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TWELVE CONCEPTS FOR WORLD SERVICE
by Bill W.
as adopted by the 12th Annual
General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous
on April 26, 1962


Published by GENERAL SERVICE OFFICE
of ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS®
475 Riverside Drive New York, NY 10115
Mail address:
P.O. Box 459
Grand Central Station
New York, NY 10163

Copyright © 1962 Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

All rights reserved but excerpts from this publication may
be reproduced with the written permission of the publisher.
For information write to A.A. World Services, Inc., P.O. Box
459, Grand Central Station, New York, N.Y. 10163.

1st Printing 1962
18th Printing 1987
21st Printing 1990
22nd Printing 1991
23rd Printing 1992
24th Printing 1993
25th Printing 1996
26th Printing 1997





PREFACE

The "Twelve Concepts for World Service" were written by Bill
W. in 1962. His introduction to that first printing,
following this preface, explains its purpose, as relevant
today as at that time.

Over the years the size of the Fellowship and the
responsibilities of its service entities have grown
immensely. Therefore, some details of the original text
have become out-dated and were changed in editions of the
Concepts since that time, and a number of bracketed inserts
were added.

Following the recommendations of an ad hoc committee of the
A.A. General Service Board, the 1985 General Service
Conference recommended that future publication of the
Concepts in "The A.A. Service Manual" and the booklet
"Twelve Concepts For World Service" be in the original 1962
version, with required factual changes provided as numbered
footnotes at the end of each chapter. The only exceptions
are certain footnotes written by Bill W. in the years
following the first appearance of the Concepts: these are
marked by asterisks that appear on the same pages as the
text they refer to.

A "short form" of the Concepts was prepared by the 1974
General Service Conference for inclusion in the "A.A.
Service Manual." It now appears in the Bylaws of the
General Service Board, printed in that Manual, and also
precedes the introduction to the Twelve Concepts.

General Service Office September 1985





The Twelve Concepts (Short Form)



I. Final responsibility and ultimate authority for A.A.
world services should always reside in the collective
conscience of our whole Fellowship.

II. The General Service Conference of A.A. has become, for
nearly every practical purpose, the active voice and the
effective conscience of our whole Society in its world
affairs.

III. To insure effective leadership, we should endow each
element of A. A.— the Conference, the General Service Board
and its service corporations, staffs, committees, and
executives—with a traditional "Right of Decision."

IV. At all responsible levels, we ought to maintain a
traditional "Right of Participation," allowing a voting
representation in reasonable proportion to the
responsibility that each must discharge.

V. Throughout our structure, a traditional "Right of Appeal"
ought to prevail, so that minority opinion will be heard and
personal grievances receive careful consideration.

VI. The Conference recognizes that the chief initiative and
active responsibility in most world service matters should
be exercised by the trustee members of the Conference acting
as the General Service Board.

VII. The Charter and Bylaws of the General Service Board are
legal instruments, empowering the trustees to manage and
conduct world service affairs. The Conference Charter is not
a legal document; it relies upon tradition and the A.A.
purse for final effectiveness.

VIII. The trustees are the principal planners and
administrators of overall policy and finance. They have
custodial oversight of the separately incorporated and
constantly active services, exercising this through their
ability to elect all the directors of these entities.

IX. Good service leadership at all levels is indispensable
for our future functioning and safety. Primary world service
leadership, once exercised by the founders, must necessarily
be assumed by the trustees.

X. Every service responsibility should be matched by an
equal service authority, with the scope of such authority
well defined.

XI. The trustees should always have the best possible
committees, corporate service directors, executives, staffs,
and consultants. Composition, qualifications, induction
procedures, and rights and duties will always be matters of
serious concern.

XII. The Conference shall observe the spirit of A.A.
tradition, taking care that it never becomes the seat of
perilous wealth or power; that sufficient operating funds
and reserve be its prudent financial principle; that it
place none of its members in a position of unqualified
authority over others; that it reach all important decisions
by discussion, vote, and, whenever possible, by substantial
unanimity; that its actions never be personally punitive nor
an incitement to public controversy; that it never perform
acts of government, and that, like the Society it serves, it
will always remain democratic in thought and action.





The Twelve Concepts (Long Form)



I. The final responsibility and ultimate authority for A.A.
world services should always reside in the collective
conscience of our whole Fellowship.

II. When, in 1955, the A.A. groups confirmed the permanent
charter for their General Service Conference, they thereby
delegated to the Conference complete authority for the
active maintenance of our world services and thereby made
the Conference—excepting for any change in the Twelve
Traditions or in Article 12 of the Conference Charter—the
actual voice and the effective conscience for our whole
Society.

III. HI As a traditional means of creating and maintaining a
clearly defined working relation between the groups, the
Conference, the A.A. General Service Board and its several
service corporations, staffs, committees and executives, and
of thus insuring their effective leadership, it is here
suggested that we endow each of these elements of world
service with a traditional "Right of Decision."

IV. Throughout our Conference structure, we ought to
maintain at all responsible levels a traditional "Right of
Participation," taking care that each classification or
group of our world servants shall be allowed a voting
representation in reasonable proportion to the
responsibility that each must discharge.

V. Throughout our world service structure, a traditional
"Right of Appeal" ought to prevail, thus assuring us that
minority opinion will be heard and that petitions for the
redress of personal grievances will be carefully considered.

VI. On behalf of A.A. as a whole, our General Service
Conference has the principal responsibility for the
maintenance of our world services, and it traditionally has
the final decision respecting large matters of general
policy and finance. But the Conference also recognizes that
the chief initiative and the active responsibility in most
of these matters should be exercised primarily by the
Trustee members of the Conference when they act among
themselves as the General Service Board of Alcoholics
Anonymous.

VII. The Conference recognizes that the Charter and the
Bylaws of the General Service Board are legal instruments:
that the Trustees are thereby fully empowered to manage and
conduct all of the world service affairs of Alcoholics
Anonymous. It is further understood that the Conference
Charter itself is not a legal document: that it relies
instead upon the force of tradition and the power of the
A.A. purse for its final effectiveness.

VIII. The Trustees of the General Service Board act in two
primary capacities: (a) With respect to the larger matters
of over-all policy and finance, they are the principal
planners and administrators. They and their primary
committees directly manage these affairs. (b) But with
respect to our separately incorporated and constantly active
services, the relation of the Trustees is mainly that of
full stock ownership and of custodial oversight which they
exercise through their ability to elect all directors of
these entities.

IX. Good service leaders, together with sound and
appropriate methods of choosing them, are at all levels
indispensable for our future functioning and safety. The
primary world service leadership once exercised by the
founders of A.A. must necessarily be assumed by the Trustees
of the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous.

X. Every service responsibility should be matched by an
equal service authority—the scope of such authority to be
always well defined whether by tradition, by resolution, by
specific job description or by appropriate charters and
bylaws.

XI. While the Trustees hold final responsibility for A.A.'s
world service ad ministration, they should always have the
assistance of the best possible standing committees,
corporate service directors, executives, staffs, and
consultants. Therefore the composition of these underlying
committees and service boards, the personal qualifications
of their members, the manner of their induction into
service, the systems of their rotation, the way in which
they are related to each other, the special rights and
duties of our executives, staffs, and consultants, together
with a proper basis for the financial compensation of these
special workers, will always be matters for serious care and
concern.

XII. General Warranties of the Conference: in all its
proceedings, the General Service Conference shall observe
the spirit of the A.A. Tradition, taking great care that the
conference never becomes the seat of perilous wealth or
power; that sufficient operating funds, plus an ample
reserve, be its prudent financial principle; that none of
the Conference Members shall ever be placed in a position of
unqualified authority over any of the others; that all
important decisions be reached by discussion, vote, and,
whenever possible, by substantial unanimity; that no
Conference action ever be personally punitive or an
incitement to public controversy; that, though the
Conference may act for the service of Alcoholics Anonymous,
it shall never perform any acts of government; and that,
like the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous which it serves,
the Conference itself will always remain democratic in
thought and action.





Introduction



The "Twelve Concepts for World Service" to be described in
this Manual are an interpretation of A.A.'s world service
structure. They reveal the evolution by which it has arrived
in its present form, and they detail the experience and
reasoning on which our operation stands today. These
Concepts therefore aim to record the "why" of our service
structure in such a fashion that the highly valuable
experience of the past, and the lessons we have drawn from
that experience, can never be forgotten or lost.

Quite rightly, each new generation of A.A. world servants
will be eager to make operational improvements. Unforeseen
flaws in the present structure will doubtless show up
later on. New service needs and problems will arise that
may make structural changes necessary. Such alterations
should certainly be effected, and these contingencies
squarely met.

Yet we should always realize that change does not
necessarily spell progress. We are sure that each new
group of workers in world service will be tempted to try
all sorts of innovations that may often produce little
more than a painful repetition of earlier mistakes.
Therefore it will be an important objective of these
Concepts to forestall such repetitions by holding the
experiences of the past clearly before us. And if mistaken
departures are nevertheless made, these Concepts may then
provide a ready means of safe return to an operating
balance that might otherwise take years of floundering to
rediscover.

