The Practice

Money, accounts, and the boundary

What the Continuance costs, who pays it, what a payment does not buy, and how the houses conduct themselves toward people who do not belong to them. The figures are printed every February with the shortfalls, the bad debts, and the discrepancies still open at the date of printing.

The Institute owns eleven buildings, employs nineteen people, and spends about four and a half million dollars a year across all its houses in all its currencies. None of that is interesting, and all of it is public, because an institution which asks people to give it their evenings owes them a plain account of where the money goes.

The short version: houses are held by ordinary local legal entities and are separately solvent; residents pay for their board at a rate adjusted to what they have; public gatherings and public work are free and are not a collection point; the Fellowship costs nothing; a few posts are salaried because the work is a job; and the books are reconciled once a year and printed whether or not they balance.

The longer version is below, in the order people actually ask about it.

What things cost

Public gatherings, readings, and observances

Free. No ticket, no door charge, no suggested amount.

Nothing is collected at a gathering. There is no plate, no bowl, no basket, no envelope on the chair, no card on the table, and no appeal from the front. A person who offers money at a gathering is thanked and asked to send it afterwards, if they still want to, to the treasurer.

This is a rule about the room rather than about the money. A meeting that ends in a request for money is a meeting arranged around the request, and people can tell.

Goes wrongHouses forget it applies to their own members. Twice in the last decade a house has passed round a list at the end of an observance for a roof fund. Both times the treasurer stopped it and both times the house thought the treasurer was being difficult.

The meal, the hospice sitting, the bindery, the repair table

Free to whoever receives it. Always.

Nobody who eats at a house table, is sat with, has a book mended, or has a chair repaired is asked for money, told what it cost, invited to contribute, or added to a list. There is no register of recipients beyond the count of meals.

Where a public agency offers to pay for a service, the house may accept payment for the direct cost of materials and no more. Fell House has declined a per-volume rate from two library services on the ground that an invoice implies an office.

Goes wrongRefusing payment can be a way of refusing accountability. River House was told this plainly by a county officer in 2015 and now keeps a materials account for the meal so that the figure exists even though the money does not change hands.

The Fellowship

No fee, no subscription, no dues, ever.

There is no fee to enter the Fellowship, no annual subscription for members, and no charge for withdrawing from it or for entering it again later. There is no membership card, and nothing is sold that says a person belongs.

The Reader is printed at cost and sold at cost to whoever wants one, member or not, at $14 or the local equivalent. Copies are given free to anyone who says the price is a difficulty; no reason is asked for and the fact is not recorded against them.

Goes wrongFree of charge is not the same as free of cost. The Fellowship asks for two evenings a month for two years, which is expensive for a person paid by the hour, and the Institute has been slow to say so.

Room and board at a house

Full rate $62 a night. Adjusted by the steward, in private, to what the person has.

The full rate is what a night actually costs the house: food, heat, water, laundry, and a share of the fabric fund. It is published so that a person can see they are not being charged for anything else.

The steward adjusts it on request, on the person's own statement of their circumstances, without documents, means tests, or a form. The adjusted rate may be anything down to nothing. The house's books record the number of adjusted nights and the total adjustment; they do not record which person was adjusted, and the steward is instructed not to tell the treasurer.

Work does not reduce the rate. Everyone in a house cooks, cleans, and takes a rota turn, resident or steward or visitor, and doing so is not payment for anything. A house that let people work off their board would within a year have two classes of resident.

Goes wrongPeople with money underpay and people without it overpay, because asking for an adjustment requires a kind of confidence that does not track income. Three houses now state the adjustment aloud at arrival rather than waiting to be asked, which has helped a little.

Long residence (over three months)

Assessed annually, in writing, against income and not against savings.

Nineteen people live at a house for most of the year. Their contribution is set once a year by the treasurer and the house steward together, against declared income, with a floor of nothing and a ceiling of the true nightly cost. Nobody is asked to sell anything, spend down savings, cash a pension, alter a will, or make the Institute a beneficiary of anything.

A long resident who becomes unable to contribute continues to live at the house. This has happened eleven times since 1979 and has never once been the occasion of a meeting.

Goes wrongThe assessment is a conversation about money between a person and the two people who also decide their rota. The Institute knows this is uncomfortable and has not solved it; the only mitigation is that the treasurer is not resident at the house being assessed.

Printed material

Cost of printing and postage. Nothing is sold at a margin.

The Reader, the circulars, the printed calendar, the annual report, and the repair manuals are sold at what they cost to make and send, and given away where the price is a difficulty. In 2025 printed material returned $31,900 against $34,600 of printing, which is to say it lost money, as it has every year since 1981.

