else’s money?) There is obviously, to me, still padding in the NYYM budget. For example, where is the electricity surcharge of $200 per month for the NYYM office buried? It doesn’t show in the rent line, which by the way is the actual rent sans electricity in 2007. Did the office rent sans electricity go up for 2008?

What most likely will be given for all these questions will be unsupportable empty statements, not facts. Don’t’ listen to what the elite say. Follow the money and hard evidence in your own Quaker government. Go to the meeting.

Notice how much later Budget Saturday is this year? Notice how much earlier Representative Meeting (where the proposed budget is approved) is this year? This will be why they ‘can’t’ make any changes to their pre-determined agenda. Psst. Don't buy that.

The General Secretary, with the affect of a minister, has been approved at annual sessions, by the clique who can afford to spend 7 days and lots of money to attend. See the cost comparison of of annual sessions of NYYM with NEYM and BaltYM.

The NYYM General Secretary has possibly been given a ‘mandate’ by the inbred to draw more resources up into their elite corps, desiccating the roots. In this vein, General Secretary also plans to attend the Budget Saturday Financial Services Meeting. Would this be a conflict of interest - someone possibly trying to influence what happens at a meeting that has a large influence on his own (already overpaid) salary?*

I have personally seen a Philadelphia YM Gen Sec affect a Financial Stewardship Committee meeting badly.

There was a NYYM proposal and plan to reduce the staff salaries, and then increase them over time. It was totally ignored when it was written over two years ago. Want to see it with a succinct numbers plan? Click here.

Membership growth occurs only at the local Monthly Meeting level. Use the resources of time, talent, and money, first in your own neighborhood. NYYM has misrepresented the membership ‘growth’ in the past two years, and could try it again for a third year straight to make all feel better.

It is clear to many Friends that NYYM continues to have an agenda for which no discussion let alone any dissent is allowed - for example, the Friends World College divestiture in the 1990s. For another example, in the early part of this decade - the questions were whether or not to have a GS, how many days per week this person would be in the office, where the person would live, and how much the position would be paid (without any consideration of membership decline or Monthly Meetings’ ability to pay that salary responsibly). NYYM required a 35% increase in contributions from Monthly Meetings from 2003 to 2005, and now forever, it seems.

Remain vigilant NYYM Friends. Follow the money as the foundation for which the elite body is enabled or the government is run with integrity. Ask NYYM to balance its budget on 2003 funding levels, which would be in line with Baltimore and New England.

Ask also why the NYYM Advancement Committee is now the clearinghouse for ‘ministers’ who receive money to travel to other Monthly Meetings. Doesn’t this smack of a hierarchy of approved ministers paid to come to your Meeting? What happened to the prerogative of Monthly Meetings to approve and pay the expenses of traveling ministers? To me, Monthly Meetings appear to be under assault by those who are ‘more equal’. The world has plenty of hierarchal religions. It doesn’t need another one.

Consider your next vigil for peace not in a protest march about something far way – witness to internal Quaker affairs. Can Friends, or anyone, have peace without Integrity?

Plan to witness what happens at Budget Saturday, on September 29, at Bulls Head Meeting - no matter how much the elite don’t want you there.

Don’t be afraid to ask these hard questions. Then watch and listen. Go and watch the new Clerk of this committee and see if s/he serves the NYYM elite or serves Quakerism. Then go back to your Monthly, Quarterly and smaller regional Meetings and get to work - nourish the roots. The wider bodies of NYYM, FUM, FGC, and FWCC will fix themselves when this happens.

In Friendship,

Glenn R.

* It is highly likely that all of the full-time NYYM employees are ‘overpaid’ when compared with nearby similar-sized Quaker Yearly Meetings. Friends might also consider that sojourning in service to the Church is just that, not a lifetime career.

see why NYYM might be better off divided up - Like Iraq

see a proposal for a five year budget plan to alleviate heavy taxes that was rejected

A Redrawing of the Quaker Map

2007-04-01T02:08:00.000-05:00

April 1, 2007

In a stunning series of announcements, the soul of Quakerism may have found its original resonance again in the geographic regions of North New Jersey, Southwestern Connecticut and New York State, United States of America.

After a wave of key resignations by the NYYM Trustees and the Clerks of the NYYM Coordinating Committees, in what had been known as New York Yearly Meeting, the member monthly meetings and regions have affirmatively broken apart from and morphed or assimilated into more responsible Yearly Bodies which, from proof by decades of growth, use good Quaker governance in their business affairs.

“The Quaker map has been redrawn to give us a real chance to live our own spiritual lives”, said a member of a small Monthly Meeting in Rockland County, New York. The unidentified Friend - a virtual nobody – reports he has never once stood to take in the grandeur of the occasion and listen to himself speak in New York Yearly Meeting sessions at Lake George, in the Adirondack Mountains.

This is how that newly redrawn Quaker map will look:

(Click on map to enlarge)

Farmington Scipio Butternuts Yearly Meeting (FSBYM)

Going first to the western region – the Farmington Scipio Regional Meeting along with the Butternuts Quarter, have incorporated under New York State Religious Incorporation statute and severed ties with what’s left of New York Yearly Meeting. The announcement was leaked by a senior official within the newly incorporated body – the FSB Yearly Meeting. The FSBYM official declined to be named, but said, “the announcement has been a long time coming, and even though a highly paid employee of NYYM traveled extensively in our region(s) in the past three years, we felt it was pure patronizing behavior on the part of the NYYM elite who gave him his marching instructions to come and bug us all the time”. Going further, the official continued, “There’s nothing religious about our decision, all the mumbo jumbo in the world the ministers throw around has no meaning, it is purely a realization that we’ve been sending our money and time into the toilet of the NYYM office for years, and its time to stop.”

Affiliation with New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM)

Echoing with a slightly different timbre as the western region, a combined statement by the Clerks of the Northeastern Regional Meeting, Nine Partners, Purchase and Long Island Quarterly Meetings, says the following:

“Its time to reign in our own dissident Friends who spend their (and our) valuable time going abroad to NYYM affairs, squandering our money and valuable human resources away to some elitist house of cards in the sky. Effective immediately we have joined New England Yearly Meeting, a well-run and governed growing body.”

Jersey Yearly Meeting (JYM)

Monthly Meetings in North and Central New Jersey in two regions – Shrewsbury-Plainfield, and All Friends have come out with a similar combined statement:

“We’re sick and tired of a few of our Friends going off to a nice vacation in the Adirondacks and coming back and asking us to contribute 1/2 to 3/4 of our member contributions to NYYM, when its obvious that the money is being sucked from things we could be doing here in our local community, to a place behind some iron curtain of non-transparency, fronted by mealy-mouthed talking heads. As of today, our Monthly Meetings have all agreed to form JYM or Jersey Yearly Meeting." A lowly peon in one of these meetings was quoted saying, “We have our own Ramapo Mountains, and we spend too much time trying to figure out what it is we get from New York Yearly Meeting instead of just going out and doing what we want to do more effectively within arm’s reach of where we live. We also have the McCutcheon trust funds now that the home has been poorly managed almost to death.

See related news story.

The Clerk of the Shrewsbury-Plainfield Half Yearly Meeting said, “We may decide to join Philadelphia Yearly Meeting or Baltimore Yearly Meeting at some point, we’ll see how it goes. Right now we feel we can nurture and witness for ourselves better than anyone else can.” The whole process was begun by a little old lady in our discussions who asked, “Does our Monthly Meeting have to be a member of a Yearly Meeting”?

East Village Yearly Meeting - Radical

Finally, what was formerly New York Quarterly Meeting (in New York City), will morph into East Village Yearly Meeting – Radical. (EVYM – R) In a statement, the NYYM remaining employee who has begun a sit-in, and refuses to leave the New York Yearly Meeting office, where the lights have been turned off, was quoted as saying, “I’ve contacted the office of mayor Michael Bloomberg and asked him when the city plans to blow the charges and allow New York City to float out into the Atlantic ocean, forming its own city/state of radical politics and atheist religion.” When reached for comment, an advisor to Mr. Bloomberg said, “Granted we have some kooks in this town, but we stopped listening to middle-aged and elderly anarchist East Village radicals who wear big peace signs on their jeans jackets decades ago.”

In a statement by the former New York Quarterly Meeting Clerk, now the Clerk of the EVYM-R, he said, “We spent years trying to revise our Quarterly Meeting handbook and realized we didn’t’ have people to staff our current or even our pared down positions, then finally came up with the plan in a moment of Divine inspiration, to form our own Yearly Meeting - to remove one level of bureaucracy from our lives. We’re actually going to make Brooklyn Meeting a Quarterly Meeting and have it begin to spawn neighborhood meetings in the manner of the first generation Friends. Brooklyn on its own has 2.2 million inhabitants. We wonder why didn’t we do this years ago?”

Representative Meeting April 2007 cancelled

When reached for comment, the clerk of the Former New York Yearly Meeting said, “ We’ve decided to cancel our next Representative Meeting, 4^th Month 2007, in western New York State. The body has spoken decisively, and we would not like to waste any more of our time, nor our precious natural resources in driving and flying way out there, nor in printing the newsletter or the agenda – even for the 50 people or so who would have showed up to rubber stamp our former agenda.

Yes, its an April Fools joke. See the next posting explaining the use of humor in making a point.

How do you get to NYYM Annual Sessions?

2007-03-18T14:57:00.000-05:00

All aboard the Gravy Train.

Here’s a nice photograph in which to contemplate the good, luxe life, even if it is an inexpensive vacation destination for most NYYM members – it's a perennial luxury destination - NYYM's reason-to-be - to give carte blanche to the same old same-olds, who run the top-down hierarchy which is New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.

Some years ago there was a bus service right to the door of what has been for over 40 years, the New York Yearly Meeting annual sessions at Silver Bay, Lake George, New York State, USA. And who wanted to take it anyway? The train - chock full of bequest and trust fund money is much more befitting of the modern NYYM way.

Some have felt my missives a bit too pointed, bringing up hard-to-hear problems - internal problems of a dying Society all the while most of it relaxes at a beautiful destination once a year. What imagery could be more incongruous with the insistent mention of concepts like lying, cheating, no-show jobs in an overweight unresponsive paid organization? Add in the politics and top down authority, and my shunning by the ministers for helping to re-institute bottom up financing among NYYM Friends (psst...bottom up financing, if continued, will help to end all of these problems) and these serene pictures just don't make sense. So lets take a walk down a more gentle path in contemplation of truth. We’ll add in a few pictures and try and paint a nice calm picture for everyone.

How about this photograph? It is Lake George at sunset over Silver Bay.

I’ve been impressed most heavily by two of the most well known Quaker forebears – George Fox and John Woolman. What I’ve come to respect about Woolman was his clear sense of the underlying or the ‘Universal’ Truth in our world. And what the Truth came down to in his view, was how each of us treats each other, individually. How Woolman expressed his views was mostly through his witness to the economics of our world. The economics was the outward expression of what was lurking deep inside – he felt. These outward manifestations of slavery and war, being age old, and used since the beginning of time, were perpetuated by individuals who agreed one by one, to continue these economic manifestations of darkness.

Woolman had no tolerance for luxury, since he understood that although it enters us from the outward, it corrupts us inwardly. Woolman basically and quite succinctly said that the embrace of luxury
moves us to enslave others and to attack others. True?