There will also be seen in these Concepts a number of
principles which have already become traditional to our
services, but which have never been clearly articulated
and reduced to writing. For example: the "Right of
Decision" gives our service leaders a proper discretion
and latitude; the "Right of Participation" gives each
world servant a voting status commensurate with his (or
her) responsibility, and "Participation" further
guarantees that each service board or committee will
always possess the several elements and talents that will
insure effective functioning. The "Right of Appeal"
protects and encourages minority opinion; and the "Right
of Petition" makes certain that grievances can be heard,
and properly acted upon. These general principles can of
course be used to good effect throughout our entire
structure.

In other sections, the Concepts carefully delineate those
important traditions, customs, relationships and legal
arrangements that weld the General Service Board into a
working harmony with its primary committees and with its
corporate arms of active service — A.A. World Services,
Inc. and The A.A. Grapevine, Inc. This is the substance of
the structural framework that governs the internal working
situation of A.A.'s World Headquarters.

Concern has been expressed lest the detailed portrayal of
our internal structure might not later harden down into
such a firm tradition or gospel that necessary changes
would be impossible to make. Nothing could stray further
from the intent of these Concepts. The future advocates of
structural change need only make out a strong case for
their recommendations — a case convincing to both the
Trustees and to the Conference. This is no more than would
be required for the transaction and passage of any other
important piece of A.A. business. Save for an exception or
two, it is noteworthy that the Conference Charter itself
can be easily amended.

Perhaps one more precaution ought to be observed when a
proposed structural change is to be specially far-
reaching. In such an event, the alteration should for an
appropriate period be labeled as "experimental." On final
approval, an alteration of this character could be entered
into a special section of this Manual which might be
entitled "AMENDMENTS." This would leave the original draft
of the Twelve Concepts intact as an evidential record of
our former experience. Then it could always be clearly
seen by our future service workers just what did happen
and why.

In other chapters great emphasis is laid on the need for a
high order of personal leadership, on the desirability of
careful induction methods for all incoming personnel, and
upon the necessity for the best possible personal
relations between those who work in our services. The
Concepts try to design a structure in which all may labor
to good effect, with a minimum of friction. This is
accomplished by so relating our servants to their work and
to each other that the chances of personal conflict will
be minimized.

In the A.A. services we have always had to choose between
the authoritarian setup, whereby one group or one person
is set in unqualified authority over another, and the
democratic concept which calls for "checks and balances"
that would prevent unqualified authority from running
unrestrained. The first approach is that of the
"institutional" or authoritarian type. The second is the
method of "constitutional" governments and many large
business corporations in their upper echelons.

Well knowing our own propensities for power driving, it is
natural and even imperative that our service concepts be
based on the system of "checks and balances." We have had
to face the fact that we usually try to enlarge our own
authority and prestige when we are in the saddle. But when
we are not, we strenuously resist a heavy-handed
management wherein someone else holds the reins. I'm the
more sure of this because I possess these traits myself.

Consequently ideas like the following pervade the
Concepts: "No group or individual should be set in
unqualified authority over another," "Large, active and
dissimilar operations should be separately incorporated
and managed, each with its own staff, equipment and
working capital," "We ought to avoid undue concentration
of money or personal influence in any service group or
entity," "At each level of service, authority should be
equal to responsibility," "Double-headed executive
direction should be avoided." These and other similar
provisions define working relations that can be friendly
and yet efficient. They would especially restrain our
tendency to concentrate money and power, this being nearly
always the underlying (though not always the conscious)
motivation of our recurrent passion for the
"consolidation" of world service entities.

Because of the large range of topics which had to be
included, these Concepts have been difficult to organize
and write. Since each Concept is really a group of related
principles, the kind of abbreviated statements used in
A.A.'s "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" have not been
possible. However, these Concepts do represent the best
summation that I am able to make after more than twenty
years experience in the creation of our service structure
and in the conduct of A.A.'s world affairs. Like the
earlier written "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions," and
the Conference Charter, these service principles are also
the outcome of long reflection and extensive consultation.

It is much to be hoped that these Twelve Concepts will
become a welcome addition to our "Third Legacy Manual of
A.A. World Service," and that they will prove to be a
reliable working guide in the years that lie ahead.





CONCEPT I



The final responsibility and the ultimate authority for A.A.
world services should always reside in the collective
conscience of our whole Fellowship.



The A.A. groups today hold ultimate responsibility and final
authority for our world services —those special elements of
over-all service activity which make it possible for our
Society to function as a whole. The groups assumed that
responsibility at the St. Louis International Convention of
1955. There, on behalf of Dr. Bob, the Trustees and A.A.'s
old-time leaders, I made the transfer of world service
responsibility to our entire Fellowship.

Why, and by what authority was this done? There were
reasons of stark necessity for it, and there were further
reasons which have to do with A.A.'s fundamental structure
and tradition.

By the year 1948 our necessities had become clear enough.
Ten years earlier — in 1938 — helped by dedicated friends,
Dr. Bob and I had commenced work upon a world service
structure. Our first step was the creation of a
trusteeship for A.A. as a whole. We called this body The
Alcoholic Foundation; and in 1954 it was renamed The
General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous.

This trusteeship was designed to inaugurate and maintain
all of those special services for A.A. as a whole that
could not well be performed by single groups or areas. We
envisioned the writing of a uniform A.A. literature, the
development of a sound public relations policy, and a
means of handling the large numbers of pleas for help that
might follow in the wake of national and international
publicity. We thought in terms of aiding new groups to
form and of furnishing them with counsel based upon the
experience of the older and already successful groups. We
thought there would be a need for a monthly magazine and
also for translations of our literature into other
languages.

By 1950 nearly all of these dreams for world service had
come true. In the dozen years following the creation of
The Foundation, A.A. membership had jumped from 50 to
100,000. The A.A. Traditions had been written and adopted.
A confident unity had pretty much replaced fear and doubt
and strife. Our services had unquestionably played a large
and critical role in this unfoldment. World service,
therefore, had taken on crucial meaning for A.A.'s future.
If these vital agencies were to collapse or bog down, our
unity within and the carrying of our message to
innumerable alcoholics without, would suffer serious and
perhaps irreparable damage. Under all conditions and at
any sacrifice, we would have to sustain those services and
the flow of life blood that they were pumping into the
world arteries of our Fellowship. Among the A.A. groups it
had been proven that we could survive great strain and
stress. But could we stand heart failure at our world
center?

And so we asked ourselves: What further precautions could
we take that would definitely guard us against an
impairment or a collapse? Nevertheless the period 1945 to
1950 was one of such exuberant success that many A.A.'s
thought that our future was completely guaranteed.
Nothing, they believed, could possibly happen to our
Society as a whole, because God was protecting A.A. This
attitude was in strange contrast to the extreme vigilance
with which our members and groups had been looking after
themselves. They had quite prudently declined to charge
Providence with the entire responsibility for their own
effectiveness, happiness, and sobriety.

When, at A.A.'s Service Headquarters, some of us began to
apply this tested principle of "stop, look, and listen" to
A.A.'s world affairs, it was widely thought that we must
be foolish worriers who lacked faith. Many said, "Why
change? Things are going fine!" "Why call in delegates
from all over the country? That means expense and
politics, and we don't want either." And the clincher was
always, "Let's keep it simple."

Such reactions were natural enough. The average member,
preoccupied with his group life and his own "twelfth
stepping," knew almost nothing of A.A.'s world services.
Not one member in a thousand could tell who our Trustees
were. Not one in a hundred had the least idea what had
been done for A.A.'s general welfare. Tens of thousands
already owed their chance at sobriety to the little
noticed activity of our Trustees and general services. But
few realized that this was true.

Among the Trustees themselves, a sharp division of opinion
was developed. For a long time most of them had strongly
opposed calling together a representative conference of
A.A. delegates, to whom they would become accountable.
They thought that the risks were immense and that
politics, confusion, expense, and fruitless strife surely
would result. It was true that the woes of much lesser
undertakings, such as local A.A. services and clubs, had
sometimes been great. Hence the conviction was widespread
that calamity would be in the making if ever a conference
representing all of A.A. were assembled. These arguments
were not without merit; they were difficult to contest.

However, in 1948, there occurred an event that shook us
all. It became known that Dr. Bob was suffering from a
fatal illness. As nothing else could, this news drove home
the hard fact that he and I were almost the sole links
between our virtually unknown Trustees and the movement
they served. The Trustees always had relied heavily upon
Dr. Bob and me for advice. They had taken a firm grip on
money expenditures, but they necessarily turned to us
every time that A.A. policy questions arose. Then, too,
the groups of that time did not really rely much on the
Trustees for the management of their service affairs; they
were still looking to Dr. Bob and me. So here was a
society whose total functioning was still largely
dependent upon the credit and the confidence which, for
the time being, its founders happened to enjoy.

The fact had to be faced that A.A.'s founders were
perishable. When Dr. Bob and I had gone, who would then
advise the Trustees; who could link our little-known Board
to our thousands of groups? For the first time it was seen
that only a representative conference could take the place
of Dr. Bob and me. This gap simply had to be filled
without delay. Such a dangerous open end in our affairs
could not be tolerated.