Goes wrongSelling at cost means the print run is set by guesswork and the loft at Orchard House currently holds four hundred unsold copies of the 2019 calendar.

Contributions

Contributions are received by post and by bank transfer to the local entity, from members and from other people. They amounted to $2,914,000 in 2025 across all entities, which is 61 per cent of what the Institute spent.

They are acknowledged in writing by the treasurer with a receipt, a figure, and nothing else. There is no thank-you letter, no newsletter for donors, no annual appeal, no legacy programme, and no second letter.

What a contribution does not do

No contribution buys standing. A person who has given nothing and a person who has given a hundred thousand dollars are the same in the Record, sit in the same chairs, wait the same time for the Fellowship, and are asked for their rota turn in the same words. This is the whole of the rule and it is not negotiable.
No contribution is named. There is no donor wall, no plaque, no named room, no named chair, no bench with a name on it, no list of benefactors in the annual report, and no acknowledgement from the front of a room. Six people have withdrawn contributions over this and the stewardship has let them.
No contribution carries a condition. Money given for a stated purpose is either accepted for that purpose or declined; it is never accepted with a view about who should hold an office, what should be published, who should be admitted, or what a house should say.
Contributions above $25,000 from one person in one year are referred to the stewardship, which asks one question: whether accepting it would make the house reluctant to disagree with the giver. Where the answer is yes, or unclear, it is declined. $86,000 was declined in 2025 on this ground and the fact is printed in the report.
No solicitation. The Institute does not fundraise, does not employ a fundraiser, does not run appeals or campaigns or matched-giving weeks, and does not ask any individual for money at any time. It publishes its accounts and its shortfall and leaves the matter there.

Bequests

Bequests are accepted and are the largest single irregular income. The Institute will not draft a will, will not provide a form of words, will not witness, and will not be present at the making of one, and it asks that anybody intending a bequest tell somebody outside the Institute that they are doing so.

A bequest from a person who was resident at a house in their last year is referred to the stewardship and to the local entity's independent trustees before it is accepted. Two have been declined.

Who is paid

Archivist

$58,400 (North House), pro rata elsewhere.

Two, full time; one part time at Karst House.

Cataloguing eleven thousand items is a job. It was done unpaid until 1989 by one person who did it in the evenings and whose health suffered for it.

Treasurer

$61,200.

One, four days a week.

Six entities, four currencies, five audits, and the annual assessment interviews. The post has been salaried since 1993 precisely so that it can be held by somebody who is not independently wealthy.

Correspondent

$41,000.

One, three days a week; volunteers at each house besides.

Four thousand letters a year, of which a great many need a careful answer and some need a careful refusal.

Custodian

$19 to $26 an hour, local rate.

Four, part time, one at each of the larger buildings.

Boilers, roofs, and the maintenance year. Volunteer maintenance is how a building is quietly lost.

Cook

Local hourly rate, not below the local living-wage figure.

Three, part time, at the houses running a public meal five days or more a week.

Cooking for sixty, five days a week, is not a rota turn. Where it was treated as one, it fell on the same four women for nineteen years.

Bookkeeper

$28,000.

One, two days a week, and an external auditor at each entity.

So that the person who keeps the books is not the person who signs the cheques.

Nineteen people are paid. Everybody else, including every steward and every convener, is unpaid, and stewards are unpaid on purpose: the post carries judgement about other people's lives and should not also be a living.
The highest salary may not exceed three times the lowest full-time-equivalent salary. The present ratio is 2.4 to 1 and is printed in the annual report.
Salaries are set by the local entity's board on external comparison, published by post and amount, and reviewed annually. No salary is set by the person holding the office, and no officer votes on their own pay.
Being paid does not add authority and does not remove it. The archivist is paid and cannot decide what is withheld; a steward is unpaid and can. This is stated because people assume the opposite.
Where a member does paid work for the Institute — a builder, a translator, a solicitor — the work is tendered where it exceeds $10,000, the member's interest is entered in the register, and the member does not sit on the decision to appoint.

Hardship

Each entity keeps a hardship fund, in total about $140,000 a year, from which small sums are given to members and to people who are not members: travel to a house, a boiler, a funeral, rent in a bad month, a set of tools.

A grant is made by the steward and the treasurer on the person's own account of the matter. There is no form, no application, no committee, no evidence requirement, and no repayment. The largest single grant is $4,000; above that it goes to the stewardship, which is slower and which everybody dislikes.