We all have different views of what luxury constitutes? Is it that BMW 5 Series? I’ve seen the Beemer in your garage in white-bread Connecticut. So, we publicly eschew things that we sometimes privately embrace, or try to show something we’re not, like hypocrites. But no matter how much we criticize luxury, and know its wrong, we continue to go along to get along, and raise the NYYM budget ad infinitum, no matter where the moneycomes from - dead Monthly meetings which are too tired to grow, and no longer nurture or witness for themselves - and from trust funds and bequests – even better - declining membership or not. All for one week in summer, for this:

But, I thought I’d at least show a shot of the main lodge at the
Silver Bay Association to show Friends what it looks like after sunrise, the sun coming over the mountains on the east shore of Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains. You can’t see the rocking chairs on the front porch, but they’re there, probably empty at that early hour. Somehow the rocking chairs really say ‘Quaker’ to me, since I visited the Cape May FGC Gathering as a child to visit my grandfather there. Maybe Quakerism really is an old folks religion? That’s how I knew it first. That’s how it is now. How did it get that way? More importantly than chronological age, when did Quakerism become intolerant of new ways of doing things?

I’m not talking about new beliefs, just new ways of doing things. I’m not sure if the intolerance began recently, or if it began slowly some decades ago. I’ve been barking up a dead tree, most likely thinking I can reinvigorate Friends back to the ‘good old days’ when Friends had an individual responsibility to themselves and to the group. I’m somewhat well read and experienced in the Quaker faith, and have read the Quaker critics also. Quakers in groups are not as nice as they can be individually, many times.

See more pictures of Silver Bay on its Web Site.

Let’s put our minds into movie mode. Now that Amazing Grace is out, we’ll no doubt have discussions on whether Wilberforce was or was not a Quaker. But in the tradition of Friends, it was a pretty boring film, well photographed and costumed, but boring.

Lets roll forward the film and consider this new movie screenplay:

Scene: New York Yearly Meeting Financial Services
Committee meeting to plan the following year’s budget, Bay View Hall, Silver Bay, basement, lights off, late July - you pick the year.

Interior Shot: Four people sitting at a long table (where 21
others should be but are not because of the apathy of Friends to deal with money and to serve on this committee)

- NYYM Treasurer (ex-officio on Financial Services) who oversees
the bookkeeping service

- General Services Coordinating Committee
Clerk, also Treasurer of the Trustees - self appointed to act as the top-down regulator of that committee (can be seen as the organ grinder)

- Financial Services Clerk – (can be seen as the monkey running around obsequiously with his tin cup asking for donations, especially when NYYM
hired someone recently for too much money, to add to an already overweight expense budget)

- New member of the FS committee (interchangeable each as one or two new people come and go or get shunned for asking hard questions)

Sound: Sensaround Theater to reproduce exterior ambient sounds of water, shuffleboard, and racquet sports outside with 700 select Friends, their guests, their 3^rd cousins, grandma and grandpa, neighborhood kids making free room and board to work 15 hours that week, at the cost of the declining membership of NYYM, frolicking to and fro. Stereo interior audio coming from each of the first three committee participants mouths – i.e. talking out of both sides of their mouths.

New Member: Mr. Treasurer, why can’t we have more expense detail within ‘Administrative Cost’ - $18,000? ($18,000 is 3% of the total annual expenditure.)

Treasurer: The bookkeeping service would charge us more.

New Member: (Thinks, but shuts up) what a load of crap – anyone who’s used bookkeeping software (and believe me the bookkeeping service or any Treasurer does) has very little problem identifying and reporting more specific categories of expense.

Here’s another nice shot to contemplate the good, luxe life, even if in an inexpensive vacation destination for most – but a nice destination to help give carte blanche to the same old same-olds, who run the show in NYYM.

Look closely at the next shot – see the web I photographed in the foreground at sunset at Lake George? It might be an omen - like the web of lies NYYM spins about its membership numbers and its budget line numbers. Oh, so the membership, is going up? – Hey let’s go sailing, then play tennis on the clay court!

But all in all, the NYYM annual sessions at the Silver Bay Association is a cheap vacation for those who don’t go to business sessions or committee meetings. But it's an expensive and long (7 days) annual sessions for those who do participate in the self-government of the Society, especially that many more Friends today live far from the Adirondack mountains, and below the poverty line. Those who work, mostly make less than the median income in any given county they live. Why can’t NYYM choose a campground or a college campus closed for the summer, like others do, at which to have their annual sessions? Nah, its easier not to change and to just tap into trust funds from the old wealthy monthly and quarterly meetings (which are dead or dying).

Which brings me to the transparency about dealings with the Silver Bay Association as a fixed location for the last 50 years, for the perennial booking each year in late July – the Sessions Committee, probably acting under pressure or orders from the General Services Coordinating Committee (NYYM really is a top down organization at this point, does anyone disagree?) –NYYM should convene with seriousness and lack of interference from the Trustees and the GSCC (General Services Coordinating Committee), in selecting a new site or sites for NYYM annual sessions which are not destinations in and of themselves. NYYM Trustees or other Friends should make public their ownership of property near or within the Silver Bay Association property. This is just one example of how NYYM is now non-transparent.

Why can’t the NYYM annual sessions move every five years or every year? It would allow each of the regions to be exposed to NYYM. As hard as my criticism is, can’t you see that if you suggest at NYYM, you will be silenced with fear of being crushed and shunned like I was, by the iron-clad fist of human authority now running NYYM?

Your Friend in the Truth,

Glenn R.

NYYM has neither answered any of my observations,
nor data that has been collected, but simply sent a sanctimonieus letter linked below.

See next previous post

A Four Year Timeline of NYYM Malfeasance

2007-03-18T14:56:00.016-05:00

October 2002

GLENN R. Contacted New York Yearly Meeting (NYYM) Clerk with request for the Meeting to join with AFSC (American Friends Service Committee) and send Jimmy Carter, and the Carter Center, a congratulations letter (for winning the Nobel Peace Prize)

December 2002

1. GLENN R. was given 60 seconds at the end of the NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee meeting (part of the hierarchy which allows minutes to be heard on the floor of the Yearly Meeting) to propose the congratulations letter to Jimmy Carter, which if approved in committee would have allowed the minute to be passed to the floor of the Yearly Meeting. Two responses by committee members were: 1) We don’t do things like this around here, 2) This minute needs seasoning. (Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2002) (Seasoning, I’ve found through experience, is a way fearful, dishonest people say they don’t like the idea, and go forward and will stall and derail an initiative until it dies).

2. When NYYM Operating Budget for 2003 was presented, GLENN R. asked NYYM Representative Meeting if a 6% increase in the budget, considering a poor economy and declining membership, was responsible. Responses by both clerks of the Financial Services Committee were: 1) We don’t base our budget on the stock market, (indicating that although the Quakers were supposed to have changed the model of church governance away from one controlled by the rich, the modern Quaker church is still run by the rich (those whose fortunes are dictated by the stock market) and 2) Yes.

3. GLENN R. asked to join NYYM Financial Services Committee by the Clerk who answered ‘Yes’.

4. GLENN R. was considering joining the NYYM Communications Committee, went to meeting and saw how paid employees dominate the committee agenda and action. The Communications committee was gerrymandered to replace the Publications Committee. The name change also indicates how decisions controlling information about NYYM are now centralized and closely attached to the top paid employees. (Like in corporate America)

June 2003

NYYM Financial Services Committee does not meet, as prescribed, to consider next year’s expense requests from Coordinating Committees. (Clerk/Captain refuses to convene and instead combines it at the annual sessions in July, which is very difficult for Friends to attend due to its location and time needed). The main tactic of poor governance is to cancel meetings, so that budgets can be rammed down the throats of those uninformed committee members at the last minute. You've heard of cancelled elections in so-called democracies in civil governments? This is basically the same concept in religious organizational governance.

Basically the expenses are added up and divided by the number of regions because the committee has not been given authority to make cuts. The Clerk/Captain goes out of view of the whole Financial Services Committee to make special deals with Clerks of Coordinating Committees. This might because there are very few people on this committee, when there should be 27. The Clerk/Captain did whisper once to GLENN R. that "we don't want too many people on our committee".

July 2003

GLENN R. approved to NYYM Financial Services Committee. Committee Clerk (Captain) is the one who answered ‘Yes’, above.

September 2003

1. Spark, the official printed newsletter (house organ for propaganda) of NYYM, is published including an edited feature story by GLENN R.. GLENN R. was not told of the edition, which he GLENN R. felt substantially changed his message. It was found later that the NYYM database record was altered so that GLENN R. would not receive the edition in the mail. However, GLENN R. had been to the NYYM office in New York City to pick up a copy, and subsequently realize that the edition had happened surreptitiously.

2. NYYM Financial Services approves a 27% increase in New York Quarterly Meeting’s share of the 2004 NYYM proposed budget without GLENN R., due to being unavailable. New York Quarterly Meeting Treasurer was also not present. Increase was to prepare for a 3 year trial General Secretary position.

December 2003

1. NYYM Representative Meeting canceled due to weather. (Conveniently, again in order to ram business at the last minute down an unprepared body.) 2004 Budget approval (of 20% higher expense) is delayed until April 2004 Representative Meeting.

2. A congratulatory letter to Jimmy Carter and minute is approved by Brooklyn Monthly Meeting. (One year after Carter's award)

January 2004

1. A congratulatory letter to Jimmy Carter and minute approved by Brooklyn Monthly Meeting is approved by New York Quarterly Meeting. A separate minute directs the Clerk to send this to New York Yearly Meeting for consideration.

2. GLENN R. applies for General Secretary position of NYYM on a ‘platform’ of his ability to enable communication between Monthly Meetings and his ability to enable communication and transparency between Monthly Meetings and Yearly Meeting, and stated in the letter, on the understanding that this position is a sojourning position, not a permanent or lifetime position.

3. GLENN R. has clearness (grievance) meeting with a paid staff member, who was the Editor of NYYM Newsletter, and a member of the NYYM Personnel Committee. No apology was made by Editor for making the changes without notifying GLENN R.. GLENN R. witnesses the NYYM database being altered back to allow him to receive the next newsletter mailing. The NYYM Spark Editor position was shortly after given to another employee.

April 2004

1. Most likely less than 50 Friends out of 3,500 are in attendance at a remote location in Western New York State. NYYM 2004 Proposed budget is approved. NYYM General Secretary is introduced and approved for a three year probationary period (the approval of the position was due to be made at the December Representative Meeting but it was cancelled)

2. New York Quarterly Meeting minute approving congratulatory letter to Jimmy Carter is not brought to floor of New York Yearly Meeting.

June 2004

1. NYYM Financial Services Committee does not meet, as prescribed, to consider next year’s expense requests from Coordinating Committees. (Clerk refuses to convene and instead combines it at the annual sessions in July, which is very difficult for Friends to attend due to its location and time needed). Basically the expenses are added up and divided by the number of regions because the committee has not been given authority to make cuts. The Clerk/Captain goes out of view of the whole Financial Services Committee to make special deals with Clerks of Coordinating Committees. This might because there are very few people on this committee, when there should be 27. The Clerk/Captain did whisper once to GLENN R. that "we don't want too many people on our committee".

July 2004

1. Clerk of NYYM refuses to place Jimmy Carter agenda item at Annual Sessions, because the minute from NYYM was vague about what it wanted NYYM to do with it.

2. On the floor of the Yearly Meeting, Glenn R. questions the approval of a General Secretary’s Committee which was already formed in a Coordinating Committee. Glenn R. states that Committees may only be formed by the Yearly Meeting. Glenn R. also states that there is a personnel committee and this would create a redundancy and confusion of responsibility. (There are to this day no time and task specific job descriptions for any paid personnel in NYYM). The name General Secretary’s Task Group was later clarified and a three year term was defined for its life.

3. An additional increase over 2004 in the NYYM Annual Budget for 2005 is proposed and divided between regions. The 2005 proposed budget is now more than 35% above the 2003 budget.

