if ANA is a registered nonprofit organization in the US, it is mandatory that they disclose their annual budget and expenditure. i dont know much about what ANA has been doing in the past with budget transparency policies, but i know that non profits will have a record of their budget on disclosure. like panditraj said, and like ANA has disclosed its 2005 annual budget report, the information has to be available to public. and once this information is out, anyone who is not satisfied or feels being cheated can file a claim. so let's wait for ANA to print out its report.

in fact, to the organizers of ANA convention: to start this thread already says clearly that some specific changes need to be made. i know it is all voluntary and takes a lot of effort, but if anyone in the Board feels burdened to do it, and Defends his stance of careless planning to voluntarism, i think he/she should quit and let someone else be on that place. that is why the question that E-Neka raises is very valid. ANA is a nepalese organization representing Nepalese all across the US, Why then, is a free and fair election not conducted in the convention or at a similar instance where more Nepalese will be able to choose someone who represents them. A leader selected from elections in ANA convention is yet not a complete representation of all nepalese across US, but it is a better representation than what you have now. If you declare there is going to be election, there will be contestants with their agendas, and there will be competition.That way we will have someone who has an agenda at hand, and if he/she doesn't bring an output, we will have the right to sack him/her. Isnt that fair enough?

financial transparency is important, and i hope you will bring that out sooner or later.

ANA प्रति कसैको चाख छैन कि क्या हो? चुनाबमा लडाइँ भिडाईँ नै छैन बा।
नाम सुन्दा त ठुलै होला जस्तो सुनिन्छ।
स्यानो रेऽछ चौतारी जस्तै।

dc_girl,

"If ANA is a registered nonprofit organization in the US, it is mandatory that they disclose their annual budget and expenditure."

I have been an accountant for last 17 years, a practicing accountant for last 10 years (almost 7 years in the US), have at least 18 non-profit clients but never heard of this rule (please enlighten me). As far as I know if you have public contributions in excess of $2 million (in CA) you have to have an audit committee and annual audit barring few exceptions (I have heard New York is thinking of a threshold of $150k). If ANA was a governmental unit then what you said is true.

Just because there were some shortcomings?? during Texas convention doesn't make ANA a body full of cheats. Personally, I enjoyed the atmosphere, enjoyed seeing so many Nepalese at one place and enjoyed meeting friends (some of them after 20 years) and if the momos were sold for 5 bucks I would have enjoyed even more (no complaints though, after all we elected to live in capitalistic society where price is determined by supply and demand).

As far as the transparency goes, as a member of the society even I would like to see ANA more transparent about their elections, budgeting and expenditures. But just because they didn?t come up to one?s expectation doesn?t make them crooks.

My kudos to ANA executives and the Texas society for making this happen in 2005 and best wishes to New York for 2006.

well.. ya'll should be happy that ANA is atleast doing this annual convention..... stop talking shit coz i really dont want dem to stop doing it...

I don't know the people behind the Dallas ANA conference.
But I know that organising such a large conference is NOT a joke.

If it's any help, here are some experience-based random thoughts on organising activities, workshops, seminars conferences, and gatherings for a large number of fellow-santaans of Nepal Aama:

1) No matter what you do and how you do, always keep in mind that yours is a THANKLESS job -- yes, an utterly THANKLESS job. It's easy to herd cats in a
single-file formation for 20 minutes in Tundikhel than to please our compatriots!!

2) If people praise you at all for your efforts and hardwork, be genuinely surprised,
and then pause to savour the compliments, for they will be rare. Most of us Nepalis
do NOT know how to give and take condition-free compliments. But giving unwarranted
gaali is second nature to us. Accept this -- our collective "nepali-pan" -- as another charming manifestation of what makes us truly Nepalis.

3) Always assume that People will think that you do what you do for the money.
Never mind that you might have spent lots of money out of your own pocket for this community experience. Be aware that except for your own family, everyone else will always think that you must have made a lot of money by organising community events. That's the way it goes, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon. [One way to deal with this perception could be to print beforehand on tickets that all relevant accounts would be audited AFTER the event and the details would be put up on a Web site, and follow through on this promise.]