The fund is not a loan book. Nothing given from it is recoverable and no record of a grant is entered against a person's name in the Record; the accounts hold the number of grants and the total, and the steward holds the rest and destroys it after seven years.
A grant is not conditional on attendance, on Fellowship, on returning to the rota, or on saying what it is for. Nobody has ever been asked to repay one by attending anything.
The fund does not stand in for a public service, and stewards are instructed to say so and to help a person get what they are actually owed by somebody else.

Who owns the buildings

There is no parent company, no holding trust, and no entity that owns the others. The six bodies are legally unrelated and hold their property outright or on long lease. They are bound to one another by an agreement of 1996 which is about the use of the name and the transfer of records, and by nothing else.

This is deliberate and it has a cost. It means six sets of accounts, six auditors, four currencies, and a treasurer who spends most of February on exchange rates. It also means that no house can be sold to pay another house's debts, and that the failure of one entity does not reach the rest. The stewardship has been advised three times to consolidate and has declined three times, in writing, for the reason just given.

The buildings are held by the entities, not by any person. No steward, officer, member, or descendant of a founder holds a personal interest in any Institute property, and none may.

The Continuance Institute

Maine, United States · Non-profit corporation, incorporated 1976. Federally exempt as an educational and charitable organisation since 1978.

North House, River House, Orchard House, Lantern House, Briar House

Annual federal information return and Maine annual report. Both are on the public register and copies are held at the North House for anyone who prefers paper.

The corporation was formed four years after the practice began, at the insistence of a bank which would not open an account for a group of people with a name and no papers.

Continuance Institute (Nova Scotia) Society

Nova Scotia, Canada · Registered society, 1984. Charitable registration held since 1991.

Shore House

Annual society return and charity information return.

Continuance Institute (Scotland)

Scotland · Scottish charitable incorporated organisation, 2011. Previously an unincorporated association holding the farmhouse on a long lease.

Fell House

Annual accounts and trustees' report to the Scottish charity regulator.

The bindery repairs books for four library services and charges nothing, which the regulator has twice asked about and twice accepted.

Zavod Continuance

Slovenia · Private institute (zavod), 1988, non-profit by its founding act.

Karst House

Annual report to the business register; accounts in Slovene, with an English summary printed at Karst House.

特定非営利活動法人コンティニュアンス

Aomori Prefecture, Japan · Specified non-profit corporation, 1997.

Cedar House

Annual activity and financial reports to the prefecture, publicly inspectable.

Continuance Southland Charitable Trust

New Zealand · Charitable trust, 2004. Two of its five trustees have never attended an observance, by requirement of the trust deed.

South House

Annual return to the charities register.

Whether the houses can pay their way

North House

Reserves equal to nine months of running costs.

Contributions, residence, printed material, a small endowment of 1996.

Pays 14 per cent of income to central administration.

Solvent. Boiler replacement deferred for a third year.

Shore House

Reserves equal to five months.

Contributions, residence, the seasonal meal, one municipal grant for the harbour path.

14 per cent.

Solvent. The four-yearly repaint is the largest item and is funded.

Fell House

Reserves equal to four months.

Contributions, residence, and a Scottish grant for the bindery's equipment only.

10 per cent, reduced by the stewardship in 2019 and not yet restored.

Solvent but thin. The oven is deferred and the deferral is printed.

Karst House

Reserves equal to eleven months.

Contributions, translation work billed to outside bodies, and a watershed contract with the regional society.

14 per cent.

Solvent. The only house whose outside earnings exceed its contributions.

Cedar House

Reserves equal to seven months.

Contributions, residence, and a prefectural grant for the winter road.

14 per cent.

Solvent.

River House

Reserves equal to three months.

Contributions, residence, and the county's materials payment for the meal.

14 per cent.

Solvent, narrowly. The seawall fund was spent in 2023 and has not been rebuilt.

Orchard House

Reserves equal to eight months.

Contributions, residence, fruit sold at the gate, and the print shop.

14 per cent.

Solvent. Print stock is carried at nil value, which flatters nobody.

Briar House

Reserves equal to six months.

Contributions and residence.

14 per cent.

Solvent.

Lantern House

Reserves equal to ten months.

Contributions, residence, and a water-rights arrangement of 1998.

14 per cent.

Solvent. Roof and cistern works funded to 2029.

South House

Reserves equal to sixteen months, which the stewardship has asked about twice.

Contributions, residence, and the trust's own small investment.

8 per cent, by distance agreement of 2006.

Solvent. Its accounts arrive last, every year, for the ordinary reason that the post takes three weeks.