September 2004

1. Glenn R. gathers representatives of all Monthly Meetings in New York (City) Quarterly Meeting (because the New York Quarterly Treasurer refused to participate in New York Yearly Meeting duties as a regional treasurer, as prescribed by the NYYM handbook). Representatives which are financially knowledgeable, write a minute as an ad hoc committee and send this to NYYM Financial Services Committee stating that they will not be able to contribute $90,000 but will contribute $80,000 in 2005, pending approval of New York Quarterly Meeting.

2. Other regions also decline to pay the amount NYYM is asking. NYYM Financial Services approves a deficit budget for 2005.

3. Glenn R. is asked to resign from NYYM Financial Services by the General Secretary and the Clerk of Financial Services. (allegedly for communicating with Friends outside of the committee structure (and for bringing up inconsistencies in spending at NYYM). The fact is that Glenn R. initiated a grass roots tax revolt, for which those wanted to punish/banish him. GLENN R. refuses to resign.

November 2004

1. New York Quarterly Meeting approves a contribution of $80,000 to New York Yearly Meeting by the Monthly Meetings of New York Quarterly Meeting.

2. GLENN R. publishes a NYYM 35 year decline in membership (data found in NEW YORK YEARLY MEETING Yearbooks) email Glenn R. for document.

December 2004

New York Yearly Meeting approves a deficit budget for 2005

March 2005

An ad hoc committee of financially knowledgeable Friends including members of Monthly Meetings of New York Quarterly Meeting sends a message to NYYM Financial Services saying that monthly meetings of New York Quarter will not be able to give substantially in excess of their 2005 approved contribution, to NYYM in 2006.

May 2005

Glenn R. sends a paper letter to Monthly Meetings of NYYM asking them to consider the Budget Issues, Membership Issues and Transparency Issues at NYYM.

June 2005

2. Glenn R. is asked to resign from NYYM Financial Services for sending the letter of 5/17/2005 to Monthly Meetings of NYYM. He refuses.

July 2005

1. Glenn R. attempts to allow teleconferencing to allow the 9 regional treasurers to participate in the Financial Services Meeting at Annual Sessions. Request is refused by Clerk/Captain. The Annual Meeting is held far away from most members, partly because it is a very beautiful location and partly because it restricts participation in governance, allowing the elite to continue to dominate.

2. Clerk/Captain of NYYM Financial Services and Glenn R. have a temporary understanding at Annual Sessions that things are changing and this is difficult.

3. Manhattan Monthly Meeting approves a one-year travel minute for Glenn R. to bring a concern for the ‘vibrant participation between Monthly Meetings and Yearly Meetings’. Approximately 1/3 of 65 Monthly Meetings were visited in the one year period. The concern is culminated in July 2006 with a published article in Friends Journal.

September 2005

NYYM Financial Services approves a deficit budget for 2006 with hopes that the Clerk/Captain of Financial Services will agree to cuts with Coordinating Committees or increases in income from Monthly and Regional meetings.

October 2005

Glenn R. is approved as a co-opted member of NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee, as the Latin American Concerns Contact. NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee approves an Information and News Sharing Infrastructure, proposed and specified by Glenn R. The news sharing infrastructure specifies Glenn R. to implement the network, and that each NYYM committee will be responsible for adding and updating news, which will forward to committee websites to give Witness Concerns a single place for the public and Friends to know what monthly and regional and yearly meeting are doing in specific witness activities. The end user for this information is the public and also the NYYM office for use in compiling its printed newsletter.

November 2005

NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee Clerk who had consulted with a 'A Trustee and the General Secretary' writes to Glenn R. and specifies that all information and news sharing would have to be approved and posted by the 'NYYM Office'. Glenn R. responds that he was not comfortable with this modification, which he felt was out of the spirit of transparency of Friends, and also requires more work to implement as well as additional ongoing work to maintain this modified network.

December 2005

1. New York Yearly Meeting approves a deficit budget for 2006, for a second year in a row.

2. NEW YORK YEARLY MEETING publishes the first annual 'increase' in membership in 36 years in its 2005 Yearbook (after GLENN R. published less than a year earlier, the fact of 35 year decrease). Glenn R. has visited approximately 1/3 of the Monthly Meetings between July 2005 and June 2006 in NYYM and finds specific instances of gross misrepresentation in the published membership numbers.

3. NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee approves a minute stating that Glenn R. is no longer interested in implementing the information sharing infrastructure. The committee does not recind the minute of October 2005 which specified the information sharing infrastructure. Glenn R. was not at the meeting and never stated he was 'not interested in implementing the infrastructure'. Glenn R. simply disagreed with the authoritarian overstepping by the Trustee and the General Secretary in their top-down manipulation of a committee approved decision.

April 2006

Outgoing NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee Clerk agrees that Information and News Sharing Infrastructure can be implemented as per the minute of October 2005, with information being posted by each NYYM Committee Clerk. Glenn R. agrees, but states that he cannot implement the project until September 2006.

June 2006

2. Glenn R. is renominated to NYYM Financial Services Committee after he sends a letter to NYYM Nominating and the Clerk/Captain of NYYM Financial Services, stating - "I am willing to be renominated to the committee to continue the change that has begun (bottom up financing). Friends might consider that change is always difficult and sometimes painful."

3. NYYM Conflict Resolution Clerk refuses to get the committee involved in Manhattan Meeting's conflict, refusing to send anyone, and mere sends a letter to the Clerk of Manhattan Meeting, suggesting that the two people that have a conflict at Manhattan be temporarily disowned. Manhattan Meeting, a formerly very small meeting, has since for all intents and purposes, dissolved.

July 2006

1. The NYYM Treasurer and the Clerk of Financial Services reject a request for teleconferencing at the Financial Services Meeting at Annual Sessions. Very few people attend these two Financial Services Meetings at Annual Sessions.

2. Glenn R. makes suggestions for making increases in income from regions which might have been deemed to be giving too little (wealthy suburbs of New York City) and cuts in the NYYM Operating Budget for 2007 (which has been in deficit for two years). The suggestions are ignored.

3. Friends Journal article is published advising Friends not to give more than 1/3 of Monthly Meeting budgets to all wider bodies (including their Yearly Meeting) This is written on the assumption that a Yearly Meeting serves Monthly Meetings in the first place.

4. Glenn R. is re-approved to NYYM Financial Services Committee

5. NYYM Witness Coordinating Committee replaces Glenn R. with no consultation, with a paid NYYM employee as Latin American Contact Person.

August 2006

Glenn R. writes an essay, to a few people, which was forwarded to the NYYM hierarchy.

September 2006

1. Glenn R. calls the NYYM Treasurer and asks how many transactions per month on average the Yearly Meeting has, not including payroll, (to justify a $28,500 per year book keeping service). Treasurer refuses to answer the question and hangs up.

2. Glenn R. is uninvited to the NYYM Budget Saturday Financial Services Meeting, by the Clerk/Captain of that committee, where the 2007 NYYM Proposed Budget will be considered and approved. Clerk of Ministry and Counsel Coordinating Committee rubber-stamps the request by the Clerk/Captain of Financial Services Committee for Glenn R. to be uninvited, without first speaking to Glenn R. to hear his side. The reason given to univite Glenn R. is his essay not intended for wide distribution. Glenn R. tells them both that they are not in authority to uninvite him to this meeting. Glenn R. ultimately makes a decision not attend the meeting. Other Friends bring similar concerns to the Sept. 2006 Budget Saturday meeting, however are put on notice that Glenn R. has been 'dealt with' by the Clerk/Captian, and others may be cowed, or possibly shunned themselves, and therefore silenced in future budget approvals.

3. Financial Services Committee approves a balanced budget for 2007, by making some cuts where in previous years it said it could not for contingency reasons (Personnel benefits lines).

December 2006

1. New York Yearly Meeting approves a balanced budget.

2. The elite of NYYM are shown data was collected showing potential employee fraud (no show) at the NYYM office. The General Secretary responded by trying to cover up for it in his report of 12th Month 2006.

3. The largest Monthly Meeting (Brooklyn) in New York Yearly Meeting does not meet its 2006 budget, which includes 57% of that expense going to New York Yearly Meeting. The large Monthly Meeting extends its budget year to April 1, in order to add three months and in order that it can then pay its full commitment.

4. NEW YORK YEARLY MEETING publishes for the 2nd year in a row, a small increase in membership. Glenn R. has visited approximately 1/3 of the Monthly Meetings between July 2005 and June 2006 in NYYM and finds specific instances of gross misrepresentation in the published membership numbers.

July 2007 - Prediction

New York Yearly Meeting will attempt to approve a third, full time, lifetime employee while it still publishes no time and task specific job descriptions.

Its membership will continue to slide, and NYYM 'same old same-olds' or the elite, or possibly the paid employees, will continue to attempt to cover up the membership slide.

The 2008 proposed budget will most probably go down compared with 2007. This is because one employee of the three employees feels entitled to a sabatical and the Personnel Committee will most probably request a less than full-time percentage of the employee's salary for 2008 while on 'sabbatical'.

New York Yearly Meeting members should hold the number of full time employees at two. I make no judgments on which ones they are. Friends should ask the important questions of NYYM. One ore more full-time employees have not been in the NYYM office a considerable amount of time, within one sampling period, and serious questions should be asked about this potential employee fraud. All full-time positions should be affirmed by NYYM as sojourning positions, not lifetime positions.

NYYM costs will go up heavily and steadily from 2009 forward while membership goes down, unless Friends in NYYM require the elite to move the NYYM office to a more affordable and central location, seek a less expensive bookkeeping service, and ask expensive long term employees (gently of course) to move on in their spiritual journeys. Elite Friends , the same old same-olds, however, will indubitably try to access dead Friends trust and bequest money from various Monthly and Quarterly meetings to pay for a static and ever more unaccountable, non-transparent NYYM religious government.

The NYYM elite controls the total NYYM body as does the brain of a stranded hiker controling the body while it dies of hypothermia. The brain, or the elite cut off the blood supply to the outer extremities, to 'save itself'. But, it's only a matter of time until the hiker and the brain die, because blood didn't get to the legs to allow the hiker to walk down off the mountain.

Unless Friends .... Wake up!

2009 - Annual Sessions Costs

Click here to see the comparison of NYYM with other Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions Costs.

The numbers say it all, especially when seen in a three year comparison - NYYM - where centralization and hierarchal elitism live. The main business issue of 2009 Annual Sessions was how much more to pay the already overpaid NYYM General Secretary.

Questions NYYM Friends Might Consider

2007-03-18T14:56:00.004-05:00

See: Beware of the Ides of March 2008

Do –

- ask NEW YORK YEARLY MEETING to publish time and task specific job descriptions for its paid staff (as has Baltimore and New England Yearly Meetings, which are both growing) Read the current self-written job descriptions which are simply a joke.

- ask whey the office staff can't take a salary cut until membership numbers come up over time? This was proposed and ignored over two years ago as a viable plan to keep NYYM taxes managable and meaningful for Monthly Meetings. Why are full-time jobs not sojourning anymore? How does the Quaker faith change when we live beyond our means? See this proposal in text form. See this expense transforming proposal in numbers form.

- ask NYYM to make transparent its process and contacts in collecting and tabulating the annual membership number statements in the NYYM Yearbooks. (the last two years of 'growth' are most probably incorrect and possibly manipulated to favor the 'leadership' and an predetermined agenda yet to be approved)

- ask the NYYM 'leadership' - committee clerks, paid employees and trustees - to give full disclosure, and sign legally binding annual conflict of interest statements which can be examined by any Friend. Here is an example of what one NYYM Monthly Meeting recently self-implemented.

- ask why NYYM spends $28,500 ($30,000 in 2008) per year on a bookkeeping service when it probably records less than 50 transactions per month on average not including payroll. More to the point, ask how many transactions NYYM has in an average month. Ask if there are any conflicts of interest between Trustees, Coordinating Committee Clerks, staff and the principals of this bookkeeping service.