Regardless of trouble or expense, we had to call an A.A.
General Service Conference and deliver our world services
into its permanent keeping. It took little imagination to
see that future collapse would be the certain penalty if
we did not act boldly and decisively. Thus propelled by
events, we did take the necessary action. Now that the
Conference is in its second decade, we find that our
former fears of the troubles a Conference might involve
were largely groundless. The results of the Conference
have exceeded our highest expectations. It now stands
proven that the A.A. groups can and will take the final
responsibility for their world services.

There were other reasons for this basic shift of ultimate
responsibility and authority to A.A. as a whole. These
reasons center around Tradition Two, which declares, "For
our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority — a
loving God as He may express Himself in our group
conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do
not govern."

Tradition Two, like all the A.A. Traditions, is the voice
of experience, based upon the trials of thousands of
groups in our pioneering time. The main principles of
Tradition Two are crystal clear: the A.A. groups are to be
the final authority; their leaders are to be entrusted
with delegated responsibilities only.

Tradition Two had been written in 1945, and our Trustees
had then authorized its publication. But it was not until
1951 that the first experimental General Service
Conference was called to see whether Tradition Two could
be successfully applied to A.A. as a whole, including its
Trustees and founders. It had to be found out whether the
A.A. groups, by virtue of this Conference, could and would
assume the ultimate responsibility for their world service
operation. It took five years more for all of us to be
convinced that Tradition Two was for everybody. But at St.
Louis in 1955, we knew that our General Service Conference
— truly representing the conscience of A.A. world-wide —
was going to work and work permanently.

Perhaps many of us are still vague about the "group
conscience" of Alcoholics Anonymous, about what it really
is.

Throughout the entire world today we are witnessing the
breakdown of "group conscience." It has always been the
hope of democratic nations that their citizens would
always be enlightened enough, moral enough, and
responsible enough to manage their own affairs through
chosen representatives. But in many self-governing
countries we are now seeing the inroads of ignorance,
apathy, and power-seeking upon democratic systems. Their
spiritual resources of right purpose and collective
intelligence are waning. Consequently many a land has
become so helpless that the only answer is dictatorship.

Happily for us, there seems little prospect of such a
calamity in A.A. The life of each individual and of each
group is built around our Twelve Steps and Twelve
Traditions. We very well know that the penalty for
extensive disobedience to these principles is death for
the individual and dissolution for the group. An even
greater force for A.A.'s unity is the compelling love that
we have for our fellow members and for the principles upon
which our lives today are founded.

Therefore we believe that we see in our Fellowship a
spiritualized society characterized by enough
enlightenment, enough responsibility, and enough love of
man and of God to insure that our democracy of world
service will work under all conditions. We are confident
that we can rely upon Tradition Two, our group conscience
and its trusted servants. Hence it is with a sense of
great security that we old-timers have now fully vested in
A.A.'s General Service Conference the authority for giving
shape — through the labors of its chosen Delegates,
Trustees, and service workers — to the destiny that we
trust God in His wisdom is holding in store for all of us.





CONCEPT II



When, in 1955, the A.A. groups confirmed the permanent
charter for their General Service Conference, they thereby
delegated to the Conference complete authority for the
active maintenance of our world services and thereby made
the Conference — excepting for any change in the Twelve
Traditions or in Article 12 of the Conference Charter — the
actual voice and the effective conscience for our whole
Society.



It is self-evident that the thousands of A.A. groups and the
many thousands of A.A. members, scattered as they are all
over the globe, cannot of themselves actually manage and
conduct our manifold world services. The group conscience is
out there among them, and so are the needed funds. The power
of the groups and members to alter their world service
structure and to criticize its operation is virtually
supreme. They have all of the final responsibility and
authority that there is. The operation is really theirs;
they really own it. This has been true ever since the groups
took over from the founders and old-timers at St. Louis in
1955.

But an ultimate authority and responsibility in the A.A.
groups for world services — if that is all there were to
it — could not amount to anything. Nothing could be
accomplished on that basis alone. In order to get
effective action, the groups must delegate the actual
operational authority to chosen service representatives
who are fully empowered to speak and to act for them. The
group conscience of A.A. could not be heard unless a
properly chosen Conference were fully trusted to speak for
it respecting most matters of world service. Hence the
principle of amply delegated authority and responsibility
to "trusted servants" must be implicit from the top to the
bottom of our active structure of service. This is the
clear implication of A.A.'s Tradition Two.

Even from the beginning, large delegations of service
authority had to be the rule. It will be recalled how, in
1937, the Akron and New York Groups authorized Dr. Bob and
me to create over-all services which could spread the A.A.
message worldwide. Those two fledgling groups gave to us
the authority to create and manage world services.
Following their action, we held both the final
responsibility and the immediate authorization to get this
project underway and keep it going. On our own, however,
we knew we could do little, and so we had to find trusted
servants who in turn would help us. As time went by, we
found that we had to delegate to these friends a very
large part of our own authority and responsibility. That
process of delegation was as follows:

First of all, Dr. Bob transferred nearly all of his
immediate responsibility for the creation of world service
to me. In New York we stood a better chance of finding
friends and funds, and we saw that our world service
center consequently would have to be located in that city.
I started the search for trusted nonalcoholic friends who
could help, and in 1938 The Alcoholic Foundation was
formed as a small trusteeship of A.A. members and our
nonalcoholic friends.

At first the Trustees of our new Foundation took
jurisdiction over money matters only. Little by little,
however, they were obliged to assume many other
responsibilities, because I alone could not discharge
these on any permanent basis. Hence I gave the Trustees
added responsibility and corresponding authority as fast
as possible.

For example, in 1940, a year after the book "Alcoholics
Anonymous" was published, we all saw that this great new
asset had to be put in trust for our whole Fellowship.
Therefore the stock ownership of Works Publishing, Inc.*
(a publishing corporation which I helped to separately
organize) was turned over to the Board of Trustees.

Nearly all of the income from the A.A. book was then
needed to finance the overall service office that we had
set up for A.A. The Trustees, therefore, presently took
over the primary management of office operation, because
they were now responsible for the funds upon which its
support depended. Consequently, so far as financial
decisions were concerned, I became an adviser only.
Another sizable chunk of my original authority was thus
delegated. When, in 1941, the A.A. groups began to send
contributions to The Alcoholic Foundation for support of
our over-all service office, the Trustees' control of our
world service monies became complete.

After some time it became apparent that A.A.'s public
relations, a vital matter indeed, could not continue to be
entrusted to me alone. Therefore the A.A. groups were
asked to give the Trustees of the Foundation complete
control in this critical area. Later on, the Trustees took
jurisdiction over our national magazine, "The A.A.
Grapevine," which had been separately organized by another
group of volunteers.

Thus it went with every one of our world services. I still
functioned in an advisory capacity in our Headquarters
operation, but the Board of Trustees was in full legal
charge of all our affairs. As Dr. Bob and I looked to the
future, it was clear that ample delegation to the Board
was the only possible way.

Notwithstanding these delegations, Dr. Bob and I did quite
properly feel that we still held an ultimate
responsibility to A. A., and to the future, for the proper
organization and structuring of our A.A. world services.
If anything were to go wrong with them, we would be held
accountable, because the groups still looked to us, rather
than to their then little-known Trustees, for leadership
in A.A.'s world affairs.

In the course of these developments the great difference
between ultimate and immediate service authority became
apparent.

-----------
* Works Publishing, Inc. was later renamed A.A. Publishing,
Inc. Today A.A. Publishing is a division of A.A. World
Services, Inc.
-----------



As early as 1945 it began to be evident that the co-
founders' ultimate responsibility and authority for
services should never be wholly vested in a Board of
Trustees. Certainly our Trustees must be given a large
share of the active and immediate responsibility. But the
ultimate and final responsibility which Dr. Bob and I
still possessed simply could not be transferred to a self-
appointing Board which was relatively unknown among A.A.'s
as a whole. But where, then, would our ultimate
responsibility for world services finally be lodged? And
what would become of my own leadership in world service
matters? A.A.'s history now shows where the ultimate
authority finally went. At St. Louis it went from Dr. Bob
and me to the A.A. groups themselves.

But the groups' acceptance of ultimate service authority
and responsibility was not enough. No matter what
authority the groups had, they could not meet their new
responsibilities until they had actually delegated most of
the active ones. It was precisely in order to meet this
need that the General Service Conference of Alcoholics
Anonymous was given the general responsibility for the
maintenance of A.A.'s world services and so became the
service conscience for A.A. as a whole.

Exactly as Dr. Bob and I earlier had found it necessary to
delegate a large part of our active authority to the
Trustees, so have the A.A. groups since found it necessary
to delegate these same powers to their General Service
Conference. The final say — the ultimate sanction in
matters of large importance — has not been given to the
Trustees alone. By the Conference Charter, confirmed at
St. Louis, this authority is now delegated to the A.A.
groups and thence to their Conference, a body which is a
representative cross section of our entire Fellowship.

Therefore the General Service Conference of A.A. —plus any
later formed sections — has become for nearly every
practical purpose the active voice and the effective
conscience of our whole Society in its world affairs.