4) If no one stops to ask, "How I can help you to make this thing better", don't be bothered, and do your own thing anyway. Most of the time, people want you to do
big things so that they MAY have the immense satisfaction of seeing you fail. The
joy that most well-to-do Nepalis take in others' misfortune/bad-luck appears to some deep evolutionary hunger for survival.

5) Just do your own thing, share your avoidable mistakes with next year's committee, shrug off the criticisms and move on -- without looking back.

6) Remember, you don't have to be nice to ALL the Nepalis ALL the time, just be nice to MOST of them at MOST of the time -- and that should be fine.

oohi
"one other bhookta bhogi"
ashu

PLEASE READ:

"The joy that most well-to-do Nepalis take in others' misfortune/bad-luck appears to some deep evolutionary hunger for survival."

AS

"The joy that most well-to-do Nepalis take in others' misfortune/bad-luck appears to serve some deep evolutionarily motivated hunger for survival.

TRY THIS EXPERIMENT AT HOME: In a room of full of Nepalis, start criticizing somebody who is NOT there in the room, and then sit back and watch how everyone else joins in the collective bashing of that absent person often with NO shred of evidence. Watch how no one ever rises to defend the absent person."

oohi
ashu

I support partly what Ashu says here. The organizing of convention
is not an easy job. Its more difficult when its more social gathering
than its professional gathering. In professional gathering, people
who attend it are more professionals and do not have much expectations
other than good room, good timing, good presentation material, audio
and visual system. Most of them neither care the things not mentioned
in their brochure. But, in social gatherings like ANA convention, people
gather their with multiple objectives and except expo people, no one
is there for biz or professional purpose. Well, some are there to find
their old friend, and some are there to make make new friend even to
search a person that fits as spouse for the rest of life. Its so complicated.

Now, Ashu's second part is that "don't care what people say here"
stuffs. It looks to me that Agulot khako .... ke bijuli dekhda tarshinchha,
bhane jasto. I wonder whether Ashu is trying to pour his continued
battled with some GBNCers who constantly criticize him since
his GBNC days. Because he is not in mood to tell the ANA officers that
they should make the organization more open and transparent.
Look at the election procedure? Do you believe that they don't have
enough number of people interested in their organization, such that
they needed proposer and supporter from same family member?
(it looks to me that they are from same family). Why should they
have election in that way? They won't disseminate information.
As Dada_Giri and others said that they were surprised to see the
Nirbirodh elections ... wow... ?

Ashu failed to recommend ANA officers to correct their mistakes
and make the organization more open. He is not interested in that
because his main purpose is that "Hey, I was also in GBNC executive
position long time back, I also organized similar programs, people
criticized me for my mistakes .... I was not treated like the Emperor
in Emperor's clothes ... but pointed out all my mistakes ... I don't
like someone point out my mistakes. .... I am a man of perfect ...
I only deserve compliments ..... ".


Ashu, your previous postings is fully prejudiced and is directed not
to the posters in this thread but to settle your Purano hisab with
former GBNCers who were constantly vigilant on you. This is the
fact, whether you like or dislike. Readers should understand this
fact. Otherwise, why failed to recommend ANA be more transparent
and open. He said what he wanted to convey to his former GBNC
critics.

eNeka.

ditto- to your comments
hats of to the organizers- it was a lot of hard work and sacrifices
looking forward to ANA 2006 in NYC

Remember that this website is also official website of GBNC.
Type http://www.gbnc.org/

you will be directed to

http://www.gbnc.org/sajha/html/index.cfm

with GBNC logo. So, the major real readership in this forum
comes from GBNC. When a former GBNC president or other
officers when speak in this forum, take their word with a
grain of salt. They might have some hidden agenda....
to settle their old unsettled agendas .....



eNeka.