- ask why NYYM doesn't give nearly as much money annually as NEYM and Balt YM to the Wider Friends Organizations - FUM, FGC, and FWCC. Ask why your Monthly Meeting should give its fair share of 1/3 of a Monthly Meeting budget, or 1/3 of its living member contributions, to NYYM when NYYM turns around and short-changes its wider affiliations?

- ask what happended to the NYYM Sharing Fund? Why did the NYYM Sharing Fund Expenditure and the NYYM Operating Budget, which were equal amounts ~$100,000 in 1975 now see the Sharing Fund Expenditure at 1/10 of the NYYM operating budget?

- ask why Powell House does not move consistently toward being financially self-sufficient? It has a perennial subsidy in the range 1/7 of NYYMs budget. This especially when many or I dare say most NYYM members cannot feasibly arrive at, let alone pay Powell House's guest fee as it is.

- ask how many unique youth visits Powell House has in a year and a progression of years to see a history. Ask how many total youth visits Powell House has also. Compare these two numbers over time with New England and Baltimore Yearly Meeting attendances. Hint: The NYYM number is very small (especially considering how much money is spent by (approx. $350,000 per year) given to Powell House by NYYM as a subsidy, approximately $70,000 per year), compared with other Yeary Meetings' retreat centers.

- ask why NYYM doesn't move its office to a less expensive and more central location to save in the range of $20,000 - $25,000 per year?

- where is the electricity surcharge of $200 per month for the NYYM office buried in the 2008 proposed budget? It doesn’t show in the rent line, which by the way is the actual rent sans electricity in 2007. Did the office rent sans electricity go up for 2008 which NYYM is not reporting accurately in the 2008 proposed budget? If $200 per month is being burried (5% of the total NYYM operating budget) where is that, and doesn't this mean that the NYYM budget is padded, yet?

- ask why NYYM doesn't host its annual sessions at a more central and less expensive location. Ask which of the same old same-olds own property near or at the current annual sessions destination. Ask why NYYM can't at least negotiate a lower rate at Silver Bay commensurate with those locations of Baltimore and New England YMs? NYYM is $20 - $30 per day more expensive than Baltimore and New England. The answer that will most probably be offered is that there is scholarship money, which by the way, is the biggest joke since private schools - which over-charge the rich and then justify their common man status by say theying 'give scholarships' S ee NYYM vs. New England and Baltimore Annual Sessions comparison.

- come to clearness whether your local Monthly Meeting wants to grow and replicate in the manner of Friends - outward - forming smaller neighborhood preparative meetings. Growth in the manner of Friends does not mean upward, by reinforcing a centralized hierarchy as has New York Yearly Meeting in the last 30 years. The choice is 1) growth - spreading outward - or 2) that your Monthly Meeting wants to die. Living organizations and organisms do one or the other, they do not stay the same – ever. Centralized organizations are not living, in the manner of Friends. A Monthly Meeting should not have more than 150 members, or it is too big.

- if the choice is to grow, Friends must take ownership of your local Quaker meeting’s life by apportioning the appropriate time, talent and money, in local affairs. And your Monthly Meeting must also apportion the correct oversight and support of Wider Bodies. No one will do it for you, and if they do, I wonder if this is true Quakerism?

- take steps to remove your meeting from the bequest/trust fund gravy train it is on. Reliance on other people's money is spiritual death row, and it causes much conflict in preparation for the demise. Here is how I wrote to Flushing Meeting in this regard.

- why is the NYYM Advancement Committee now the clearinghouse for ‘ministers’ who receive money to travel to other Monthly Meetings? Doesn’t this smack of a hierarchy of approved ministers paid to come to your Meeting? What happened to the prerogative of Monthly Meetings to approve and pay the expenses of traveling ministers? To me, Monthly Meetings appear to be under assault by those who are ‘more equal’. The world has plenty of hierarchal religions. It doesn’t need another one.

- why can't Advancement do just that? i.e. give money to small meetings for newspaper ads, or to create web sites announcing and giving information about the meeting for worship?

- Why is the NYYM Advancement Committee again using its $12,000 budget to give scholarships to the vacation at Annual Sessions, when it pledged to take this gravy train out of service and use those funds to help Monthly Meetings grow?

- Why are these tired 83 people - the 'Yearly Meeting Friends' - the perennial core group of attenders at the nice destination - allowed to make decisions for the published number of 3,500 NYYM Friends, concerning key proposals which affect the further drawing up of resources out of the Monthly Meetings and into the centralized NYYM government?

- Isn't the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), featured in the latest NYYM newsletter, evolved into something different than its Quaker founder, Larry Apsey, envisoned? Isn't AVP now an 'Alternatives to Conflict' mechanism which is how NYYM truly deals with conflict, by avoiding it and denying it?

Do not -

- approve a third permanent or lifetime position at NEW YORK YEARLY MEETING. The body is dying. The leadership or the same old same-olds, would like to continue to be permanent, overweight, unresponsive and non-transparent (unaccountable) if Friends let them.

- give more than 1/3 of your Monthly Meeting’s living member contributions to NEW YORK YEARLY MEETING (or any Yearly Meeting). Only give 1/3 of your budget if NYYM is giving a reasonable amount to its wider bodies - FWCC, FGC and FUM and it is using your money responsibly and effectively (let alone defrauding you).

- send resources of money, talent and time ‘up’ to wider bodies when there is a primary unfilled need in your local community

See: Beware of the Ides of March 2008

Why NYYM should be suspended from representation to Wider Bodies

2007-03-10T15:13:00.000-05:00

Dear Friend,

I give here, the first and best reason - the tip of the iceberg - born out by the evidence, for New York Yearly Meeting to be suspended from representation to the wider bodies - Friends United Meeting (FUM), Indiana, Friends General Conference (FGC) Philadelphia, and Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) London.

I believe, that consideration of this simple and obvious reason will naturally lead us to the deeper hidden reasons for suspension. Friends from all areas and flavors can consider their own Yearly Societies and their contributions, speaking to the evolving modern financing model of the wider bodies.

And the reason is:

NYYM has, for many years, contributed a financial pittance to wider bodies compared to other neighboring, similar membership sized, but smaller budgeted Yearly Meetings. Why is this?

Budgeted Contributions 2005

	FWCC	FUM	FGC
NYYM	4,500	9,000	9,000
NEYM	5,300	17,800	14,300
BaltYM	11,700	30,200	31,000

2005 NYYM Operating Budget = $547,000

For the full essay click: "What standing for Integrity means to me and hopefully to Friends"

In Friendship,
Glenn R.

What standing up for integrity means to me, and hopefully to Friends

2007-03-07T22:44:00.000-05:00

Read the previous post - Potential Employee and Financial Fraud

The Inn, at Silver Bay, Lake George, Adirondack Mountains - at Sunrise
The Luxurious home for 50 years - NYYM Annual Sessions

I’ve received numerous messages from Friends after my recent communications - some are appalled at my language, (most likely that they simply are offended that I claim that any Friends act in ways less than integral, and instead say they don’t like my language) others are appalled at the obvious breakdown of integrity in the Society, specifically within one Yearly Meeting, which has no history of a broadly based self-government.

New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends has exposed its underbelly, presented in the form of financial evidence (the clearest and most telling evidence), the organizational hierarchy, and malfeasance of authoritarian cover-up attempts by paid and elite non-paid persons. Consider the attempted cover up by the Clerk of General Services rebutting my original letter of 5/17/2005. (I stand by all the facts I presented in that letter). These symptoms all present, to the objective observer, as manifestations of the root malaise – the less visible inner condition of a Society in decline. (NYYM has covered up the decline saying membership is now rising. It is not.)

What is strange, or more precisely, poetic justice, is that the more Friends in NYYM try and cook the books, the more they try and cover up malfeasance and the more they try to say that their hierarchy isn’t a hierarchy – it comes back to haunt their own very Society, in the short and long term. I believe there’s a shorter aphorism – We reap what we sow. The most pernicious lie, is the one we tell ourselves.

I’ve lost f/Friends by standing up and saying what I’ve said. I’ve been blackballed in bringing Quakers in the News as a learning tool and community outreach mechanism to Friends organizations, some of which retain very little connection to the Quaker Church. Good. Pat yourselves on the backs. Those of you who’ve whispered, and those who’ve out-and-out threatened me, have killed something that had a chance to bring that connection to Friends and their wider organizations.

Over the past four years, I’ve tried to make change in NYYM from within – beginning with a question to the body of NYYM in December 2002, when I asked if an increase in the NYYM Operating Budget in 2003 - in the face of constant membership decline and a poor economy - was ‘responsible’. I’ve also lost those whom I knew were not my f/Friends in the first place, those who made themselves out to be my confidants. Those are the ones who profess to say prayers for me, in public piety, trying to deflect attention from the obvious - the basic corruption or disconnection between New York Yearly Meeting, and its constituent Monthly Meetings. These are the ministers and those who wanna-be, who would prefer a membership decline, a more manageable religious hierarchy, paid for by dead Friends’ money.

Attack me instead of trying to fix what is wrong with NYYM. It’s a painted-Indians, wagons-circled theater piece played ad nauseum, now with ministers on the sidelines saying prayers for someone who is ‘attacking’.

I mean for NYYM to improve, but I think its time for a suspension from wider bodies, until NYYM can show integrity of governance, in order to again represent in those bodies.

Most likely these ex-friends are asking God for me to step in front of a bus – rather than to hear truth about NYYM, and for the Society to change – to make the connection in the true grass roots manner of Friends.

One who has integrity, it is said, must be willing to loose something, to sacrifice something for his actions and pronouncements about those actions – for one’s own civil disobedience, and dare I say it – for one’s activism. Otherwise, activism is hollow, self-aggrandizing egoistic charade – similar to sign carrying and chanting and screaming and shouting, when no one is listening. I think Gandhi had something to say about civil disobedience? Didn't Jesus have something to say about public piety?

But, I’m going to have to chalk it up to having many doors close and others open as I move forward.

Why NYYM should be suspended from representation to Wider Bodies – Part 1

Follow the money.

Lets start off with one very simple example of why NYYM should be suspended from representation to the wider bodies. NYYM contributes a financial pittance to wider bodies compared to other neighboring, similar sized Yearly Meetings.

Budgeted Contributions 2005

	FWCC	FUM	FGC
NYYM	4,500	9,000	9,000
NEYM	5,300	17,800	14,300
BaltYM	11,700	30,200	31,000

2005 NYYM Operating Budget = $547,000

One will then consider the business model of the wider bodies as Yearly Meetings start to chintz on their wider contributions. FGC has placed its emphais of late, in ‘development’ or fundraising from wealthy individuals. FUM is in dire straits. FWCC is also. The wider bodies are all looking for new business models to support themselves – mostly in dead Friends money and in large gifts from wealthy individuals. Am I incorrect? Consider that NYYM gives only $8,000 per year to each FUM and FGC, while it gives half of that amount to FWCC – as annual contributions.

New England and Baltimore Yearly Meetings, with more employees each, and operating budgets each of 1/3 less than NYYM, give 2 - 4 times more than NYYM gives to each of the wider bodies. A line-by-line comparison of NYYM, NEYM and Balt YM. See page 42

Budgeted Contributions 2007

	FWCC	FUM	FGC
NYYM	4,000	8,000	8,000
NEYM
BaltYM

2007 NYYM Operating Budget = $530,000

At the next Representative Meeting, stand up and ask NYYM -Why are NYYM’s contributions to wider bodies so low? Then sit back and observe the ‘powers that be’ as they speak, and squirm.