In making this momentous transfer, we old-timers deeply
hope that we have avoided those pitfalls into which
societies have so often fallen because their originators
have failed, during their lifetimes, to properly delegate
and distribute their own authority, responsibility, and
leadership.





CONCEPT III



As a traditional means of creating and maintaining a clearly
defined working relation between the groups, the Conference,
the A.A. General Service Board and its several service
corporations, staffs, committees and executives, and of thus
insuring their effective leadership, it is here suggested
that we endow each of these elements of world service with a
traditional "Right of Decision."



Within the framework of their general responsibilities,
whether these be defined by charter, by resolution, or by
custom, it should be the traditional right of all world
service boards, committees, and executives to decide which
problems they will dispose of themselves and upon which
matters they will report, consult, or ask specific
directions. We ought to trust our world servants with these
discretions, because otherwise no effective leadership can
be possible. Let us consider in detail, therefore, why the
need for a "right of decision" in our leadership is
imperative, and let us examine how this principle can be
applied practically in all levels of our structure of world
service.

We have seen how the A.A. groups, under the concept of the
"group conscience," are today holding the ultimate
authority and the final responsibility for world services.
We have also noted how, by reason of the Conference
Charter and the "trusted servant" provision of Tradition
Two, the groups have delegated to their General Service
Conference full authority to manage and conduct A.A.'s
world affairs.

The Conference and General Service Board Charters in broad
terms define the responsibility of the Conference to act
on behalf of A.A. as a whole. In these two documents a
necessarily large area of delegated service authority and
responsibility has been staked out. These instruments, in
a general way, describe the relation between the groups,
the Conference, the Trustees, and the active service
units. These broad definitions and descriptions are an
indispensable frame of reference, and we could not
function without them.

Nevertheless it has long been evident that these highly
important Charter provisions cannot by themselves ensure
smooth functioning and proper leadership at the several
different levels of service which are involved. This has
become crystal clear, and we need not seek very far for
the reasons.

For example: knowing that theirs is the final authority,
the groups are sometimes tempted to instruct their
Delegates exactly how to vote upon certain matters in the
Conference. Because they hold the ultimate authority,
there is no doubt that the A.A. groups have the right to
do this. If they insist, they can give directives to their
Delegates on any and all A.A. matters.

But good management seldom means the full exercise of a
stated set of ultimate rights. For example, were the
groups to carry their instruction of Delegates to
extremes, then we would be proceeding on the false theory
that group opinion in most world service matters would
somehow be much superior to Conference opinion.
Practically speaking, this could almost never be the case.
There would be very few questions indeed that "instructed"
Delegates could better settle than a Conference acting on
the spot with full facts and debate to guide it. Of course
it is understood that complete reporting of Conference
actions is always desirable. So is full consultation with
Committee Members and Group Representatives. Nevertheless
the "instructed" Delegate who cannot act on his own
conscience in a final Conference vote is not a "trusted
servant" at all; he is just a messenger.

Now the Conference Charter does not actually solve typical
problems like this. It is a broad document which can be
variously construed. Under one interpretation, the groups
can instruct the Delegates all they like. Under another,
the Delegates and Trustees actually can ignore such
instructions, whenever they believe that to be desirable.
How, then, shall we practically understand and reconcile
such a condition?

Let us look at two more illustrations: the Conference, as
will be later demonstrated, is in a state of nearly
complete practical authority over the Trustees, despite
the legal rights of the Board. Suppose the Conference
Delegates began to use this ultimate power of theirs
unwisely? Suppose they began to issue hasty and flat
directives to the Trustees on matters respecting which the
Trustees would be far more knowledgeable than the
Delegates? What then?

This same kind of confusing problem used to beset the
relations between the Trustees and their wholly-owned
active service corporations, entities which are nowadays
partly directed by non-Trustee volunteers and paid service
workers. But the Board of Trustees certainly does own
these outfits. Therefore the Trustees can hire and fire;
their authority is final. Yet if the Trustees were
constantly to exert their really full and absolute
authority, if they were to attempt to manage these
operating entities in detail, then the volunteers and
Staff members working in them would quickly become
demoralized; they would be turned into buck-passers and
rubber stamps; their choice would be to rebel and resign,
or to submit and rot.

Therefore some traditional and practical principle has to
be devised which at all levels will continuously balance
the right relation between ultimate authority and
delegated responsibility. How, then, are we going to
accomplish this?

There are three possible attitudes that we might take
toward such a state of affairs. We could, for instance,
throw away all corporate charters, bylaws, job
definitions, and the like. This would leave it entirely to
each group of trusted servants to figure out what its
authority and responsibility really is. But such an
absence of any chartered structure would be absurd;
nothing but anarchy could result.

Then of course we could take the opposite tack. Refusing
to give our leadership any worthwhile discretion at all,
we could add to our present Charters great numbers of
rules, regulations, and bylaws that would attempt to cover
every conceivable action or contingency. That would be
altogether too much red tape—more than we A.A.'s could
stand.

The right A.A. solution for this problem is to be found,
however, in the latter part of Tradition Two, which
provides for "trusted servants." This really means that we
ought to trust our responsible leaders to decide, within
the understood framework of their duties, how they will
interpret and apply their own authority and responsibility
to each particular problem or situation as it arises. This
sort of leadership discretion should be the essence of
"The Right of Decision," and I am certain that we need not
have the slightest fear of granting this indispensable
privilege at nearly every level of world service.

There will always be plenty of ultimate authority to
correct inefficiency, ineffectiveness, or abuse. If the
Conference does not function well, the groups can send in
better Delegates. If the Trustees get badly out of line,
the Conference can censure them, or even reorganize them.
If the Headquarters' services go sour, the Trustees can
elect better directors and hire better help. These
remedies are ample and direct. But for so long as our
world services function reasonably well — and there should
always be charity for occasional mistakes — then "trust"
must be our watchword, otherwise we shall wind up
leaderless.

These are the reasons for my belief that we should
forthwith invest in all of our service bodies and people a
traditional "Right of Decision." In our structure of world
service this "Right of Decision" could be practically
applied as follows:

A. Excepting its Charter provisions to the contrary,
the Conference always should be able to decide which
matters it will fully dispose of on its own
responsibility, and which questions it will refer to the
A.A. groups (or more usually,

to their Committee Members or G.S.R.'s) for opinion or for
definite guidance.

Therefore it ought to be clearly understood and agreed
that our Conference Delegates are primarily the world
servants of A.A. as a whole, that only in a secondary
sense do they represent their respective areas.
Consequently they should, on final decisions, be entitled
to cast their votes in the General Service Conference
according to the best dictates of their own judgment and
conscience at that time.

B. Similarly the Trustees of the General Service Board
(operating of course within the provisions of their own
Charter and Bylaws) should be able at all times to decide
when they will act fully on their own responsibility and
when they will ask the Conference for its guidance, its
approval of a recommendation, or for its actual decision
and direction.

C. Within the scope of their definitely defined or
normally implied responsibilities, all Headquarters
service corporations, committees, staff or executives
should also be possessed of the right to decide when they
will act wholly on their own and when they will refer
their problems to the next higher authority.

This "Right of Decision" should never be made an excuse
for failure to render proper reports of all significant
actions taken; it ought never be used as a reason for
constantly exceeding a clearly defined authority, nor as
an excuse for persistently failing to consult those who
are entitled to be consulted before an important decision
or action is taken.

Our entire A.A. program rests squarely upon the principle
of mutual trust. We trust God, we trust A. A., and we
trust each other. Therefore we cannot do less than trust
our leaders in service. The "Right of Decision" that we
offer them is not only the practical means by which they
may act and lead effectively, but it is also the symbol of
our implicit confidence.





CONCEPT IV



Throughout our Conference structure, we ought to maintain at
all responsible levels a traditional "Right of
Participation," taking care that each classification or
group of our world servants shall be allowed a voting
representation in reasonable proportion to the
responsibility that each must discharge.



The principle of "Participation" has been carefully built
into our Conference structure. The Conference Charter
specifically provides that the Trustees, the Directors of
our service corporations, (A.A. World Services, Inc. and The
A.A. Grapevine, Inc.) together with their respective
executive staffs, shall always be voting members of the
General Service Conference itself.

Exactly the same concept is borne in mind when our General
Service Board elects the Directors of its wholly-owned
active service corporations, A.A. World Services, Inc. and
The A.A. Grapevine, Inc. If it wished, the General Service
Board could elect none but its own Trustees to these
corporate directorships. But a powerful tradition has
grown up to the effect that this never ought to be done.

For example, A.A. World Services, Inc. (which also
includes the A.A. Publishing division) currently has seven
directors, only two of whom are Trustees.1 The other five
non-Trustee directors comprise three volunteers, both
expert in office management and publishing, and two
directors who are paid staff members: the general manager
and his assistant. The general manager is traditionally
the president of A.A. World Services, Inc. and his
assistant is a vice president. For communication linkage,
the editor or a staff member of the Grapevine or his
nominee is invited to attend A.A. World Services, Inc.
meetings.