Each house keeps its own books, its own bank account, and its own reserve, and is expected to be able to close its doors without asking another house for money. A house holding less than three months of running costs is reported as such to the stewardship and printed in the report.
Central administration — the archive, the correspondent, the treasurer, the Journal, the audits — is funded by a levy on house income, presently 14 per cent, reduced by agreement for two houses. The levy is set annually and has twice been refused by a house meeting, which is permitted and which was both times resolved by lowering it.
A house in difficulty may be lent money by another house, on written terms, with a date. It may not be given money quietly. Two loans are outstanding, both from Karst House, both printed.
A house may be closed. Two have been, in 1981 and 1994, both for money, and the second closure is in the report as a failure of the stewardship rather than of the house.

The February reconciliation

Each entity's books are closed at the end of its financial year, audited or independently examined according to what its jurisdiction requires, and reconciled against the house ledgers by the treasurer in February.

The reconciliation produces three things: the entity accounts, the combined summary printed in the annual report, and the list of discrepancies. The list is printed with the accounts and is never empty; there were nine discrepancies in 2025, of which four remain unresolved and one has been unresolved since 2011.

An unresolved discrepancy is carried forward with its original date and its original figure. It is not written off to make the columns agree, and no figure in a printed report has ever been altered after issue.

Leaving owing money

A person may leave a house owing money. It happens perhaps twice a year, usually a few hundred dollars of board, occasionally more.

What follows: the treasurer writes once, plainly, saying what is owed and offering to write it off if it is a difficulty. If the person says it is a difficulty, or says nothing, it is written off at the year end and appears in the accounts as a bad debt. There is no second letter, no collection agency, no interest, no lien, no legal action for sums under $5,000, and no note against the person's name.

What does not follow: nothing follows. A debt does not affect a person's standing, their entry in the Record, their right to their own papers, their right to attend a public gathering, their right to write to a house and be answered, or their right to come back. A person who owes the Institute money and returns eleven years later is asked how they have been.

$7,400 was written off in 2025. The figure is printed in the report next to the count of people it represents, which was five.

Interests and their declaration

A register of interests is kept for every steward, officer, trustee, and paid post: employment, directorships, property, family relationships within the Institute, and anything sold to a house. It is inspectable at the North House and the summary is printed in the annual report.
No officer votes on a matter in which they have an interest, and the abstention is minuted with the reason. Four abstentions were minuted in 2025.
No house buys goods or services from an officer, a steward, or their household without a tender and a minute. The 2007 procedure came out of a case where a house bought a van from a steward at what everybody agreed was a fair price and which everybody nevertheless felt uneasy about for four years.
No officer or steward, and no member of their household, may be a beneficiary of an Institute entity, hold a mortgage over its property, or be paid a commission on anything.
Family relationships are declared and are not a disqualification. Two of the present stewards are married to one another, which is minuted, and they do not sit together on a correction matter.

What is counted

The Institute counts fourteen things. It has counted most of them since 1979 and has added a measure only four times, on each occasion because something had gone wrong that the existing figures could not show.

It does not count members converted, lives changed, depth of practice, satisfaction, engagement, reach, or anything else that would require somebody to have an opinion about another person's interior. There is no such measure and there will not be one.

Every figure of growth is printed with the burden it creates. A house that doubles its first attendances has doubled the demand on a rota held by the same people, and a report which prints the first figure without the second is not a report but an advertisement.

The work

Meals served

214,880 across ten houses

Plates put in front of a person at a public table. Counted at service by the cook on a tally, not estimated from stock.

BurdenRequires 46 cook-shifts a week and four salaried cooks. Two houses are serving above the number their kitchens were surveyed for, and one of the two knows it.

MisleadsA meal is a plate, not a person. The same eleven people at River House on a Tuesday count as eleven meals, which is right for the kitchen and wrong for anybody reading it as reach.

Repair hours

9,112 hours, of which 2,740 were teaching hours

Hours logged in the repair books at the ten houses, including hours spent teaching somebody else to do the repair.

BurdenTeaching hours are the expensive ones and are rising as a proportion, because the people who can mend things are getting older.

MisleadsIt rewards slow work. The Shore House chair has now absorbed sixty-one hours across six repairs and appears in this figure as sixty-one hours of achievement.

Hours given to public work

51,340 hours by 1,608 people

Hours logged by members on the meal, the hospice rota, the bindery, and the winter road.

BurdenAverages thirty-two hours a person a year, but the median is nine: a fifth of the members do two thirds of the hours, and eleven people did more than four hundred hours each, which the stewardship regards as a problem and not an achievement.