We're even giving NYYM from now until early April to figure out their answer to this question. But, a hint to those who read my words - there is no other answer - except that NYYM is corrupt. NYYM is a like a rogue and declining city-state among civil prospering nations - all other s pay their fair share to affiliated wider bodies.

So, at the next Representative Meeting, sit back and listen to the answer: You’ll get a dose of what George Fox declared was the marker of the untrue, the mark of a lie - by those who run on in many words.

Again, NYYM’s financial and hierarchal condition is a symptom of a decline in Quaker membership, which cannot or simply will not prioritize grass roots support of wider governments any longer. Yet the governments seem to ‘have to’ survive. The wider church governments feel they have to survive without grass roots mandate and bottom up financing which would indicate the vibrancy and health of the organic Quaker church.

And yes, growth is difficult, sometimes even painful - but necessary for any living organism, or organization. Remember when we were growing up, how hard it was? Of course we do, and we don’t want to relive it. Or we don’t remember how hard it was, and we simply like how things are - and we figure, if it’s not broke(n), don’t fix it.

Growth occurs at Monthly Meeting levels. No amount of reliance on a wider body, at a posh and exclusive Annual Session, as NYYM sponsors, will help your Monthly Meeting take ownership of its condition. NYYM has a slogan on its website – A Radical Faith, a Simple Witness. A Simple Faith- A Radical Witness.

Here’s my radical and simple witness – If it ain’t broke (and it is, by the way) break it, and put it back together better than it ever was.

Yours in Friendship,

Glenn R.

See the essay that (was called non-objective, and ) got me disinvited from the Budget Saturday Meeting September, 2006. This was the beginning of the eventual shunning from NYYM.

Read the previous post - Potential Employee and Financial Fraud

Evidence of Financial and Employee Fraud at NYYM

2007-02-26T14:08:00.000-05:00

Dear Friend,

I call on New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (NYYM) sometimes called 'Quakers' to show its members, and representatives of wider bodies, its payroll records and time sheets for the past two years, for all NYYM employees.

I also call on NYYM to answer discrepancies noted in potentially $100,000 spent out of a total $530,000 annual operating expenditure of New York Yearly Meeting, located at 15 Rutherford Place, New York City.

These wider bodies are: Friends General Conference (Philadelphia) FGC, Friends United Meeting (Indiana) FUM , and Friends World Committee for Consultation (London) FWCC .

--------

The total 2007 Approved New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (NYYM) Operating Budget is approximately $530,000

Evidence will show potentially:

- Full-time salaries are being paid for partial no-show jobs

o estimated cost of such could be up to $80,000 per year

o one or more employees might have moonlighting jobs

- Budget lines of the Operating Budget have been purposely misstated for years

o one known example is the Office Rent (and surcharges)

- Treasurer’s reports beginning balance for one year and ending balances of the previous year did not equal on at least 3 occasions in the last 5 years

o this is obvious malfeasance hiding in plain sight in the Yearbooks

- NYYM audits are very superficial and are very unlikely to show any impropriety – note the low cost not found anywhere in the budget

o also note that New York Quarterly Meeting hires an Auditor for approximately $13,000 per year, and said costs is obviously noted in its one million dollar annual expense budget.

- there is potential for a personal relationship and potentially a conflict of interest between a bookkeeping service principal and one of the NYYM Trustees, a former Treasurer of NYYM

o It is highly unlikely that there are more than 50 transactions per month, not including payroll, (the NYYM Treasurer refuses to share the average number of transactions per month) and this number of transactions, double entry or single entry, could be logged by a bookkeeper in ½ day per week – total cost approximately $5,000 per year. Total cost of Bookkeeping service is now budgeted at $28,200, which includes payroll services

o outsourced Payroll services for three full time employees and one or two part time costs approximately $1,000 - $2,500 per year (costs that BaltYM, NEYM incur respectively)

o the NYYM Clerk of General Services Coordinating Committee has also refused to share NYYM’s Financial Management Guidelines, announced in the 2004 Yearbook on page 20, which ostensibly describe the inner workings of the financial transactions between the bookkeeping service, the Treasurer (in Buffalo) and the office (in New York City). The Clerk of General Services Coordinating Committee is also the Treasurer of the Trustees of NYYM.

o So, we wonder where over $20,000 – 25,000 per year has gone each year ?

- The rent for the NYYM office has been misrepresented on proposed and approved Operating Budgets for at least the past 3 years

o NYYM has stonewalled any discussion on moving the Yearly Meeting office to a more affordable and central location

§ again, those who serve on the key NYYM committees and positions are mostly paid employees of other ‘Quaker’ organizations which has caused a conflict of interest in contradiction to good governance

I find it ironic, possibly hypocritical that the NYYM General Secretary was in attendance recently in New York City to witness a tax resistance case in Federal Court. This because NYYM has questionable internal governance issues of its own, including financial non-transparency, into which we will delve in this communication. I’ve created a tax revolt of my own to try and bring the NYYM government to account – to be transparent to its members.

At this moment, NYYM is asking New York Quarterly Meeting, a growing urban Quarter, however still very dependent on trust funds given by dead Friends for the maintenance of the Society, to meet its financial commitment to NYYM for 2006. This is because the largest Monthly Meeting of NYQM, (also the largest MM in NYYM) failed to make its budget in 2006. I think that New York Quarterly Meeting Friends might have become wise, in that deep down they knew in short changing their giving to their Meeting’s budgets, all with very high percentages going to NYYM, what I, a former member of said Quarter, am about to comprehensively and publicly expose here.

The NYYM General Secretary has the ultimate oversight of all NYYM office operations, at least in his very vague job description it does give us that assurance, although he attends the NYYM office less than one day per week on average. We have no time and task specific job descriptions for the other full and part time employees other than the self-descriptions on page 38 - here. How can the General Secretary have ultimate oversight over the office if he’s not there more than four days per week? First and foremost, there exists evidence of questionable non-attendance by one or two of the three full-time employees at the NYYM office for which NYYM spend tens of thousands of dollars per year to rent. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of dollars per year spent in these full time salaries, and part time hourly wages.

It is time for Friends to ask NYYM to come to account for the evidence of employee and financial fraud presented in this letter. (The elite NYYM members have seen the evidence of employee fraud in late 2006, however it is questionable as whether they will do anything considering the front-and-center potential cover-up the General Secretary gave in his Fall report. The General Secretary, hence, is apparently the mouthpiece for the NYYM elite and .

I intend to name the NYYM elite in a later communication. [Update 11/5/2007 - Here are the elite who should resign]Again, these are the Trustees, the Treasurer, and in key committee clerking positions who have been given, or have usurped a large amount of power due to the complacence of the total NYYM membership – which as I have stated – is probably really 1,500, not 3,500. I cast no aspersions on any individual’s power-hungry or egoistic character when these persons are placed in the religious group dynamic of a detached elite.

The General Secretary is paid approximately $75,000 per year in addition to full benefits (now including retirement) and at least 4 weeks vacation per year. He works mostly from his home, and lives in a rural area approximately 100 miles from New York City. He pays his own way into New York City on his less than once per week visits to NYYM office. The General Secretary of Baltimore YM is paid around $60,000 per year and must live in the Baltimore/Washington metro area. The Field Secretary of New England Yearly Meeting works from his home in the Boston metropolitan area, visits the office in Worcester approximately once per week, and is paid approximately 50,000 per year. Both Baltimore and New England Yearly Meetings have been growing slowly but steadily for the past 35 years. NEYM and Baltimore YM also spend approximately 1/3 less per year than NYYM.

The NYYM Administrative Secretary is paid approximately $60,000 per year, in addition to retirement benefits, and has worked for NYYM for approximately 15 years. The Administrative Secretary was the former Editor of Spark in September 2003.

These and others may have committed employee fraud against the members of NYYM who (thankfully still) mostly pay their salaries. I’ve written about the vitality of Friends, and part of this vitality includes living within our means and maintaining the direct financial connection Friends have with our religious lives – including with our paid employees. There are trust funds at various monthly and quarterly meetings in NYYM which dim this connection, but mostly the members of NYYM are responsible to give their own money for the costs that the Society incurs.

Please feel free to examine the evidence – a log of random office visits and telephone calls to confirm attendance and non-attendance of the key personnel. If the personnel were not in when the callers called randomly, What about the times the office was not called ? How many times were they not in on those occasions? After considering those questions - then examine the potential cover-up in the General Secretary’s Report Fall 2006. Pretty slick. Especially since the evidence was delivered to the elite electronically and to the paid employees a month before the General Secretary’s fall report.

The General Secretary has also tried to obtain a refund from New York Quarterly Meeting (the landlord for the office) or from Friends Seminary (another tenant in the building doing construction) for 2007 somehow because NYYM is in dire financial straits due to mismanagement. Why would a landlord give a reimbursement to a tenant for 2007 for things that happened in 2006?

Regarding this ‘refund’ - complaints that the NYYM employees were forced to inhabit small and ‘deplorable’ conditions over the summer of 2006, were laughable, especially since two of the three employees were severely overweight at that time. According to a former New York Quarterly Meeting employee the temporary NYYM office for the summer of 2006, was an above-ground space, and was actually nicer than their normal underground digs.

NYYM has also misstated (I believe on purpose) the ‘Office Rent’ line in the NYYM budget for at least 3 years – stating office rent at $23,800 per year for each year 2005, 2006 and 2007. The Clerk of Financial Services received a letter, copied to me, also on the Financial Services Committee, from New York Quarterly Meeting in June 2006, stating that the ”rent for the NYYM office will stay unchanged for 2007 at $25,500 per year”. The letter also stated that The Yearly Meeting office will be surcharged approximately $2,000 per month in electricity costs – bringing the total cost for 2007 – to $27,500. The Clerk of Financial Services disallowed the amount on the 2007 proposed and now approved budget to change from $23,800.

Financial Malfeasance

Treasurer Report Alteration

163,234	*188,702*	*203,520*	207,699	Opening Balance
381,602	416,916	427,785	487,570	Total Receipts
364,754	399,595	422,135	490,869	Total Disbursements

*$180,082*	$206,023	$209,170	$204,400	Closing Balance
2001	2002	2003	2004

Administrative Costs

Early in my short career on the Financial Services Committee of New York Yearly Meeting, I asked the Treasurer, still the Treasurer today, why couldn’t we have more detail on various expense lines – for example, the expense line – Administrative Cost.

His answer was simply that the Bookkeeping Service would have to charge us more.

This is why our curiosity is going to have to keep coming back to this phantom bookkeeping service, for which we have no name, and no assurances that there is not a conflict of interest between the service and those who contract and work with it in NYYM.

Future postings are being planned for this weblog:

- Recommendations for implementation of signed annual statements confirming explicit or implicit conflicts of interest by NYYM Trustees, Treasurer, Committee Clerks, and Employees

- Recommendations for NYYM committee and position resignations

- An open letter to FGC, FUM and FWCC regarding the need for their oversight into corruption at NYYM and a decision (without participation of NYYM representatives) regarding suspension of representation of NYYM to those wider bodies

Go to the most recent - Misrepresentation of membership numbers - in the previous post

Go to the next previous post regarding Censorship and the lack of independent oversight at NYYM

It's Time for NYYM to Come Clean with Membership Numbers

2007-02-11T01:20:00.001-05:00

See my previous Letter of 1/4/07 and its anonymous responses.

Dear Friends.

This is to follow the letter above, as some Friends asked for specification of various assertions, I made. I intend to show any and all evidence as time permits going forward.

Lets begin with the membership data - the decline in membership undermines every aspect of governance in any Friends Society.

NYYM reported that membership grew from 3501 to 3512 from 2004 to 2005.

NYYM reported that membership grew from 3512 to 3529 from 2005 to 2006.