Therefore the active management of A.A. World Services,
Inc. and its publishing division is composed of Trustees
whose mission is to see that these projects are properly
managed; of volunteer experts who contribute their advice
and professional experience; and of two paid office
executives who are charged with getting most of the work
done. It will be seen that each member of every
classification, is a director, and so has a legal vote;
that each corporate officer bears a title which, both
practically and legally, denotes what his (or her) actual
status and responsibility is.

Such a typical corporate business management easily
permits a proper degree of voting "participation." Every
skilled element to do the allotted job is present. No
class is set in absolute authority over another. This is
the corporate or "participating" method of doing business,
as distinguished from structures so common to many
institutional, military and governmental agencies wherein
high-level people or classes of people often are set in
absolute authority, one over the other.

We should also note that the seven2 A.A. Grapevine
directors are elected on the same principle as those of
A.A. World Services, Inc. Here too we see Trustees,
volunteer experts and paid staff members acting in concert
as the active managers of that operation. And a world
service nominee should be present at all GV meetings, both
corporate and editorial.

The General Service Board, furthermore, rigorously abides
by the principle of "Participation" whenever its chairman
makes appointments to the Board's principal standing
committees. Numbers of non-Trustees and paid staff workers
are customarily chosen for these important posts. As with
the active service corporations, the same elements are
nearly always present in these committees, viz.,
representatives of the General Service Board, non-Trustee
experts, and one or more staff members who must do most of
the leg work. All can vote, and therefore all can truly
"participate." When the time comes to ballot, there are no
"superiors," no "inferiors," and no "advisers."

To this highly effective and unifying principle of
"Participation" at all responsible levels, there is one
regrettable but necessary exception. Members holding paid
staff positions cannot become Trustees. This cannot be
permitted because such a practice would interfere with the
four-year rotation of the A.A. Trustees. And if ever the
General Service Board had to be reorganized by the
Conference, paid A.A. Trustees might prove to be a vested
interest most difficult to dislodge.

Nevertheless our Trustees of today traditionally invite
paid executives, staff members, accountants, and any
others whose reports or advice may be required, to attend
each quarterly meeting of the General Service Board. Thus
the Trustees are put into direct communication with these
workers who are thus made to feel that they are wanted and
needed. Although they do not vote, these workers may
freely participate in debate.

The preservation of the principle of "Participation" in
our service structure is, to those of us who already
understand its application and benefits, a matter of the
highest importance to our future. Experience suggests,
however, that some of each new generation of Delegates and
Trustees will inevitably try to weaken, modify, or toss
out the principle of "participation." Every year, a few
Delegates will question the "right" of the corporate
directors, staffs, and even of the Trustees to vote in
Conference. New volunteer corporate directors will ask why
any paid woman staff member should also be a director and
thereby have a vote as good as their own. Every now and
then a move will be made to abolish A.A. World Services,
Inc. and The A.A. Grapevine, Inc. It will be urged that
these separate corporations ought to become "departments"
or "committees" of the General Service Board, mainly
managed by Trustees. To my view, it is so vital that we
preserve this traditional "Right of Participation" in the
face of every tendency to whittle it down that we should
here bring some of our pioneering experience to bear upon
the problem.

In its early days the A.A. Headquarters was run on
authoritarian and institutional lines. At that time the
Trustees saw no reason to delegate their managerial powers
or to work in voting participation with any others outside
their own body. The result was often grievous trouble and
misunderstanding, and it was out of this rough going that
the principle of "Participation" finally emerged. This
lesson was learned the hard way, but it was learned.

We have seen how Dr. Bob and I had placed our Board of
Trustees in full legal possession of all of our service
assets. This had included our book literature, our funds,
our public relations, and our A.A. General Service Office.
This is how our early Trustees came to have all of the
authority there was. But most of the actual responsibility
for the conduct of A.A.'s Headquarters nevertheless fell
on me, my assistant, and her staff. On the one hand we had
Trustees who possessed complete authority, and on the
other hand there were founders and office managers who had
great responsibility but practically no authority. It was
a kind of schizophrenia, and it caused real trouble.

It was natural for the Trustees, who had all of the
authority and all of the money, to feel that theirs was
the duty to directly manage the office and to actively
superintend practically everything that was done. To
accomplish this, two Trustee committees were formed, a
policy and an administrative committee. We at the office
had no membership on these committees and hence no real
"participation." Of course I could go to Trustee meetings
to persuade or advise, and the same was true of the
committee meetings. But my assistant, who really carried
the greater part of the office load, couldn't get inside a
Trustees meeting, and she was called into committee
meetings only to make suggestions and reports, answer
questions, and receive orders. Sometimes these committees
issued us conflicting directives.

The situation was complicated by yet another wheel in the
management machine. Our publishing company (then Works
Publishing, Inc.) was of course wholly owned by the Board
of Trustees. Except in one important particular, Works
Publishing, Inc. had, however, become a pure "dummy." It
had nothing to do with the active management except to
issue checks for office and publishing expenses. An old
A.A. friend of mine, its Trustee-treasurer, signed those
checks. Once, when he was a bit out of sorts, he tore up
all of our paychecks because my assistant had issued them
a couple of days early so that the gals in the back office
could buy Easter bonnets. Right then and there we began to
wonder how much absolute authority over money and people
any one of us drunks could handle. Also, how much of this
type of coercion we alkies on the receiving end could sit
and take. In any case it had become dead sure that our
Headquarters could not be run by two executive committees
and a dummy corporation, each able to issue point-blank
nonparticipating directives.

The point may be made that nowadays we drunks can "dish it
out" or "take it" better man we used to. Even so, I would
sure hate to see us ever go back to a non-participating
setup. Now that we have more service people involved and
more money to handle, I am afraid the result would be much
the same and maybe worse. There was really nothing
exceptional about the incident of the torn-up checks.
Every time an absolute authority is created, it always
invites this same tendency toward over-domination
respecting all things, great and small.

It was years before we saw that we could never put all
authority in one group and virtually all responsibility in
another and then expect efficiency of operation, let alone
real harmony. Of course, no one is against the idea of
final authority. We are only against its misapplication or
misuse. "Participation" can usually stop this sort of
demoralizing nonsense before it starts.

Let us look at another aspect of this participation
problem. The final authority for services must lie in the
A.A. groups; but suppose the groups, sensing their great
power, should try to over-exercise it by sending in
Delegates irrevocably instructed as to how to vote on most
questions. Would the Delegates feel that they were
participants, trusted servants? No, they would feel like
agents and order-takers.

The Delegates themselves, of course, could also give the
Trustees this same treatment. The Delegates' power is so
great that they could soon make the Trustees feel like
rubber stamps, just as the Trustees unknowingly did to
workers at Headquarters. If, therefore, the Conference
ever begins to refuse the Trustees vote in it, and if the
Trustees ever again refuse to let corporate service
volunteers and staff members vote at the level of their
own corporate and Conference work, we shall have thrown
all past experience to the winds. The principle of
allowing a proper voting participation would have to be
painfully relearned.

One argument for taking away the Trustee and service
worker vote in the Conference is this: it is urged that
there is danger if we allow service people and Trustees to
vote on their own past performance; for example, their
annual reports. To a certain extent this argument is
sound. As a matter of tradition, there is no doubt that
Trustees and service workers alike should refrain from
voting on reports on their own past activities.

But those who would do away entirely with the votes of
Trustees and service workers in the Conference overlook
the point that such reports of past performance constitute
only a fraction of the business of that body. The
Conference is far more concerned with policies, plans, and
actions which are to take effect in the future. To take
away the votes of Trustees and service workers on such
questions would obviously be unwise. Why should our
Conference be deprived of the votes of such knowledgeable
people as these?*

Perhaps someone will object that, on close votes in the
Conference, the combined Trustees and service worker
ballots may decide a particular question. But why not?
Certainly our Trustees and service workers are no less
conscientious, experienced, and wiser than the Delegates.
Is there any good reason why their votes are undesirable?
Clearly there is none. Hence we ought to be wary of any
future tendency to deny either our Trustees or our service
people their Conference votes, except in special
situations that involve past performances, job
qualifications, or money compen-



------------
* There is another very practical reason for not giving
Conference Delegates absolute voting authority over
trustees, service directors, and staff members. It should be
borne in mind that our delegates can never be like a
Congress in constant session, having its own working
committees, elected leaders, etc. Our delegates cannot
possibly function in this manner for the simple reason that
they meet for a few days only, once a year. Hence they
cannot have an extensive firsthand acquaintance with many of
the problems on which they are expected to vote. This is all
the more reason for allowing the sometimes better-informed
minority of trustees and Headquarters people the balloting
privilege in all cases where no self-interest is involved.
------------



sation, or in case of a sweeping reorganization of the
General Service Board itself, occasioned by misfunction of
the Board. However, this should never be construed as a
bar to Trustee vote on structural changes. It is also
noteworthy that in actual practice our Trustees and
Headquarters people have never yet voted in a "bloc."
Their differences of opinion among themselves are nearly
always as sharp and considerable as those to be found
among the Delegates themselves.