MisleadsHours are self-logged and the people who log most carefully are not the people who work most.

The people

Obligations carried

3,004

Rota turns taken by somebody other than the person to whom they fell, marked in the ledger as work carried.

BurdenEvery carried turn is a turn somebody took twice. The rota clerks report that carrying is concentrated in the same third of each house's list.

MisleadsA high figure can mean a house looks after its members or that a house is short-handed, and the number cannot tell the difference. Both readings are printed.

Rota turns unfilled

417, of which 61 were the hospice rota

Turns that fell to nobody and were not done. Counted by the rota clerk at the week's end.

BurdenThe hospice figure means sixty-one occasions on which somebody sat alone who had been told they would not.

MisleadsNone worth the name. This is the truest number in the report and the most disliked.

First attendances

1,102

People at a public gathering for the first time, counted by the person on the door, without names.

BurdenEach first attendance costs the house about forty minutes of somebody's attention that evening, and the houses that grew fastest last year are the houses now reporting the most unfilled rotas. Growth is a bill, payable later, by the same people.

MisleadsCounting first attendances at all creates a temptation to arrange the year around them. The figure is printed beside the unfilled rotas for that reason and the two are read together.

Separations and returns

134 separations; 46 returns

Periods of separation begun in the year, and attendances resumed after a separation of a year or more.

BurdenA separation releases a rota, which somebody else then holds. The returns figure is not a success and is not reported as one.

MisleadsReturn is easy to read as recovery. Most returns are logistical: a person moved back to the town.

The record

Letters received and answered

4,206 received; 3,918 answered

Items opened by a house, and items answered by a person who had read them.

Burden288 letters were not answered within the year. The correspondent is funded for three days a week and the figure has been the same for four years.

MisleadsAnswered means a reply was sent, not that the reply was any good. Eleven people wrote back to say the reply was not.

Time to answer

Median 19 days; slowest tenth over 94 days

Days between opening and posting a reply. Median and worst decile, from the correspondence book.

BurdenThe slow tenth is almost entirely enquiries needing a steward's decision, which is a stewardship problem and not a postal one.

MisleadsThe median flatters. A person waiting ninety-four days is not consoled by a median of nineteen.

Books reconciled

10 of 10, on time in 8 cases

House ledgers agreed line by line against entity accounts in February.

BurdenThe two late reconciliations both belong to houses with one bookkeeper and a long post.

MisleadsReconciled means agreed, not correct. See the discrepancies.

Discrepancies unresolved

9 raised; 4 unresolved; oldest 2011

Figures that did not agree at reconciliation and have not since been explained.

BurdenEach carried discrepancy is re-examined every February, which costs about a day.

MisleadsA low figure may mean clean books or an incurious treasurer.

Records withheld and records corrected

31 withheld; 12 corrected

Catalogued items withheld in whole or part at the year's end, and items corrected after issue with the correction printed beside them.

BurdenEvery withholding is reviewed annually by the archivist, and the review of thirty-one items takes about three weeks.

MisleadsA falling withholding count can mean openness or that a review has not been done. The dates of last review are printed with the count.

The buildings

Accessibility work

14 completed; 29 outstanding; oldest outstanding 1994

Recommendations made by access surveys, work completed in the year, and recommendations still outstanding with the year they were first made.

BurdenThe outstanding list is the honest measure of what the Institute has decided to be slow about, and it is printed with the original dates for that reason.

MisleadsCompleted counts jobs, not difficulty: a handrail and a lift both count as one.

Buildings opened, closed, and lost

14 opened; 2 closed; 1 lost

Buildings taken into use, given up, and lost by fire, sale, or the end of a lease, since 1972.

BurdenTwo closures were failures of money and are reported as failures of the stewardship. Buildings are easy to open and hard to keep.

MisleadsThe count is of buildings and not of the people who used them.

Not counted

Anything describing a person's progress, depth, sincerity, or transformation.
Conversions, retention, engagement, reach, impressions, or growth rate as such.
Comparisons between houses, or league tables of any kind.
Individual members' hours, published or circulated. The clerk holds them; the report does not.
Anything about a recipient of public work beyond the count of meals and sittings.

The public boundary

Most of what the Institute does with the outside world is answer letters. Four thousand a year: relatives, students, reporters, the county, a woman in Nebraska who has written every March since 1991 about a discrepancy in the 1984 report and who is, on the point at issue, correct.

The house style in these replies is patient, exact, and slightly too pleased with itself. Several of the people below say so. Their letters are printed as they were written.

Families

A relative who writes because somebody they love is attending is answered by a person, at length, without being told anything about that person.

What is done

The correspondent answers with what is public: what happens at a gathering, what the Fellowship asks for, what residence costs, who the steward is, and an invitation to come and see the building on an ordinary Tuesday.
Where a relative is frightened, the reply says plainly that no member is asked to give money, break contact, move in, or account for their family, and that the writer is welcome to test this by visiting.
The member is told that a letter was received, in every case, and is told nothing about what to do with the information.

What is not done

No detail about any person's attendance, standing, health, residence, or contribution is given to a relative, ever, including to a spouse and including to a parent.
No approach is made to a member's family by the Institute, at any time, for any reason.
No relative is enrolled, added to a list, or written to again.

Goes wrongThe refusal to confirm that a person attends at all is experienced as stonewalling, and in one case in 2014 a mother whose son had in fact stopped attending two years earlier spent a further year believing the Institute was concealing him. The Institute has not found a way round this and prints the complaint.

COR/2014/22 — Correspondence with a parent, and the reply

Former members

A person who has left may use every public surface of the Institute without asking, explaining, or returning.

What is done

Public gatherings, the archive, the Journal, the Reader, the meal, the correspondence: all open, on the same terms as to anybody else, with no readmission and no conversation about coming back.
A former member's own papers are given to them on request, at cost of copying, whether or not they left owing money and whether or not they left angry.
Where a former member asks to be removed from the printed roll, they are removed, without a reason being asked for or recorded.

What is not done

No approach, no invitation to return, no anniversary letter, no request for an exit account, no visit, and no record of where a person went.
No warning about a former member is circulated to any house, and no list of people who have left in bad terms exists in any form.
Nothing a former member says in public is answered by reference to why they left.

Goes wrongHouses are sentimental and individual members do write to people who have left, which is their own business and is not the Institute writing. Two former members have said the distinction is thin from the receiving end.

COR/2019/07 — Letter from a former member, and the reply

Critics

Substantial criticism is printed in the Journal or the archive with a reply from a named person, or with no reply where there is nothing to say.

What is done

The Journal has printed eleven critical pieces by people outside the Institute since 1980, unedited, at the writer's word length.
Where the criticism is right, the reply says which part is right and what has changed. Where nothing has changed, the reply says that it has not.
Where the criticism is a matter of judgement rather than fact, the Institute prints both and stops.

What is not done

No critic is described as hostile, misinformed, bitter, unwell, or unready. No critic's private history with the Institute is mentioned in a reply.
No legal threat is made about anything said about the Institute, and none has been made since 1988.
No account of persecution is kept, told, or implied. The Institute has never been persecuted and would find the claim useful, which is why it is forbidden.

Goes wrongThe house style is patient to the point of condescension. A critic wrote in 2022 that being answered by the Institute is like being apologised to by a filing cabinet, and the stewardship, in a reply that proved the point, thanked her for the observation.

COR/2022/14 — Exchange with a critic, printed entire

Researchers

Academic access is granted to the catalogue on the same terms as to anybody, with the withheld material withheld and listed as withheld.

What is done

The finding aid is public. A researcher may read anything open, at a house, during ordinary hours, with a fortnight's notice for the record room.
The Institute does not ask what the research is for, does not require sight of the work, and does not seek a right of reply before publication.
Where an item is withheld, the researcher is given the reference, the reason, the date of the withholding, and the date of the next review.

What is not done

No exclusive access, no favoured researcher, no approval of findings, no requirement to submit a draft, and no funding of anybody who studies the Institute.
No living person's file is opened to a researcher, whatever the person's standing or notoriety.

Goes wrongThree doctoral researchers have complained that the withheld list is itself an argument, and that an institution which publishes what it will not show has arranged to be interesting about it. The archivist agrees this is a fair charge and has no remedy that is not worse.

COR/2016/31 — Correspondence with a doctoral researcher

Journalists

Questions are answered in writing by a named person. Interviews are usually declined and filming almost always is.

What is done

Written questions get written answers within a fortnight, with figures where figures exist, and the whole exchange is catalogued and may be printed by either side.
A reporter may attend any public gathering as a member of the public, sit anywhere, and speak to anybody who wants to speak to them.
Errors in print are answered once, briefly, on the record, and the answer is filed with the article.

What is not done

No filming inside a house while people are at work, no photographs of anyone who has not agreed, no access to a hospice sitting, and no interviews with residents arranged by the Institute.
No press office, no spokesman, no embargo, no background briefing, and nothing said off the record.
No complaint to an editor or a regulator about any piece, ever.

Goes wrongDeclining interviews reliably produces the sentence 'the Institute declined to comment', which is worse than the interview would have been. The stewardship has debated this since 1996 and has never changed the practice, which the correspondent describes in the file as institutional cowardice dressed as restraint.

COR/2011/45 — Correspondence with a newspaper, with the published piece

Neighbours

The people nearest a house are told about anything that will affect them before it happens, and are answered by the steward directly.

What is done

Notice of building work, of any gathering above the ordinary size, and of anything involving vehicles or noise, delivered by hand.
A standing offer at every house: the long room may be used by anybody local, free, on the ordinary terms, and it is used most weeks by things nothing to do with the Institute.
Complaints are answered by the steward in person within a week, in writing afterwards, and are printed in the house's own book whether or not they were justified.

What is not done

No neighbour is invited to a gathering as such, and nobody is called on.
No dispute with a neighbour is described to members as anything other than a dispute with a neighbour.

Goes wrongParking. Every house that grew has a parking problem and every parking problem has taken years too long to admit; the Shore House file on the harbour front runs to nine years and the house was in the wrong for the first six.

COR/2008/12 — Neighbour's complaint and the house's admission

Public agencies

Inspectors, regulators, licensing officers, and safeguarding authorities get full cooperation, complete records, and no negotiation.

What is done

Fire, food, building control, charity regulators, and safeguarding authorities are given whatever they ask for, at once, without a solicitor present and without asking why.
Where a house is found at fault, the finding is printed in the annual report with the date it was put right, or the date it has not been.
Where a matter concerns the safety of a person, the Institute reports it to the proper authority and says so to the person concerned, and does not treat it as an internal matter first.

What is not done

No claim of confidentiality, privilege, conscience, or internal jurisdiction is ever raised against a public authority.
No public official is entertained, given anything, or asked for a favour, and no house accepts a grant conditional on anything but the work it names.

Goes wrongCooperation upward has twice substituted for candour downward: in 2013 a food hygiene finding at River House was corrected within a fortnight and mentioned to the members eleven months later, in the report, which is where they read it.

COR/2013/28 — Notice from a county officer, and the house's reply

Partner organisations

Hospices, libraries, food banks, and a speleological society. The Institute works under their rules and does not recruit on their premises.

What is done

Every arrangement is written, dated, terminable by either side at a month's notice, and names what each side does.
Institute members working with a partner work as volunteers of that partner, under that partner's supervision and safeguarding, and say so.
Where a partner asks the Institute to stop something, it stops first and discusses afterwards.

What is not done

No literature, no Reader, no circular, no invitation, and no conversation about the Practice on a partner's premises or with a person receiving a partner's service.
No partner's name is used in Institute material as an endorsement of the Practice, and no partnership is described as a certification, accreditation, approval, or recognition of anything the Institute believes.

Goes wrongA hospice ended its arrangement with Briar House in 2017 after a volunteer answered a dying man's question about what she believed. The volunteer was not disciplined, the arrangement was not restored, and the house still thinks the hospice was harsh. The hospice was not harsh.

COR/2017/19 — Termination of a hospice arrangement

Owners of former property

Two buildings the Institute used are now owned by other people, who are left alone.

What is done

The current owners were written to once, at purchase, with a note of what the Institute holds about the building and an offer of copies of the plans.
Where a person turns up at a former building, the house that keeps the papers writes to the owner and apologises.
The addresses of former buildings are not printed in Institute material.

What is not done

No visits, no anniversaries, no photographs taken from the road, no plaque, and no request to be let in.
No former building is described as still belonging to the Institute in any sense, ordinary or otherwise.

Goes wrongIt happens anyway. The owner of the Seawall building has written three times in eleven years about people at the gate, and the Institute's letters of apology have got shorter each time, which she has noticed and mentioned.

COR/2020/09 — Letter from the owner of a former building

Refusal

The Institute refuses things. It declines interviews, filming, joint statements, endorsements, speaking invitations from bodies it has no view about, requests for member lists, and requests to comment on other organisations.
A refusal is given as a refusal, with the word no in it, by a named person, in one paragraph, with the reason. It is not deferred, not referred onward, and not answered with a form.
The Institute does not refuse a public authority, a safeguarding enquiry, a person asking for their own papers, or a former member asking to be removed from the roll. There is nothing else on that list.

Money in ordinary use

The rate

What a night at a house costs, published in full, and adjusted in private by the steward to what the person has.

Said as: “the rate” and “the adjusted rate”. Never the contribution, never what you can give.

Held by: steward

Kept in: The board card at every house door, printed with the full rate and the sentence about adjustment.

Marked: entered-beside

Done by: The steward says the rate and the adjustment aloud at arrival, before the person has to ask, and enters the adjusted nights as a number without a name.

Fails as: People who can pay ask for the adjustment and people who cannot do not. Saying it aloud helps and does not fix it.

Refusing a contribution

Money is declined where accepting it would make a house reluctant to disagree with the person giving it.

Said as: “declined, with thanks, as too large”. The formula is fixed and is used in the letter.

Held by: treasurer

Kept in: The declining letter, one paragraph, and the entry in the schedule of declined contributions.

Marked: held-outside

Done by: Any sum above $25,000 from one person in one year goes to the stewardship, which asks the single question and minutes the answer.

Fails as: The threshold has not been raised since 1998 and now catches sums that are not really large, so the stewardship spends its February on this rather than on the houses.

The levy

Fourteen per cent of house income, which pays for the archive, the letters, and the audits.

Said as: “the levy”, and at three houses “the fourteen”.

Held by: treasurer

Kept in: The levy sheet, one page per house, sent in March and returned signed.

Marked: reconciliation

Done by: Set annually by the stewardship; a house meeting may refuse it, and two have.

Fails as: It is levied on income rather than on surplus, so a house with a large public meal pays for the privilege of feeding people. Fell House has argued this since 2016 and is right.

Writing off

A debt owed by somebody who has left is written off at the year end and printed as a bad debt.

Said as: “written off”. Not forgiven, not released, not cleared.

Held by: treasurer

Kept in: The one letter, and the bad-debt line in the printed accounts.

Marked: closed-entry-retained

Done by: One letter, an offer, and then silence. Nothing is entered against the person.

Fails as: The single letter still reaches people at a bad time, and two former members have said it read as a summons rather than an offer. The wording was changed in 2021 and one of them says it is no better.

The register of interests

Who holds what, who is related to whom, and who sold a house anything.

Said as: “entered in the register”, “declared and stood down”.

Held by: treasurer

Kept in: A bound ledger at the North House, one page per person, and the printed summary.

Marked: referred

Done by: Declared on appointment and confirmed each February; abstentions minuted with the reason.

Fails as: It records interests and cannot record loyalties, and the stewardship of a small institution is mostly loyalties.

The unresolved discrepancy

A figure that does not agree, carried forward with its date rather than adjusted away.

Said as: “carried forward, unresolved”.

Held by: archivist

Kept in: The discrepancy list, printed at the back of the annual report every year since 1979.

Marked: referred

Done by: The treasurer lists it, the archivist keeps the original sheet, and nobody is permitted to make the columns agree by decision.

Fails as: One discrepancy of $2,180 has been carried since 2011 and is now more famous than it is important, which is its own kind of distortion.

The words used

contribution, wage, salary, rate, board, cost, debt, shortfall, reserve, levy, grant, bad debt, written off.

Offering, gift of self, seed, sowing, energy exchange, abundance, prosperity, covenant, tithe, dues of the heart, love offering, investment in the work, and every other phrase which makes a payment sound like a state of mind.

Also not used: supporter, friend of the Institute, patron, benefactor, partner, and the whole vocabulary by which giving money is turned into a kind of belonging.

Standing limits

No payment, contribution, bequest, or debt affects standing, attendance, the Fellowship, an office, a rota, a return, or anything written in the Record.
No money is asked for at a gathering, at a first attendance, in a reply to an enquiry, or in any paper concerning an illness, a death, a separation, or a correction matter.
No contribution is named in public, on a wall, on a plaque, on a room, or from the front of a room.
No contribution may carry a condition about publication, appointment, admission, or what a house may say.
The Institute does not solicit. It publishes its accounts and its shortfall and asks nobody for anything.
Nobody is asked to sell property, spend savings, take a loan, alter a will, or name the Institute in one.
Work is never credited against board, and board is never reduced in exchange for labour.
A person's financial circumstances are known to the steward who adjusted their rate and to nobody else, and are not entered in the Record.
A debt is a civil matter between two parties. It reaches no other part of a person's dealings with the Institute, including access to their own papers.
Hardship is given, not lent, and is never conditional on attendance or explanation.
No officer, steward, or member of their household takes a personal interest in Institute property or a commission on its dealings.
Figures are printed as they stand, including shortfalls, deferrals, bad debts, and discrepancies that have not been resolved.

The accounts, the return of measures, and the letters quoted here are catalogued in the archive. What people who have attended say about all of it, including those who think poorly of it, is at recorded accounts.