Does anyone surely believe that after 35 straight years of decline, only after the costs of the Yearly Meeting go up by 1/3 within a two-year period, and only after I publish the sad but true fact of this long membeship decline, that the membership somehow rises for two years straight ?

In NYYM (Self) Job Descriptions, from the Advance Reports 2006 we find an hourly employee was charged with gathering membership data from Monthly Meetings for the 2006 Yearbook.

Would Friends feel moved to ask NYYM for transparency into how this data was gathered for the 2006 Yearbook? Were there multiple persons involved in compiling this data in the NYYM office? For example, did one person collect the data and someone else tabulate it? Can Monthly Meetings corroborate the numbers in the 2006 Yearbook to a central objective person or committee?

I’ve traveled over NYYM to many Monthly Meetings and found a few examples where the membership numbers are obviously misstated by someone or more persons (paid) who had a vested interest to show higher than actual membership numbers. I ask Friends to consider appointment of an independent (if this is truly possible) auditor or committee to examine each Monthly Meeting membership total.

For example, I notified the General Secretary’s Task Group in 7^th Month 2006, that Scarsdale Meeting had reported 100 members without change since 2003 (and maybe for longer) . I asked this group, with oversight of the General Secretary, to 'come clean' with the membership numbers in the 2005 Yearbook. I visited Scarsdale meeting and there were 12 people in attendance on a non-holiday good weather First Day in 2006. For another example, I visited Manhasset Meeting on same such day in 2006 and found 9 persons present when their stated membership is 85 members. Granted Manhasset meeting was at that time, in early 2006, trying to reconcile its membership numbers. However the 2006 NYYM Yearbook, published in 12th Month 2006, doesn't show a substantial change. How odd?

Try this test in your own meeting. Find the published membership number of your Monthly meeting. Is it higher or lower than 3x the average number of attenders on First Days? If so, your membership number is overstated. At most, there are 3x as many members, as there are those in attendance on a given First Day.

3x the number in attendance is generous – mostly it would even be 2x the average attending number on First Days as a good quick estimator of the 'real' membership of your meeting.

So, Scarsdale really has – at most - about 40 members, and Manhasset has 30 (at 3x). Let’s ask independent minded Friends to look at more Monthly Meetings, then recommend that NYYM ‘come clean’ with its ‘real’ membership number?

NYYM membership declined each year for 35 years - until I published a report of the decline in October 2004. In 2005, NYYM then saw a membership growth for the first time in this period. In 2006, somehow it grew again – miraculously enough after the General Secretary arrived, and NYYM was in budget deficit for 2005 and 2006?

Again, does anyone surely believe that after 35 straight years of decline, and only after I publish the sad but true fact of this decline, that the membership somehow rises for two years straight?

This membership ‘increase’ also occurred after NYYM received my letter of 5/17/2005 to all Monthly Meetings stating the membership decline among other issues of malfeasance and mismanagement. I was subsequently asked to resign from the NYYM Financial Services Committee by the Clerk of said committee. This was the second time that I was asked to resign. I refused and hence asked the committee clerk to resign – he didn’t.

The first time I was asked to resign from the committee was in September 2004 when I spoke up to inconsistencies in NYYM spending and job duties at the NYYM office. This attempted force-out was a two on one lunch meeting where the new General Secretary and said Clerk tried to convince me to resign Financial Services Committee service. I refused.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I find there is a strong vested interest in paid employees to show a membership increase for the past two years straight when it is highly unlikely that this increase has occurred. The General Secretary has used this membership increase in his latest report to NYYM – front and center. But, only after he first creating a public relations diversion for other collected NYYM office visits data, as his reason to be employed along with the other staff members for whom we have no serious job descriptions. He ‘needs to’ start his report in bringing our attention to the conditions the employees, those who have been in the office, have endured over the summer of 2006.

I also suspect that there are those insiders who have a vested interest in keeping the paid employee status quo, in drawing more resources from Monthly Meetings than they can afford. This because the attitude of said insiders is that NYYM is an entity which is unaccountable to the Monthly Meetings, and it is a ‘higher’ organization rather than an organization which draws its authority from the grass roots. They truly don’t want a connection. They most likely just want the money to continue centralized power structure and the summer vacation at Lake George.

I would guess that NYYM has less than 1500 members - not 3500 or whatever number has been published. This is from first hand experience in visiting over 1/3 of Monthly Meetings of NYYM in a one-year period.

NYYM will only grow in the manner of Friends – by spreading out roots (by spending resources) in witness and nurture from the bottom to form strong activities and small new (preparative) societies at more numerous local levels.

In Friendship,

Glenn R.

See my previous Letter of 1/4/07 and its anonymous responses.

NYYM (Self) Job Descriptions

2007-02-11T00:36:00.000-05:00

In light of the 50% higher cost of operation of NYYM vs. NEYM and BaltYM, I find the self-made job descriptions an insult to anyone with business experience. (These self-descriptions are in the absence of time and task specific approved job descriptions, which are not published by NYYM). Please see page 38 of the 2006 Advance Reports, for the best description we have of what goes on at NYYM Headquarters, at 15 Rutherford Place, New York City.

Farewell Letter 1/4/2007

2007-02-10T22:53:00.002-05:00

Please click here to see my letter to Monthly Meetings of NYYM - 5/17/2005

January 4, 2007

Dear Friend,

I’ve left New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends and moved in the direction of what I feel is my spiritual journey. I’ve joined Baltimore Yearly Meeting and a local Monthly Meeting where I was raised to which I feel close, after being censored and shunned regarding my persistent witness to blatant malfeasance of governance in my former Society.

Granted, my Quaker family were never members of New York Yearly Meeting (NYYM) before I arrived, however I still feel a duty to inform Friends of the malfeasance living cancerously in NYYM. Here are succinct statements for the benefit and longevity of organic Quakerism - written to my f/Friends everywhere to consider.

1. NYYM, formed in the mid 1950's, has begun its end as a forced religious governmental construct. Three obvious death knells have been:

The institution of an organizational hierarchy - the ‘Coordinating Committees’ in 1976 and its resultant insular in-crowd control of power by the same old same-olds.
The divestiture of its ‘diamond in the rough’ more or less by the current insular elite - Friends World College in 1991
Concurrent with severely declining membership, the institution of permanent paid positions instead of the continued insistence on sojourning paid positions. Pension benefits are now given employees. This was evidently approved by the Personnel Committee (also insiders) - out of view of the constituency. As membership declines, money sent to NYYM from local Monthly Meetings will come more and more from dead Friends’ bequests, hastening the end of Friends’ direct connection to the Faith.

2. NYYM elite and paid personnel have mismanaged time, talent and money behind a wall of non-transparency. The NYYM Operating Budget is approximately 1.5x New England and Baltimore YM budgets, while both have more employees than NYYM, and Baltimore and New England are growing steadily in members over a long period of time. NYYM has misrepresented finances and membership numbers in the most recent two years to make themselves look better. Friends sometimes criticize profit-making business for such breakdown in ethics, but Friends who are not accountable to their constituency, as some are in NYYM, can do it themselves. The NYYM Ministers (Recorded Ministers) and those who covet these titles support malfeasance in that their titles are protected by the unquestioned continuance of NYYM as a governmental body.

3. NYYM Annual Sessions occur at the same exclusive destination far from just about everyone at Lake George in the Adirondacks each year – which is out of reach in time (7 days) and money for most Friends. This ‘vacation’ for the elite and others is the ultimate reason-to-be for the forced governmental construct of NYYM.

4. NYYM draws excessive resources of time, talent and money ‘up’ into the hierarchy out of local Monthly Meetings – instead of allowing the resources to flow ‘out’ laterally for growth in the organic manner of Friends. This removal of resources from Monthly Meetings - the basic units of Friends Society, simply helps to destroy Quakerism in our region.

Although the NYYM elite and paid staff talk of membership growth, they act in ways to hinder growth, through the centralization of authority and resources. The geographic expanse of NYYM is simply too large - it wastes time, talent and money that could be spent in local and regional concerns.

5. NYYM has recently published membership numbers which have been manipulated or misrepresented most probably by paid employees to show growth in NYYM in the last two years (2005 and 2006). These two years of ‘growth’ occurred co-incidentally after 35 straight years of decline, and after this decline was published widely by a Friend in November 2004. The official NYYM membership decreased from 6,800 members in 1970 to 3,500 in 2004. Although membership growth occurs at the Monthly Meeting level, it can decrease due to malfeasance and other concerns at both the Yearly or Monthly levels. A Friend has traveled to Monthly Meetings and seen evidence of this ‘official’ membership misrepresentation in 2005 and 2006.

6. If Monthly Meetings of NYYM come to unity they are certainly within their right to choose another Yearly Meeting in which to affiliate. Monthly Meetings can also decide to form new Yearly Meetings which may make up smaller, more natural, governable bodies.

7. If other Wider Bodies and Yearly Meetings come to unity (obviously with NYYM members removing themselves from the decision process), they are within their rights to de-certify New York Yearly Meeting as a recognized Friends body.

If Friends want more detail, I’ll consider supplying evidence in support of these statements, which might involve asking NYYM to make itself transparent with published time and task specific job descriptions, publishing of the Financial Management Guidelines, and the publishing of more itemized operating budget lines.

In essence, the complacence and malfeasance evident in NYYM trouble me, even for those I love whom I’ve left. There are timeless truths and timeless expressions of these truths. Fraud and the complacence that allows it - are not two of these expressions. In essence, my NYYM Friends: if Friends want to begin to change the world – look closer to home.

In Friendship,

G.R.

Please click here to see my letter to Monthly Meetings of NYYM - 5/17/2005

Letter of Concern 5/17/2005

2007-02-10T22:53:00.001-05:00

If you would like an in-format version of this letter, please send a request to qinfriend 'at' gmail.com

New York, New York

May 17, 2005

TO: Clerks of each Monthly Meeting in NYYM

FROM: Glenn L. R., a member of Manhattan Monthly Meeting, New York Quarterly Meeting

Dear Friend,

Would thee pass this letter to an appropriate committee in your Meeting, or address some or all of these concerns with your Monthly Meeting?

This is a letter concerning the apparent disconnectedness between Monthly Meetings and New York Yearly Meeting, of the Religious Society of Friends. Joshua Brown, a former pastor at South Glens Falls Meeting, wrote an essay, ‘You can’t get there from here’ almost 20 years ago, in 1986.

This letter of my concerns is a continuation of Joshua’s concerns and hopefully will address clearly the issues we face concerning our internal business affairs. Hopefully the consideration and possible discussion and action we take will bring us closer together within Monthly Meetings, as well as within our Yearly Meeting body.

In Friendship,

Where have we gone?

A Letter from a Concerned Friend

To: Monthly Meetings of New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

– May 2005 – by Glenn L. R.

Dear Friends,

This is a letter concerning the apparent disconnectedness between Monthly Meetings and New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. I will describe my view of the disconnectedness in three major areas of concern: Membership Issues, Budget Issues, and Transparency Issues.

I ask Monthly Meetings or committees therein, to consider: How do Monthly, Quarterly, Regional and Yearly Meeting re-connect ourselves in the large geographic expanse we occupy? How will we re-connect in the Life and Light within, in commonality and mutual understanding?

Membership Issues

Are we aware of the facts about our Monthly and Yearly Meeting membership decline, especially compared with our neighbors, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New England who are stable or growing in membership?

Have we reconciled our declining situation to circumstances that we can or cannot change? Do we understand that a declining membership beginning in the Monthly Meeting, undermines all participation, financial and otherwise, in the work we might do at all levels of our Religious Society?

Budget Issues

Can we begin to lovingly describe our condition in our Monthly Meetings by telling a story about ourselves with our finances?