There is another good reason tor "participation," and this
one has to do with our spiritual needs. All of us deeply
desire to belong. We want an A.A. relation of brotherly
partnership. It is our shining ideal that the "spiritual
corporation" of A.A. should never include any members who
are regarded as "second class." Deep down, I think this is
what we have been struggling to achieve in our world
service structure. Here is perhaps the principal reason
why we should continue to ensure "participation" at every
important level. Just as there are no second-class A.A.'s,
neither should there be any second-class world service
workers, either.

The "Right of Participation" is therefore a corrective of
ultimate authority because it mitigates its harshness or
misuse. It also encourages us who serve A.A. to accept the
necessary disciplines that our several tasks require. We
can do this when we are sure that we belong, when the fact
of our "participation" assures us that we are truly the
"trusted servants" described in A.A.'s Tradition Two.



------------
1 Currently A.A.W.S. has nine directors, of which four are
trustees.
2 Currently nine.
------------





CONCEPT V



Throughout our world service structure, a traditional "Right
of Appeal" ought to prevail, thus assuring us that minority
opinion will be heard and that petitions for the redress of
personal grievances will be carefully considered.



In the light of the principle of the "Right of Appeal," all
minorities — whether in our staffs, committees, corporate
boards, or among the Trustees — should be encouraged to file
minority reports whenever they feel a majority to be in
considerable error. And when a minority considers an issue
to be such a grave one that a mistaken decision could
seriously affect A.A. as a whole, it should then charge
itself with the actual duty of presenting a minority report
to the Conference.

In granting this traditional "Right of Appeal," we
recognize that minorities frequently can be right; that
even when they are partly or wholly in error they still
perform a most valuable service when, by asserting their
"Right of Appeal," they compel a thorough-going debate on
important issues. The well-heard minority, therefore, is
our chief protection against an uninformed, misinformed,
hasty or angry majority.

The traditional "Right of Appeal" should also permit any
person in our service structure, whether paid or unpaid,
to petition for the redress of a personal grievance,
carrying his complaint, if he so desires, directly to the
General Service Board. He or she should be able to do this
without prejudice or fear of reprisal. Though in practice
this will be a seldom exercised right, its very existence
will always tend to restrain those in authority from
unjust uses of their power. Surely our workers should
cheerfully accept the necessary direction and disciplines
that go with their jobs, but all of them should
nevertheless feel that they need not silently endure
unnecessary and unfair personal domination.

Concerning both "Appeal" and "Petition," I am glad to say
that in A.A.'s world services these valuable practices and
rights have always been put to good use. Therefore I am
committing them to writing only by way of helping to
confirm and enlarge their future applications.

The Rights of "Appeal" and "Petition'' of course aim at
the total problem of protecting and making the best
possible use of minority feeling and opinion. This has
always been, and still is, a central problem of all free
governments and democratic societies. In Alcoholics
Anonymous individual freedom is of enormous importance.
For instance, any alcoholic is a member of A.A. the moment
he says so; we cannot take away his right to belong.
Neither can we force our members to believe anything or
pay anything. Ours is indeed a large charter of minority
privileges and liberties.

When we look at our world services, we find that here we
have also gone to great lengths in our trust of minority
groups. Under Tradition Two, the group conscience is the
final authority for A.A. world service, and it will always
remain so respecting all the larger issues that confront
us. Nevertheless the A.A. groups have recognized that for
world service purposes the "group conscience of A.A." as a
totality has certain limitations. It cannot act directly
in many service matters, because it cannot be sufficiently
informed about the problems in hand. It is also true that
during a time of great disturbance the group conscience is
not always the best possible guide because, temporarily,
such an upset may prevent it from functioning efficiently
or wisely. When, therefore, the group conscience cannot or
should not act directly, who does act for it?

The second part of Tradition Two provides us with the
answer when it describes A.A. leaders as "trusted
servants." These servants must always be in readiness to
do for the groups what the groups obviously cannot or
should not do for themselves. Consequently the servants
are bound to use their own information and judgment,
sometimes to the point of disagreeing with uninformed or
biased group opinion.

Thus it will be seen that in world service operations A.A.
often trusts a small but truly qualified minority — the
hundred-odd members of its General Service Conference — to
act as A.A.'s group conscience in most of our service
affairs. Like other free societies, we have to trust our
servants, knowing that in the unusual event that they
should fail their responsibilities, we shall still have
ample opportunity to recall and replace them.

The foregoing observations illustrate, in a general way,
A.A.'s concern for the freedom and protection of
individual members and the whole membership's willingness
to trust able and conscientious servants to function in
their several capacities, for us all. As the longtime
recipients of this kind of trust, I am sure that many of
A.A.'s old-timers would like me to record their gratitude
along with my own.

By 1951, when the General Service Conference was put into
experimental operation, these attitudes of trust already
were an essential part of A.A. life. In drafting the
Charter for our Conference, therefore, we naturally
infused that document with provisions which would insure
protection and respect for minorities. This is
exemplified, for instance, in our "Third Legacy" method of
selecting Delegates. Unless the majority candidate can
poll a two-thirds vote of his State or Provincial
Assembly, he must place his name in a hat with one or more
of the choices of the Assembly minority. By thus drawing
lots, the minority candidates have an equal chance with
the majority's choice.

Strictly speaking, a democracy operates on the will of the
majority, no matter how slim that majority may be. So when
making special concessions to the feelings and the often-
demonstrated wisdom of minorities, we occasionally may
deny democracy's cherished principle of final decision by
a simple majority vote. Nevertheless we actually have
found that our Third Legacy method of electing Delegates
has much strengthened the spirit of democracy among us.
Unity has been cemented, cooperation has been increased,
and when the Delegate is finally chosen, no discontented
minority can trail in his wake. To increase the actual
spirit of democracy by special deference to minority
opinion is, we think, better than to follow blindly the
rule which always insists on an unqualified dominance by a
slight majority vote.

Consider another example: our respect for the minority
position, plus a desire for unity and certainty, often
prompts A.A.'s General Service Conference to debate at
length on important questions of policy, provided there is
no need for an immediate or early decision. On many
occasions the Conference has insisted on a continuing
discussion even in certain cases when a two-thirds
majority easily could have been obtained. Such a
traditional voluntary practice is evidence of real
prudence and courteous deference to minority views. Unless
it has been absolutely unavoidable, the Conference has
usually refused to take important decisions on anything
less than a two-thirds vote.

This same kind of consideration for the minority position
can be found in the Charter provision that no Conference
vote can be considered binding on the Trustees of the
General Service Board unless it equals two-thirds of a
Conference quorum. This gives the Trustees a power of veto
in cases where the majority is not great. By reason of
this provision the Trustees, if they wish, can insist on
further debate and so check any tendency to haste or
emotionalism. In practice the Trustees seldom exercise
this option. More often they go along with a simple
majority of the Delegates, especially when prompt action
on less critical matters is clearly needed. But the choice
is always theirs whether to veto a simple majority or to
act with it. Here again is a recognition of the
constructive value of a trusted minority.

If to such a generous recognition of minority privileges
we now add the traditional Rights of "Appeal" and
"Petition," I believe we shall have granted to all
minorities, whether of groups or of individuals, the means
of discharging their world service duties confidently,
harmoniously, and well.

More than a century ago a young French nobleman named De
Toqueville came to America to look at the new Republic.
Though many of his friends had lost their lives and
fortunes in the French Revolution, De Toqueville was a
worshipful admirer of democracy. His writings on
government by the people and for the people are classics,
never more carefully studied than at the present time.

Throughout his political speculation De Toqueville
insisted that the greatest danger to democracy would
always be the "tyranny" of apathetic, self-seeking,
uninformed, or angry majorities. Only a truly dedicated
citizenry, quite willing to protect and conserve minority
rights and opinions, could, he thought, guarantee the
existence of a free and democratic society. All around us
in the world today we are witnessing the tyranny of
majorities and the even worse tyranny of very small
minorities invested with absolute power. De Toqueville
would have neither, and we A.A.'s can heartily agree with
him.

We believe that the spirit of democracy in our Fellowship
and in our world service structure will always survive,
despite the counter forces which will no doubt continue to
beat upon us. Fortunately we are not obliged to maintain a
government that enforces conformity by inflicting
punishments. We need to maintain only a structure of
service that holds aloft our Traditions, that forms and
executes our policies thereunder, and so steadily carries
our message to those who suffer.

Hence we believe that we shall never be subjected to the
tyranny of either the majority or the minority, provided
we carefully define the relations between them and
forthwith tread the path of world service in the spirit of
our Twelve Steps, our Twelve Traditions, and our
Conference Charter — in which I trust that we shall one
day inscribe these traditional Rights of "Appeal" and
"Petition."





CONCEPT VI



On behalf of A.A. as a whole, our General Service Conference
has the principal responsibility for the maintenance of our
world services, and it traditionally has the final decision
respecting large matters of general policy and finance. But
the Conference also recognizes that the chief initiative and
the active responsibility in most of these matters should be
exercised primarily by the Trustee members of the Conference
when they act among themselves as the General Service Board
of Alcoholics Anonymous.