This is to inform anyone concerned that the thread titled "ORGANIZERS CHEATED AT ANA2005" has been deleted due to the request made by the originator of the thread and the organizer of ANA Dallas. There was a little misunderstanding - which I am pleased to note has been resolved offline amongst the parties involved. Since it has been resolved, Sajha is not intent on continuing to propagate the message that the organizers cheated at the ANA, hence the removal.

At the afterthoughts of any event there will always be few things here and there that could have been better. I do believe that discussions here in sajha will provide a general feedback (which needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, as is with any discussions in kurakani) to the organizers and any future organizers. While comments regarding organizational issues can be taken in a positive light, accusatory postings that question the legality of any entity could possibly provide negative bias in the mind of readers without any proofs or legality of the issues.

I do realize there were some good content posted by other posters and I would be happy to email you a copy of your posting if you are interested. Contact admin@sajha.com for a copy of your own posting(s) in that thread.

Although sajha encourages freedom of posting on any topic, I would like to urge individuals to settle personal differences offline without involving other posters/readers at large.

Best wishes

I have enabled the rest of the messages from that thread here since they don't have anything to do with the issue in question.

Best wishes

san jyu,
originator le removal ko request and "originator and ana beeach ko resolution" pani thread ma rakhi diyeko bhaye nispachye hunthyo hoina ra??

kina bhane ORIGINATOR initiated it is SAJHA. and you admit that there was a DIFFERENCE. (MISDOING??? we may never know) MISUNDERSTANDING???

Forum's intent is to preserve discussion. Just because it was resolved between the parties does not mean that the public forum used for that discussion need to be removed. My opinion it was that discussion that caused the resolution.

By removing the thread, Sajha in itself has nothing to gain unless it is related to either party. If it is an independent site then it should allow all the posting to remain as it is.
Personally, sajha did lose its reputation as an INDEPENDENT DISCUSSION place.

YOU HAVE A NOTE SAYING THAT
The opinions here represent the opinions of the individual posters, and not of Sajha.com.
You also have a big DISCLAIMER.

REMOVAL OF THE WHOLE THREAD IS VERY BIASED. Let it be resolved by READERS whether the matter is resolved or not. I am sure most of the reader were analysing the fact and asking for proof rather than making judgement.

what you mean is RED CROSS organization will ask all the forum that held the discussion about the misappropriation of 9-11 fund to be removed and it was removed because the originator settled?

there should be a right RESOLUTION. If ANA thinks/thought that the individual was WRONG then they should post their RESPONSE and LET IT BE. And the anonymous user should also be behind the accusation made in the public forum; right??

BY THE WAY READERS AND ANA MEMBERS SHOULD ASK FOR MORE TRANSPARENCY IN THE EXPENSE AND INCOME STATEMENT PROVIDED. ESPECIALLY ANA CONVENTION INCOME AND EXPENSES .. THE TREASURER'S REPORT IS LIKE AN CHEQUE BOOK ITEM NOT A BIT DETAILED.


------just my thout....
but what do i know??? i certainly do not know as much as San dai..

hatteri....
san dai le power chha bhanera magic garnu hunchha ani mero posting ko relevency nai chhaina..

this is my posting in another thread I think it might be relevant here now...

http://www.sajha.com/sajha/html/OpenThread.cfm?forum=2&ThreadID=22397#reply

Posted on 07-09-05 9:43 PM Reply | Notify Admin
just cruised through the reconcilliation available from the web. [ btw i am not an accountant or CPA but i could deduce following. MY EXPERIENCE IS BASED ON HANDLING PERSONAL BUSINESS ACCOUNT] I may have missed something pls. feel free to add on
1. it looks like they advance $10,000 to each of the convention
2. Each convention's income/expenses is handled by AN INDIVIDUAL [ or THE ADVANCED COMITTE .. cannot deduce]
3. Convention's INCOME/EXPENSE is not the responsibility of ANA [ looks like]
4. assigned INDIVIDUAL [of item 2] returns the ADVANCE [ i did not see this in phoenix ana .. may be i missed it.. for the denver it is there 10,000]
5. they include the so called income as PROCEEDS from the convention as a whole or ACCOUNT CLOSING for convention and Specify PROCEEDS. [ done for various accounting practices]