Might you begin by considering the income, expenses, assets and budget of Poplar Ridge Monthly Meeting? Does your awareness of how New York Yearly Meeting operates, as partially supported by a large part of your Monthly Meeting budget, work to fulfill Fox’s admonition - ‘Let your lives speak’?

Might the deep consideration of how your Monthly Meeting spends its budget be the first step in making or renewing a covenant between our faith and our actions?

Transparency Issues

Are we true participants in a process of self-governance that is organically connected? Or do we ignore the process because of the growing inability or unwillingness to do hard work? Have we been transformed by the world in the only way possible for modern Friends to exist?

Do we at local levels receive sufficient feedback, support and transparency from those who ‘run’ our wider Yearly Meeting and wider Friends organizations?

Have we become so specialized ourselves in the modern world, and hired professional administrators to try and fix this disconnectedness?

Where do we go from here?

Joshua Brown, a former pastor at South Glens Falls Meeting, wrote, ‘You can’t get there from here’ and Looking for the Promised Land, almost 20 years ago, in 1986 and 1988. These were two essays about the issues facing New York Yearly Meeting – before he left to become the pastor at West Richmond Friends Church, in Indiana.

Internal issues, in his opinion, prevented, and, in my own heartfelt opinion, still prevent New York Yearly Meeting from being integrally connected, and being truly progressive - moving forward in the Spirit, in continuing revelation.

I don’t want to ‘run on in many words’. I simply present facts in the following pages, mostly related back to our membership, finances and transparency up and down in the Yearly Meeting. I hope Friends will consider these facts and discuss them and communicate up and down with other Friends in our Yearly Meeting about where we are led to go.

The presentation of these facts might be annoying to some, it might be blasphemous to others, it might be eye-opening to some others, or it might be energizing yet to others.

I’ve heard a Friend say to me, “Everyone is entitled to one’s own opinion, but not one’s own facts.”

The following are ‘our facts’ to consider:

Membership Issues

Facts/Reactions/Facts in light of reactions

Quakerism in the US has declined in membership in the last 35 years from ~120,000 members in the US to ~90,000 members in 2005. /Mainline traditional Protestant Christian churches are also declining at approximately the same rate as the Quakers./Religious groups which give participants self-determination, and participation in their beliefs and governance are increasing in membership over the last 35 years. (Buddhist, Earth Religion, Wiccan, etc)

Sympathetic groups like Unitarians and the Bretheren are increasing in membership in this period also.

Membership in New York Yearly Meeting has declined by ~50% from 1970 to 2004 (6800 members in 1970, to 3500 in 2004) and membership continues to decline at the same rate.

Membership in similar-sized New England and Baltimore Yearly Meetings has increased moderately in this same period.

1. and 2. We’ve been cleaning out our rolls of inactive members.

3. Since Friends are cheap, and the method of paying for New York Yearly Meeting was by head count, Meetings were more likely to remove members who were not active in this time period, to reduce their share contribution to the Yearly Meeting./

1. 35 years is much too long a period for this reaction to be valid.

2. In decentralized organizations such as NYYM, NEYM, or BaltYM, there has not been any top-down requirement for independent recorders, and independent Monthly Meetings to empty rolls or to keep inactive members on rolls.

3. NYYM stopped using the head count method of apportioning the cost of the YM in the late 1990’s. The rate of membership decline since 1970 has continued at the same rate since 2000 to the present.

Membership in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting declined at a similar but less steep rate as NYYM over the same period, but slowed in 1980 and 1990 and stabilized in 2000./It’s just the way it happened.

The 1960’s membership bubble burst.

The 1960’s ‘protest’ Friends came in and drove away a number of less ‘militant’ Friends./PYM initiated a study of Diversity and Outreach¹ in 2000 to determine the attitudes and makeup of their Meetings. Feedback from these surveys are used to help with an open self-awareness.

The outreach attitude or atmosphere in MM’s in PYM is changing, Meetings were not even listed in the phone book, but attitudes changed. A real push occurred from MM level in cooperation with YM to get indoor plumbing, wheelchair access in Meetinghouses, and local paper listings, billboard ads, etc.

The ‘Making new Friends’, pilot project started with 8 meetings (out of 110) that wanted to grow. PYM provided support for those Meetings – and has at least one employee² dedicated to this project, which started about 2000.

The 1960’s is gone and the world we live in is much different now.

New York Yearly Meeting had 3501 members as of summer 2004.

The maximum participation at Annual Sessions at Silver Bay is 750 including both adults and children.

There is camping and a few hotels nearby which would increase the 750 number slightly, but you must travel by bicycle (on narrow heavily traveled roads) or by car each day to get to Silver Bay. /

At most, 1/5 of NYYM’s membership can possibly participate in annual sessions.

Much of the fellowship and interaction at Sliver Bay occurs at the meals.

Although Annual Sessions are self-financing, or outside of the Operating Budget, the cost to attend has gone out of reach for many Friends./One Friend has said, “Although I’ve gone to Silver Bay for 40 years, I’d consider other locations for annual sessions if the costs for annual sessions were cheaper and the duration shorter.” “Since I’m here to work, I don’t consider it a vacation.”

The Advancement Committee budget of $12,000 for 2005, plus trust fund distributions of an undetermined amount helps pay for scholarships for Friends who cannot afford to go to Annual Sessions at Silver Bay./Annual Sessions are 7 days in a place which, although reasonably priced considering other ‘vacations’, is expensive as a meeting place for the business of annual sessions.

The Advancement Committee uses most or all of its budget for Annual Sessions scholarships, and very little or none for Outreach programs, which are meant to increase membership.

The NYYM website homepage features a slogan:

“QUAKERS--A simple faith.

A radical witness.

A radical faith. A simple witness.”/A non-Quaker friend of mine said, “I wouldn’t be interested in a group where the word ‘radical’ was used to describe itself”.

“Why do Quakers really need a slogan, especially one that confuses the public and further marginalizes the faith?”/Synonyms of ‘radical’ are:anarchistic, communistic, complete, entire, excessive, extremist, fanatical, far out, forward, freethinking, gone, iconoclastic, immoderate, insubordinate, insurgent, insurrectionary, intransigent, lawless, leftist, liberal, militant, mutinous, nihilistic, progressive, rabid, racist, rebellious, recalcitrant, recusant, refractory, restive, revolutionary, riotous, seditious, severe, supremacist, sweeping, thorough, ultra, ultraist, uncompromising, unruly, violent

//¹ this summary presentation of Diversity and Outreach is available in electronic format from qinfriend 'at' gmail.com

² Lyle Jenks, PYM

Tel. 215 241 7225

Budget Issues

Facts/Reactions/Facts in light of reactions

New York Yearly Meeting has a 2005 budget of $550,000 while NEYM and BaltYM which are slightly larger in membership size, have 2005 budges of

~ $375,000 each.

/Its more expensive to operate in New York City.

The (reasonable) rent for the Yearly Meeting office has increased from 13,000 per year in 1991 to $24,000 per year in 2005.

We must pay our employees fairly./The relocation of the New York Yearly Meeting office to a more central, and less expensive location was studied ~15 years ago.

In this age of communication technology, there is possibly no need to have a fixed office. The Yearly Meeting office could be relocated every 5 years or office staff could work from a home office with proper communication capability.

Of course we should pay our employees fairly, but if an employee works from home there is normally a salary adjustment for that.

The NYYM General Secretary position was approved by many Monthly Meetings as proposed to be $70,000 in annual salary, to establish a residence in New York City, and work three days per week in the office, and to supervise the office staff./None/The NYYM General Secretary works one day per week on average in the NYYM office.

The Field Secretary of NEYM working mostly from his home in Boston, MA, is paid much less than the NYYM General Secretary who works mostly from his home north of Poughkeepsie, NY.

This is a testament to how much more the NEYM Field Secretary should be paid, or how much extra NYYM is paying for its General Secretary.

NYYM has budgeted $9,000 each in membership contributions to FGC, and FUM - Wider Friends organizations in 2005./None/Baltimore has budgeted ~2x NYYM amounts. ³

New England has budgeted ~1.5x NYYM amounts.

There are mixed messages about the cost and need for a ‘bookkeeping service’ ($26,000 budgeted in 2005) when members of NYYM office staff potentially participate in the bookkeeping process./

“How is NYYM

support of the Sharing Fund with staff, bookkeeping service, and the treasurer’s accounts been included or excluded in your [report]”

Lack of transparency in office processes does not mean that anything is awry, however, Quakers are (historically?) known for their openness and transparency.

New York Yearly Meeting approved a 7% or ~$35,000 deficit for the 2005 Operating Budget.

New York Yearly Meeting has consistently overestimated its expenses in budgets (compared with actual expenses for the corresponding years) by an average of 6.7% since 1991./

“This deficit budget is intended for a one-year period (2005) only.”

Attempts were made to balance the budget between Budget Saturday (9/18/2004) and 12^th Month Representative Meeting -instead of in spring meetings of the NYYM Financial Services Committee./

After reductions were made in all sections in fall 2004, the NYYM General Services Section 2005 budget (~$390,000)was approved at 71% of the total (~$550,000) Operating Budget.

The General Services budget represents the cost of administering ourselves as a Yearly Meeting body.

Powell House, the NYYM retreat center, is now a substitute for, or the evolution from the Quaker tradition of Inter-visitation.

The Yearly Meeting subsidy for Powell House is around $70,000 per year, or 13% of our 2005 Operating Budget./

Powell House is an important asset in the life of NYYM./

^{Even with the Yearly Meeting subsidy in the Operating Budget, costs to arrive at, and attend Powell House are not inexpensive for many Friends.}

//³ BaltimoreYM lists a contingency amount equal to what would be contributed to FUM, on a special line for ‘other’ due to consideration of FUM’s Personnel Policy regarding sexual relations between unmarried persons.

Transparency Issues

Facts/Reactions/Facts in light of reactions

NYYM has 3.5 employees without any dedication to specific committees or functions.

Baltimore YM has 5 employees,

NEYM has 4.5 employees. These employees are dedicated to specific committees and functions of the Yearly Meeting.

/New York Yearly Meeting has a small but dedicated staff and job descriptions are given in verbal reports at different times./New England and Baltimore Yearly Meetings have written job descriptions, reporting structures, and time allocations to various committees available to the public for its paid office staff.

At this time, NYYM does not plan to issue any written job descriptions, reporting structure, or time allocations for its office staff.

NYYM dedicates staff time and ‘Bookkeeping Service’ expense to administer and distribute ‘Sharing Fund’ disbursements for Witness projects around the world.

There is an amount that might be determined as ‘overhead’ which could be charged back to the total Fund for our employee time and outside bookkeeping expense./

To "break out" these data…makes the process seem a bit easier than it is. To "break them out" , they would have to already be there in some form that differentiates these activities and transactions from similar ones done for other reasons./

A distribution of $11,801. for ‘Overhead’ was made in 1991 for the Sharing Fund out of a total distribution of $70,280.

A NYYM Sharing Fund distribution total of $46,312. was made in 2004. The 2004 overhead line is $0.

In the 1970s, the NYYM Sharing Fund distribution, an amount that goes to our Witness activities abroad, was approximately equal to the NYYM Operating Budget. (~$100,000).

The NYYM Operating Budget is approximately $550,000 in 2005./

Where are our priorities?/

The 2005 Sharing Fund Goal is $70,000.

The Financial Management Guidelines is not a public document.

Page 20 of the 2004 NYYM Yearbook reads …”we also approved a set of Financial Management Guidelines for use by the Yearly Meeting office and the Treasurer, these guidelines will also assist us in our work with our auditor and bookkeeping service.”/

“This document pertains to the management of YM funds and the various responsibilities - especially between the treasurer and the YM Office. It simply puts into writing the procedures we have been following for the benefit of any new personnel. “/

Lack of transparency in office processes does not mean that anything is awry, however, Quakers are (historically?) known for their openness and transparency.

