Procedure on Money

CIRCULAR TO ALL HOUSES PRO/1980/04

PROCEDURE ON MONEY

1. Money is to be described plainly. A sum is a sum, a debt is a debt, and a payment is a payment. Houses are not to invent words for these things, and the words offering, gift in kind, and support are not to be used where the word is fee, rent, or wage.

2. No public gathering, reading, lecture, meal, or funeral carries a charge. Nothing is collected at any of them. No plate, no envelope, no card, no mention.

3. The Fellowship carries no fee. A house which introduces one has exceeded its authority and the stewardship is to say so in writing.

4. Residents pay for room and board. The sum is set annually by the house against its actual costs and is adjusted to what the resident can pay. The adjusted sum is known only to the treasurer and the resident.

5. Work does not reduce a sum and payment does not reduce work. The two are not exchangeable and no house is to operate an arrangement in which they are.

6. A donation buys nothing. It does not affect standing, precedence, the rota, access to records, the naming of a room, or the disposition of any question. A donor who states or implies otherwise is to be refused.

7. Single donations above ten thousand dollars are refused unless the stewardship, in a minuted decision, records why the refusal would be worse than the acceptance. Nine such decisions have been minuted since 1980; four accepted, five refused.

8. No house is to hold an unrestricted balance above one year's running costs. Surplus above that is levied to the houses in deficit at the annual reconciliation.

9. Where a person leaves owing money, the debt stands as a debt and is pursued only by the ordinary means available to any creditor, which in practice means one letter a year. It has no effect whatever on that person's access to their own records, to any public gathering, or to the archive.

10. The accounts of every house and of the central administration are published annually, unaudited where an audit cannot be afforded, and the fact that they are unaudited is stated on the front page.