Just as the A.A. groups find themselves unable to act
decisively respecting world service affairs unless they
delegate a great amount of active authority and
responsibility to their Conference, so must the Conference
in turn delegate a liberal administrative authority to the
General Service Board, in order that its Trustees may act
freely and effectively in the absence of the Conference
itself.

This critical need for Trustee liberty of action raises
several important questions.* Next to the Conference,
A.A.'s Board of Trustees should be the most influential
group of world servants that we have, and therefore we
shall have to consider carefully the kind and degree of
authority, responsibility, leadership, and legal status
the Trustees must possess in order to function at top
effectiveness over the years to come. We shall need to
review and perhaps amend somewhat our present methods of
choosing Trustees. We shall need to define clearly the
several kinds of professional and financial skills that
will always be required for a balanced trusteeship. Only
by doing so can we permanently insure the Board's
capability of future leadership.

In order to avoid continuous confusion, it will also be
necessary to show precisely how the Trustees ought to be
related to the Conference and just how they in turn should
relate themselves to their active service corporations,
A.A. World Services, Inc. (including its division of A.A.
Publishing) and the A.A. Grapevine, Inc., our monthly
magazine. In a general way these relations already are
indicated in our Conference Charter, and to some extent
they have been discussed on preceding pages. Nevertheless
there still remains a real need to interpret and spell
them out in detail. Of course there is no desire to freeze
these relations into a rigid pattern. However



----------
* See Concept VIII for a definition of the Trustees' powers
and activities.
----------



satisfactory and right our present arrangements seem, the
future may reveal flaws that we do not yet envision. New
conditions may require refinements or even considerable
alterations. For this reason our service Charter is
capable in most respects of being readily amended by the
Conference itself.

It ought to be recalled, however, that all of our present
arrangements, including the status of A.A.'s Trustees, are
based on a great amount of experience, which it is the
purpose of these writings to describe and make clear. When
this is done, we shall not be hampered later on by such a
lack of understanding that we could be tempted into hasty
or unwise amendments. Even if we do someday make changes
that happen to work out poorly, then the experience of the
past will not have been lost. These articles can then be
relied upon as a point of safe return.

Let us therefore make a more specific examination of the
need of a wide latitude of administrative freedom for the
Trustees of the General Service Board.

As we have seen, the Conference Charter (and also the
Charter of the General Service Board, and its Bylaws) has
already staked out a large area of freedom of action for
our Trustees. And we have reinforced these Charter
provisions by granting to all world service bodies,
including of course our Trustees, the traditional Rights
of "Decision," "Participation," and "Appeal." A careful
review of these legal and traditional rights can leave
little doubt what the actual administrative
responsibilities of the Trustees are; nor can there be any
question that their authority in this area is large
indeed.

Why should our Trustees be given this very wide latitude
of judgment and action? The answer is that we A.A.'s are
holding them mainly responsible for all our service
activities: A.A. World Services, Inc. (including A.A.
Publishing) and The A.A. Grapevine, Inc. These entities
(as of 1960) have combined gross receipts approaching one-
half million dollars annually.1 Our Trustees are also
responsible for A.A.'s worldwide public relations. They
are expected to lead in the formulation of A.A. policy and
must see to its proper execution. They are the active
guardians of our Twelve Traditions. The Trustees are
A.A.'s bankers. They are entirely responsible for the
investment and use of our substantial reserve funds. The
very wide range of their activities will be still further
seen under "Concept XI," wherein the work of their five2
standing committees is described.

While the Trustees must always operate under the close
observation, guidance and sometimes the direction of the
Conference, it is nevertheless true that nobody but the
Trustees and their wholly-owned service corporations could
possibly pass judgment upon and handle the very large
number of transactions now involved in our total world
service operation. In view of this very large
responsibility, they must therefore be given a
correspondingly large grant of authority and leadership
with which to discharge it. We should quite understand,
too, that the conduct of our world services is primarily a
matter of policy and business. Of course our objective is
always a spiritual one, but this service aim can only be
achieved by means of an effective business operation. Our
Trustees must function almost exactly like the directors
of any large business corporation. They must have ample
authority to really manage and conduct A.A.'s business.

This is the basic corporate concept on which our structure
of world service rests. We have deliberately chosen the
corporate form rather than the institutional or
governmental model, because it is well known that the
corporation is a far superior vehicle when it comes to the
administration of policy and business.

From top to bottom, our whole service structure indeed
resembles that of a large corporation. The A.A. groups are
the stockholders; the Delegates are their representatives
or proxies at the "annual meeting", our General Service
Board Trustees are actually the directors of a "holding
company." And this holding company, the General Service
Board, actually owns and controls the "subsidiaries" which
carry on our active world services.

This very real analogy makes it even more clear that, just
like any other board of directors, our Trustees must be
given large powers if they are to effectively manage the
principal world affairs of Alcoholics Anonymous.



------------
1 The 1996 revenue of A.A. World Services and the Grapevine
was over eleven million dollars.
2 There are now eleven standing committees.
------------





CONCEPT VII



The Conference recognizes that the Charter and the Bylaws of
the General Service Board are legal instruments: that the
Trustees are thereby fully empowered to manage and conduct
all of the world service affairs of Alcoholics Anonymous. It
is further understood that the Conference Charter itself is
not a legal document: that it relies instead upon the force
of tradition and the power of the A.A. purse for its final
effectiveness.



This concept may appear to be contradictory; it may look
like the collision of an irresistible force with an
immovable object. On the one hand we see a Board of Trustees
which is invested with complete legal power over A.A.'s
funds and services, while on the other hand we find that
A.A.'s General Service Conference is clothed with such great
traditional influence and financial power that, if
necessary, it could overcome the legal rights of the Board
of Trustees. It can therefore give the Trustees directives
and secure compliance with them — practically speaking.

This means that the practical power of the Conference will
nearly always be superior to the legal power of the
Trustees. This superior power in the Conference flows from
the powerful traditional influence of the Charter itself.
It derives from the large majority of group-chosen
Delegates in the Conference. And finally, in any great
extremity, it would rest upon the undoubted ability of the
Delegates to deny the General Service Board the monies
with which to operate — viz., the voluntary contributions
of the A.A. groups themselves. Theoretically, the
Conference is an advisory body only, but practically
speaking, it has all of the ultimate rights and powers
that it may ever need.

When we reflect that our Trustees have no salaried
financial interest in their posts, we can be quite sure
that such a Board would never think of legally contesting
the clear and sustained will of the Conference Delegates
and the A.A. areas they represent. If someday the chips
were really down, there would be little chance of a
stalemate. The Conference would find itself in complete
control of the situation. As the conscience of A.A., the
Delegates would find themselves in ultimate authority over
our General Service Board and also its corporate arms of
active world service.

The history of this development is interesting and
important. When in 1950 the Conference Charter was drawn,
this question of where the final authority ought to rest
was a very moot matter. Would the Conference have the last
word, or would the Trustees? By then we knew for sure that
complete and final authority over our funds and services
should never continue to reside in an isolated Board of
Trustees who had an unqualified right to appoint their own
successors. This would be to leave A.A. world services in
the hands of a paternalistic group, something entirely
contradictory to the "group conscience" concept of
Tradition Two. If the Trustees were to be our permanent
service administrators and the guardians of A.A.'s Twelve
Traditions, it was evident that they must somehow be
placed in a position where they would necessarily have to
conform to our Traditions, and to the desires of our
Fellowship.

To accomplish this objective, we considered all kinds of
devices. We thought of incorporating the Conference
itself, thus placing it in direct legal authority over the
Board. This would have meant that all Conference members
would have had to have a legal status. It would have been
much too cumbersome an arrangement, involving really the
incorporation of our whole Fellowship, an idea which the
Conference itself later repudiated.

We also considered the idea of country-wide elections for
all Trustees. But this procedure would have produced a
political shambles, rather than the top flight managerial
talent the Board had to have. So that notion was
abandoned.

We next inquired whether the Conference itself could not
both nominate and directly elect our Trustees. But how
could several scores of Delegates do this? They would come
from all over the country. They would not be too well
acquainted with each other. Their terms would be short and
their meetings brief. How, then, could such a body
nominate and elect alcoholic and nonalcoholic Trustees of
a top managerial caliber? Clearly there could be no
reliable method for doing this. Very reluctantly, we had
to drop the idea.

It thus became obvious that new Trustee choices - subject
to Conference approval - would still have to be left
pretty much to the Trustees themselves. Only they would be
capable of understanding what the Board needed. Except in
a time of reorganization, this method of selection would
have to continue — certainly as to the larger part of the
Board's membership. Otherwise the Board could not be held
accountable for management results. We might wind up with
no effective management at all. For these reasons, the
Conference was given the right to reject, but not to
elect, new Trustee candidates.1

It was out of these considerations that our present
Conference Charter was developed, a structure which
clearly gives the Conference a final and ultimate
authority but which nevertheless legally preserves the
right of the Trustees to function freely and adequately,
just as any business board of directors must. This
arrangement is in strict conformity with the "trusted
servant" provision of Tradition Two, which contemplates
that our servants, within the scope of their duties,
should be trusted to use their own experience and
judgment. Trusted servants at all A.A. levels are expected
to exercise leadership, and leadership is not simply a
matter of submissive housekeeping. Of course leadership
cannot function if it is constantly subjected to a barrage
of harassing directives.