my observation is they rather take a proceed in addition to advance [ inspite of including income and expense of the convention]. reason are various:
a. accounting ease [ they need not save the receipts etc. because they are just mentioning proceeds... somebody else is giving them a balance i.e. profit so nobody cries foul esp. irs audit.. + other various reasons]
b. if they include income and exp of the convention then they are liable for any misappropriations. [ deniability. ]
c. advance is an INVESTMENT and PROCEED is the ROI. and ORIGINAL investment is RETURNED as advance back PAYMENT.
[ matrix.. food for you. I think u r an expert in FINANCE and ACCOUNTING.. pls review]

PS: pls. somebody with accounting expertise look at it and comment on my finding.

Thapap,

I am not aware of the details regarding the resolution between the originator and the ANA. However I am glad that a resolution has been reached.

As the moderator of this forum, I try to be flexible regarding user requests. If a user posts something and later changes his mind, I have to respect thier freedom to have their post removed. In this case the originator and the organizer (who was involved in the thread) both requested that the thread be removed, hence I removed the thread.

On further contemplation, I realized that some of the postings on that thread were unrelated to the topic in question so they didn't deserve to be deleted hence I have put them back in this thread.

Please note that every poster has full right to ask that their posting be removed. As mentioned in the note below "Please send an email to admin@sajha.com using a valid email address if you want any posting to be considered for deletion. Your request will be handled on a one to one basis."

San - I haven't gotten a chance to say this before so here I go - thanks for the great work you have done over the years for Sajha.

To your point of a user changing his or her mind after posting, any thoughts on having an "edit" function that a user can use to edit a previous post? I have seen this on some other discussion forums and it is particularly useful if there have been typos and misspellings in your post ( I am sure it has other benefits too) . Just a suggestion.

Regards.

eNeka writes:

"I wonder whether Ashu is trying to pour his continued battled with some GBNCers who constantly criticize him since his GBNC days."


Since you brought this up, I think that a VERIFIABLY TRUE clarification is necessary.

I look back upon my GBNC days with great pride.
There are two parts to my GBNC career.

Part 1:

When I became GBNC president, that is, after taking over from Sanjay Manandhar, I spent a lot of time practically recruiting many of the team-members myself. The result was that we had a first rate team of Raju Pradhan, Sunil Shakya et al.

It was at that time, during my presidency, that GBNC FIRST started hosting momo parties, mailing out newsletters and GBNC phone directories and so forth.
Accounts were made clear and transparent too.

If you ask old-timers in Boston, and I am sure they'll be happy to support what I have said here. In fact, in Kathmandu these days, I still hang out with a number of Nepalis whom I first met as GBNC president in Boston.

*******
Part II

This happened when Rajesh Babu Shrestha was the president of GBNC.

I had had a jhagada with Shailesh Nath Gongal (SNG) over some non-GBNC matters. That jhagada could have been resolved by having a face-to-face conversation (my usual method for resolving misunderstandings and jhagada). In fact, I offered to meet Shailesh face to face and resolve it.

But in the hands of Shailesh Nath Gongal, that jhagada took a life of its own.

To his credit, he was able to:

a) recruit others to support him,
b) tell them his side of the story,
c) paint a picture of how he was wronged by me,
d) show me in the worst possible light, and then
e) and get a chorus of GBNC-wallahs to to bad-mouth me personally and publicly.

At that time, I was a bit down on my luck in my personal life; so I took the hit -- right
in my stomach, again and again. It was painful, but, then, I ended up experiencing
a rainbow of human emotions that I had only read about in fat Russin novels!!