In Summary:

In the wider New York Yearly Meeting, Friends have tacitly or unconsciously given way to a few, taking over for what many Friends should be doing. Is it possible that this small group of Friends comprise the only ones left to do the hard work? Up to 1/5 of us might simply relate to the Yearly Meeting by spending a week at Silver Bay at Lake George, in the Adirondaks, for a week in July. What about the rest of us?

What is needed now Friends, is mindfulness, communication and feedback up and down in our statewide-regional organization of 60 Monthly Meetings and 9 regions. What are Philadelphia, and more specifically New England and Baltimore doing that New York is not? What is New York doing that New England and Baltimore are not? Are there issues or circumstances that prevent New York from growing, or at least stopping the decline in membership? Are we ready to confront these circumstances and issues?

Do we understand as our membership declines, that we must face finite realities in Yearly Meeting committee participation? We will have to face the realities of work that must be done and money that must be spent on our local concerns, in the context of our wider expression of fellowship of the Yearly Meeting.

Are we led to grow in number at our Monthly Meeting levels, or will we have to make difficult decisions in reducing our expenditures and number of committees on which Friends serve?

Are we ready to re-connect our faith and our material lives? Can we re-connect our Monthly Meetings with the Yearly Meeting?

Yours in faith,

Glenn L. R.

Member of Manhattan Monthly Meeting

New York Quarterly Meeting

New York, NY 10011

NYYM Office Visit Log

2007-02-10T22:52:00.003-05:00

Gen Sec – (full time) General Secretary – has ultimate supervisory authority over the office, in < 1x per week, has home office in Rhinecliff, NY, office hours and travel schedule are not published, however he is in mostly on Wednesdays.

Admin Sec* – (full time) Administrative Secretary – supervises the office staff, erratic attendance and availability

Admin Asst – (full time) maintains website, edits Spark and InfoShare, other general work, mostly there, sometimes rude

Hourly Employee #1 – hourly employee

Hourly Employee #2 – hourly employee / and or volunteer

NYYM Office Rent - ~$27,500 per year

Book Keeping Service Fees - $28,200 per year

* Admin Sec is pursuing a Graduate degree. Graduate school is finished by May 15^th each year. Graduation at the Bank Street College of Education was May 20, 2006.

5/17/06 – Wed./2:30 pm/Dropped in to NYYM office/Hourly Employee #1, (Admin Asst?)/Hourly Employee #1 sitting at Admin Sec’s desk typing on the computer. One other person (Admin Asst?) had gone to the bank and or to lunch. Gen Sec had not come in that day (he is usually in the office on Wed.)

5/23/06 – Tues/9:45 am/Called/Admin Asst answered phone./ “Is Admin Sec there?” He said,” No she’s not in, may I help you” “Is she coming in today?” He said, “No she won’t be in today”

5/24/06 – Wed/4:30 pm/Called/Admin Asst answered phone, Admin Sec was on the phone, Gen Sec was on his way out to catch a train./Told Admin Asst that Spark is looking much better. He said thanks.

5/25/06 – Thurs/3:45 pm/Called/Hourly Employee #1 Hourly Employee #1 answered phone, by saying ‘good afternoon, New York Yearly Meeting, this is Hourly Employee #1.’/He said ‘Admin Sec is not in today, she will be in tomorrow.’ When caller asked for Admin Asst, by first name only, he said, ‘Yes he is, may I ask who’s calling?’

6/2/06 - Fri//Emailed/Admin Sec answered, not sure where she is located./Confirmed attendance at a future event. NYYM moving office upstairs to temporary space for summer, on 6/2/06.

6/6/06 – Tues/9:40 am/Called/Hourly Employee #1 Hourly Employee #1 answered the phone. /Admin Sec will not be in the office today, “but, I can get a message to her”. Admin Asst will be in at 10:00 am

6/9/06 – Fri/10:05 am/Called/Admin Asst answered phone /When asked if Admin Sec was in he said – “she’s not in today, may I help you”? “Admin Sec will be in on Monday”

6/30/2006 – Fri/3:45 pm/Called/Admin Sec answered phone/Admin Asst is in.

7/17/2006 – Monday///Admin Sec leaves to stay at Silver Bay for one week prior to Annual Sessions (as reported at New York Quarterly Meeting)/

7/19/2006 - Wed/1:00 pm/Called/Admin Asst Answered phone/Asked if Gen Sec was in. No. Asked Admin Asst if Gen Sec had asked him to change the web site to reflect an Editorial Policy that said “Editor will contact writer with suggested changes. ” He said no. Called Gen Sec at home office – he was in.

7/23/2006 – Sunday///Annual Sessions at Silver Bay begin/

8/21/2006 – Monday/3:30 pm/Admin Sec calls to answer an email sent on 8/3/Not sure if she is in the office/Admin Sec says she has been on vacation since 7/31/2006, or immediately after Silver Bay

8/23/2006 – Wednesday/1:15 pm/Called/Hourly Employee #2 answered phone/Gen Sec not in, due in office Thursday 8/24, Admin Sec is on vacation.

8/30/2006 – Wednesday/11:10 am/Called/Hourly Employee #1 Hourly Employee #1 answered/Admin Sec not in, due in later around 1-2 pm, Admin Asst is there.

9/2/2006 - Saturday//A Regional Treasurer reports that he has not received a monthly NYYM Treasurer’s report in all of 2006 until a few days earlier, dated 8/15/2006/Hourly Employee #2 contacted him /She asked if he would mind if it were sent electronically. He was very happy to have it electronically.

9/7/2006 Thursday//NYYM office moved back to its permanent location from its temporary location today//

9/8/2006 Friday/3:55 p.m./Called/Admin Sec answered/Admin Asst is in

9/15/2006 – Friday/12:05 pm/Called/Admin Asst answered /Is Admin Sec in? “No she isn’t may I help you?” No. When will she be in next? I expect her on Monday.

9/17/06 – Sun///Atlantic Antic outreach event 2 blocks from the largest Monthly Meeting in NYYM. Registration fee paid by NYQM/Admin Sec is scheduled to staff event

9/19/2006 – Tuesday/2:00 pm/Called Treasurer at his home near Buffalo, NY//Asked why a bookkeeping service was needed at NYYM. He answered “To have timely information provided to us without the need for a full time employee”. Caller asked how many transactions on average NYYM has per month in its ledger. “I’m not going to go into that”. He hung up on the caller.

9/20/06 – Wed/1:20 pm/Called/Admin Asst answered phone, Admin Sec in, GS not in/Admin Sec on phone, “may I take a message or may I help you?” Is Gen Sec there? No, he’s not in today. When will he be in next? Who’s calling? (in an aggressive tone, not a question). I’ll have to check the schedule. He gets up and walks away for about 30 seconds. “GS will be in on 9/27 (Wed).” Thank you.

10/5/2006 – Thursday/2:10 pm/Called/Admin Asst Answered/Admin Sec out to lunch, Hourly Employee #1 in the ‘other office’

10/12/2006 Thursday/11:00 am/Called/Admin Asst Answered/Admin Sec working at home Thursday and Friday. What’s her number there? Admin Asst said, “Do you really want me to go and look up the number in the Yearbook for you?” Admin Sec’s home phone busy all day.

10/13/2006 Friday/All day/Tried to call Admin Sec at home/./Phone is busy all day

10/16/2006 Monday/All Day/Called Admin Sec at home//Phone busy

10/17/2006 Tuesday/All Day/Called Admin Sec at home//Phone busy

10/18/2006 - Wednesday/All Day/Called Admin Sec at Home//Phone busy

10/19/2006 Thursday/12:30 pm/Called NYYM Office//Phone machine picked up

10/19/2006 Thursday/12:35 pm/Called Admin Sec at home//Phone machine picked up after two rings

10/19/2006 Thursday/12:40 pm/Called Gen Sec at his published home office number//Phone machine picked up after four rings

10/19/2006 Thursday/12:42 pm/Called Admin Asst at home//Phone machine picked up, outgoing message played then Admin Asst picked up

10/19/06 Thursday/2:20 pm/Called NYYM office/Hourly Employee #1 answered/Admin Sec not in today. She is due in on Friday. Gen Sec not in today.

10/24/06 Tuesday/2:50 pm/Called/Admin Sec answered/Admin Asst is in

10/26/06 -Thursday/11:15 am/Called/Admin Sec Answered/Gen Sec is not in the office. :”When will he be in?” ‘Who’s calling?’ in an aggressive tone. At first Admin Sec said next Wednesday, then she had to go and look (30 seconds) then confirmed it would be 10/31/2006.

10/27/06 – Friday/2:15 pm/Called/Admin Sec answered/Admin Asst is out to lunch. “When will he be back. “ ‘Within the hour.’

10/27/06 – Friday/2:30 pm/Went to website/September 2006 Spark not posted on Website, October 2006 Infoshare not distributed or published on website/

Procedure for Conflict of Interest - Implemented by one Monthly Meeting

2007-02-10T22:52:00.001-05:00

Should this policy be adopted by NYYM?
(or any Yearly Meeting)

Purpose: The purpose of this procedure is to protect this tax exempt organization’s interest when it is contemplating entering into a transaction or arrangement that might benefit the private interest of an officer of the Meeting, Clerk or Treasurer, or might result in a possible excess benefit transaction. This policy is meant to supplement but not replace any applicable state or federal laws governing conflict of interest applicable to nonprofit and charitable organizations.

Definitions:

1. Interested Person – Any officer or member of a committee with delegated powers who has direct or indirect financial interest.

2. Financial Interest – A person has a financial interest if the person has, directly or indirectly, through business, investment or family: a. An ownership or investment interest in any entity with which Meeting has a transaction or arrangement b. A compensation arrangement with Meeting or with any entity or individual with which Meeting has a transaction or arrangement, or c. A potential ownership or investment interest, or compensation arrangement with, any entity or individual with which Meeting is negotiating a transaction or arrangement.

Compensation includes direct and indirect remuneration as well as gifts or favors that are not insubstantial. Some members of NYYM receive compensation from NYYM. These are most of the full and part time staff

A financial interest is not necessarily a conflict of interest. A person who has a financial interest may have a conflict of interest only if the trustees and Monthly Meeting decides that a conflict of interest exists.

Procedure:

Responsibility Action

Interested Person 1. Discloses the existence of the financial interest.

2. Arranges a meeting to disclose all material facts to the trustees and officers of the Meeting considering the proposed transaction or arrangement.

3. During the meeting and after the presentation has been made disclosing the conflict of interest, leaves the meeting.

Officers and trustees 4. Decides whether or not a conflict of interest exists.

5. Appoints a disinterested person or committee to investigate alternatives to the proposed transaction or arrangement.

6. If a more advantageous transaction or arrangement is not reasonably possible, determines whether or not the transaction or arrangement is in the Meeting’s best interest and whether or not it is fair and reasonable.

7. Agrees to enter into the transaction or arrangement.

8. If the officers and trustees have reasonable cause to believe a member has failed to disclose actual or possible conflict of interest, informs the member of an opportunity to explain the alleged failure to disclose.

9. If the member has failed to disclose an actual or possible conflict of interest, takes appropriate corrective action.

10. Documents the nature of the failure to disclose the conflict of interest including the name(s) of members involved and the details of the conflict of interest.

Annually

11. Receives a copy of the procedure.

12. Reads, understands and agrees to comply with the procedure.

13. Understands the Meeting is charitable and engages in activities which accomplish its tax exempt purposes.

14. Signs the attached document that they affirm that they will comply with the procedure.

Signed By: Date: