Over the past two years, the club’s directors changed the nonprofit’s bylaws to deemphasize membership control, then put up a new sign with a new name: Maple Rock. This fall and winter, a group calling itself “Washtenaw Alano Club Members” fought back. After negotiations failed, they filed a lawsuit against the board, leading to the February election of three WAC Members-backed candidates and the March resignation of almost the entire previous board. The suit has since been dismissed.
Established in 1969, the club is one of numerous Alano Clubs nationwide that host regular meetings and other social events for people in recovery. Group members follow the twelve-step model of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and the clubs are considered the local AA outlets in their communities. However, AA’s guiding document, the “Twelve Traditions,” strongly cautions that “problems of money, property and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim.” For that reason, no incorporated group may use the AA name. The Washtenaw club, like others around the nation, worked around that restriction by forming a nonprofit under the “Alano” name. So club members took notice last year when the “Alano Club” sign was replaced by one that read “Maple Rock.”
Larry S., a club member and former president, formed the WAC Members group (in the AA tradition of anonymity, he didn’t want his last name used). He says that at least since he joined the club in 1984 members had paid dues and elected the club’s board. But he and other members didn’t even notice at first when the board, then led by executive director Ron Plunkett and president Muir Frey, changed the organization to a directorship structure. In 2013 the board rewrote the bylaws, adding “dues-paying” to most references to “members” and eliminating a membership committee. Larry says members who attempted to pay dues were instead invited to make a contribution to the club, and in general no one thought much of the change.
“It looked like things were being taken care of,” Larry says. “They did a lot of upgrades to the building. Nobody was drumming us for money. It felt like everything was under control … But unfortunately, the spiritual underpinning of the club was being hollowed out.”
The new sign brought that issue to the surface. Members were concerned at the loss of the Alano name, which makes it easy for an alcoholic seeking support in a new town to find a place to go. They also took umbrage at the fact that Frey had filed paperwork with the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs to change the group’s full name to “Maple Rock Recovery Center.” They thought the directors might be planning to offer ancillary services akin to a rehab center–an idea contrary to AA’s identity as a nonprofessional fellowship for alcoholics.
“‘Recovery center’ is a sort of nebulous term which may have led to some confusion,” says Matt Statman, one of only two board members who made it through the March regime change. “The board was really just interested in upgrading the facilities and property in a way that made it more functional and appealing in hopes of attracting more people in need of support.”
Larry says he doesn’t wish to paint the previous board as “the bad guys.” He says members, particularly old-timers like himself, had “taken their eye off the ball” and become lax on paying dues. Meanwhile the organization had amassed some debt, though how much depends on who you ask. Larry says members of the previous board told him the bills amounted to $30,000. Misha Hammond, who returned to the board in April after previously serving as its secretary from 2010 to 2012, recalls a constant debt of $17,000 during that time frame.
Larry says it was not uncommon for the club to carry some debt. It borrowed $80,000 to buy its current property, a former schoolhouse, in 1987. In the past, Larry says, a more engaged membership would have pulled together to pay the bills, as it did to renovate the building’s parking lot and roof and eventually pay off the mortgage. “I don’t blame [the previous board] from this point of view: they did run a membership campaign, and it kind of fell flat, and they had this debt,” Larry says. Plunkett and Frey declined comment, but new president Khalid Hanifi reports that the club’s debt was paid off by the time most of the previous board departed in March.
The new board held an advisory vote in April to fill the vacated seats. The newly elected members restored the Washtenaw Alano Club name, and Hanifi says they are working to reinvigorate committees and other forms of member participation in club governance.
“It’s a place where the members need to have an investment in keeping the thing going, and I don’t think that’s always been the case at the club,” Hanifi says. “Frankly, I think that’s what set the stage for those guys going off and doing the Maple Rock thing, because there weren’t enough people paying attention and staying involved in the club.
“Really, that’s what we’re trying to do now: make sure the members stay involved and stay active in shepherding the club into the future.”