Looking back, I think I NEEDED, for my own maturity, that particular experience at that time in my life . . .that experience of being backstabbed, attacked and publicly ridiculed . . . for the result has been that I have survived all that quite all right with a smile and with my head high, and have become much, much stronger in so many ways. I remain in touch with many of my Boston friends, and life has gone on quite well for me -- both personally and professionally.

Today, I harbor NO ill-feeling toward Shailesh Nath or toward GBNC. They did to me what they had to do, what they were capable of doing at the time. Sure, much of what they did was NOT right or fair.

But then, who says, "Life is fair?"
It isn't.
And I have learnt to live with that fact.

oohi
ashu

san jyu,
as always i always appreciate your hard work and u should get lot of kudos for that.
once again thank you for your side of story.

i meant no harm neither foul but am just trying to point to somethings that may be a better alternative for the forum as a whole. what say u?

One can always misuse the forum and its content for their personal benefit. This thread may be taken as a prime example.
This individual was not able to strike a deal with the organization and posts a version of it and forces an outcome. [one side of it]
may be there is some other side of story. [organization being at fault]

i do not think it is a right precedent to have something removed. Reason, author has to be accountable for what they write about.

[BANDUK bata chuteko goli ra mukh bata boleko boli firta lina mildaina]

One can APOLOGIZE in the forum and move on BUT just to take the whole thing back as NOTHING HAS HAPPENED is a REAL BAD PRECEDENT.

just my thots...
=========
but what do i know???

Well, it certainly is good to see this thread back again. It is indeed a privilege to have the opportunity to undo the act that one did, although the posters were matured, sane adults and posted the accusations and rebuttals in their capacity, perfectly understanding the nature and course it might take here in Sajha.

I guess, it is indeed the hallmark of sajha, where the moderator has been remarkably prompt in the request by the sajhaities. I assent with my fellow sajhaities that San deserves much kudos.

Regarding the editing option of already posted materials, we have to look at two side of the coin. At one hand, yes, we can edit and correct the misspelled words and other typos, but that would definitely take away certain spontaneity from the posting, and with it, a certain 'attraction'; so to speak. Many discussions and bantering follows a certain unplanned, on the spur of the moment equivocal postings, which actually keeps the 'masalas' alive, thus, before actually adding that function, we should really look at the pros and cons. MAYBE, too much flexibility, would cease to help keep the spontaneity factor, and also a poster can go and edit the entire piece at his whim. I guess unless the posting is largely personal and utterly disgusting; it should remain as posted. Of course we can request to take away our individual posting on our personal request to San, as he mentioned earlier.

Now, about the deleted contents; agreed that moderator had given this privilege to every Sajhaities to be able to request to remove their postings, never mind that those postings were relevant to many Nepalese. What concerns me is: would it not send a dangerous precedent for the future postings in the sense that a poster can request not only their postings to be removed, but also any other postings. I and Chatmandu had not requested to delete our posting, then to do so, on Chayaure ko dokan and ANA people's request is a little too much privilege for the sane adults who actually choose this medium to voice their displeasure. Those postings were not a personal attack, nor was it done in bad taste. Would it be a wise thing to do to delete OTHER'S postings just because those wise people apparently decided to settle the score in private? Indeed if it was a personal attack or if our comments were actually senseless act of spreading rumor, it would be justified, but I fail to see anything as such in our comments.

If that had to be removed at their whim, then so be it, but I just thought I should bring it to San's notice that it indeed sends a bad precedent. So long as we do not make a personal unacceptable attacks on the two parties concerned, neither of them should have enough authority to request OUR postings to be removed as well. Regardless, one's got to do what one's got to do, but I hope I made some sense.

Bar that, I acknowledge the difficulty and extra ordinary effort that the San has put for Sajha. I hope you would take it as a concerned opinion from huge Sajha enthusiast, and a well wisher.

IndisGuise:)

".....I acknowledge the difficulty and extra ordinary effort that the San has put for Sajha...."

Read: "....I acknowledge the difficulty and extraordinary effort that San has put for Sajha...."

P.S: Ignore the typos. :)

Sabaile San lai Namste garne ni. Good work.