Up to the present time our experience shows that this
balance of powers between the Trustees and the Conference
is thoroughly workable. We have taken great pains to
reserve final authority to the Conference by practical and
traditional means. By legal means we have delegated ample
functional and discretionary authority to the Trustees. We
believe this balance can be maintained indefinitely,
because the one is protected by tradition and the other by
law.

Now we come to another interesting question often raised
by new General Service Board Trustees. They say, "We
Trustees have certain rights and duties which are legally
established by our Charter. Are we not violating this
Charter when we accept a Conference opinion or directive?
We should have a perfect legal right to say 'no' to
anything and everything that the Conference wants."

Our Trustees certainly do have this absolute legal
authority, but there is nothing in their Charter that
compels them to use all of their authority all of the
time. They are quite at liberty to accept advice or even
direction from anyone at all. They can simply refrain from
using their absolute legal right to say "no" when it would
be much wiser, all things considered, to say "yes." Just
as the Conference should avoid the overuse of its
traditional authority, so should the Trustees avoid
overuse of their legal rights. The President of the U.S.,
for example, has an absolute legal right to veto
congressional legislation. Yet ninety-nine percent of the
time he does not do it, because (a) he likes a piece of
legislation or (b) he does not like the legislation but
believes a veto would nevertheless be unwise or impossible
of success. Whether or not he will exercise his veto is
determined by circumstances. It is just like that with
A.A.'s Board of Trustees.

Clearly, then, our Board of Trustees does reserve a veto
power over any Conference action; this is legally
necessary and right in principle, even though the veto
will seldom be used. At certain times, however, the
Trustees' veto could be of important and constructive use.

Here, for instance, are three typical examples in which it
would be the duty of the Trustees to veto Conference
action:

1. If, in a time of haste or heavy stress, the Conference
should take an action or issue a directive to the Trustees
in clear violation of its own Charter, or that of the
General Service Board; or if the Conference were to pass
any measure so ill-considered or so reckless as to
seriously injure, in the judgment of the Trustees, A.A.'s
public relations or A.A. as a whole, it would then be the
duty of the Trustees to ask for a Conference
reconsideration. In event of a Conference refusal to
reconsider, the Trustees could then use their legal right
to veto. And, if desirable, they could appeal the issue
directly to the A.A. groups themselves.

2. Although traditionally the Trustees never should
substantially exceed a Conference-approved budget without
consulting the Conference, they should feel entirely free
to reduce the Conference budget figure during any fiscal
year, even though such an action might curtail or cancel
special plans or projects initiated and directed by the
Conference itself.

3. If, by reason of unforeseen conditions, any particular
plan, project, or directive of the Conference should
become impractical or unworkable during a fiscal year, the
Trustees should, without prejudice, be able to use their
right of veto and cancellation.

If, therefore, in the years ahead, the Conference will
always bear in mind the actual rights, duties,
responsibilities, and legal status of the General Service
Board, and if the Trustees in their deliberations will
constantly realize that the Conference is the real seat of
ultimate service authority, we may be sure that neither
will be seriously tempted to make a "rubber stamp" out of
the other. We may expect that in this way grave issues
will always be resolved and harmonious cooperation will be
the general rule.



----------
1 Trustee elections are now held during Conference week for
regional and at-large trustees; to that extent the
Conference now chooses trustees according to the procedure
described in the "Service Manual."
----------





CONCEPT VIII



The Trustees of the General Service Board act in two primary
capacities: (a) With respect to the larger matters of over-
all policy and finance, they are the principal planners and
administrators. They and their primary committees directly
manage these affairs. (b) But with respect to our separately
incorporated and constantly active services, the relation of
the Trustees is mainly that of full stock ownership and of
custodial oversight which they exercise through their
ability to elect all directors of these entities.



Since our Trustees bear the primary responsibility for the
good conduct of all our world service affairs, this
discussion deals with the basic concepts and methods by
which they can best discharge their heavy obligations. Long
experience has now proved that our Board as a whole must
devote itself almost exclusively to the larger and more
serious questions of policy, finance, group relations,
public relations and leadership that constantly confront it.
In these more critical matters, the Board must of course
function with great care and deliberation. Here the Board is
expected skillfully to plan, manage, and execute.

It follows, therefore, that the close attention of the
Board to such large problems must not be subject to
constant distraction and interference. Our Trustees, as a
body, cannot be burdened with a mass of lesser matters;
they must not concern themselves with the endless
questions and difficulties which arise daily, weekly, and
monthly in the routine conduct of the World Service Office
and of our publishing enterprises. In these areas the
Board cannot possibly manage and conduct in detail; it
must delegate its executive function.

Here the Board's attitude has to be that of custodial
oversight; it cannot be the executive. Hence the Trustees
are the guarantors of the good management of A.A. World
Services, Inc. and The A.A. Grapevine, Inc. They discharge
their custodial obligation by electing the directors of
these services, a part of whom must always be Trustees. By
this means, the executive direction of these functions is
securely lodged in the active service corporations
themselves rather than in the General Service Board. Each
corporate service entity should possess its own charter,
its own working capital, its own executive, its own
employees, its own offices and equipment. Except to
mediate difficult situations and to see that the service
corporations operate within their budgets and within the
general framework of A.A. and Headquarters policy, the
Board will seldom need to do more, so far as routine
service operations are concerned.

This arrangement is in line with modern corporate business
practice. The General Service Board is in effect a holding
company, charged with the custodial oversight of its
wholly-owned and separately incorporated subsidiaries, of
which each has, for operating purposes, a separate
management. We have demonstrated to our satisfaction that
this corporate basis of operation is superior to any
other.

This lesson, as we have observed before, has been learned
the hard way. When discussing "Participation" in Concept
IV, we saw that earlier attempts to manage the A.A.
General Service Office and A.A. Publishing Company through
a multiplicity of Trustee committees did not work well.
These were really efforts to make our services into
departments of the old Alcoholic Foundation (now the
General Service Board). It was found difficult to define
the powers of these several Trustee service committees
respecting each other and respecting the work at hand.
Responsibility and authority rarely could be kept in
balance. Point-blank directives, rather than participating
decisions, were the rule. In these committees nobody held
titles that fully denoted what individual responsibilities
actually were; and, naturally enough, those who handled
money and signed checks assumed the greater authority. The
control of money, therefore, too often determined A.A.
policy, regardless of the views of the workers and
volunteers at the office who sometimes understood these
matters better.

But the moment we consolidated our service office function
into a single and permanent corporate structure wherein
officers and directors had legally defined titles and
duties and responsibilities — the moment such a
corporation was provided with its own working capital,
employees, and facilities — the moment its directors could
legally vote in proportion to their actual
responsibilities — the moment we were able in this way to
define clearly executive authority — from that moment we
began to see great improvement. More harmonious and
effective conduct of our business has been the result ever
since.

We finally learned what the business world well knows:
that we could not, at the level of top management, run a
large, active and full-fledged business entity with loose-
jointed committees and departments. For example, how could
our Trustees function today if they were to become a mere
"committee" or "department" of the General Conference
instead of the legally chartered and carefully defined
body that they necessarily are?

Neither can our General Service Board be made into an
operating corporation. Any corporation conducting a large
and active business always must have a single executive
head who is familiar with every department, who is
actually on the job most of the time, and who therefore
can directly coordinate the several departments and
mediate their differences. This would mean (if we tried
it) that the General Service Board "divisions" would have
to report to the General Service Board Chairman, as their
chief executive. But unless he was an executive in fact,
and constantly available to them, how could they do so? In
the very nature of our particular setup, our Board
Chairman can never be such an executive. He is usually a
nonalcoholic and could not give the required time. Nor, as
a Trustee, could he be paid a salary for the work that
would be required of him as the top executive of all our
services.

Suppose, however, that the Trustees engaged a full-time
manager who would actively conduct all three of our
service enterprises as departments of the Board. An
immediate difficulty would be that such a person could
never be a Trustee and could therefore never act as the
Chairman of the General Service Board. He would therefore
have no real status. He would become a man of all work
under the absentee direction of the Board Chairman.
Consider, too, the fact that halt of our Board of
Trustees normally live out of town1 and the further fact
that we cannot well ask our nonalcoholic Trustees to give
the active services close and continuous supervision.
Altogether, these are weighty reasons why we should never
turn the General Service Board into an operating
corporation.

Nor would we be much better off if we formed one big
subsidiary service corporation, wholly-owned by the
General Service Board and designed to encompass under a
single top executive all of our active services, including
The A.A. Grapevine. This plan would also create executive
difficulties because it would overconcentrate executive
authority. And finally, an individual executive having the
many diverse talents required would be hard to find and
hard to replace.

A further consideration is that we have always rigorously
avoided any great money or executive concentration by
placing our reserve funds with the Trustees and by
dividing our total working capital between the A.A. World
Services, Inc. and The A.A. Grapevine, Inc., each entity
having its separate executive. There is always a powerful
connection between money and authority. Whenever we
concentrate money, we shall inevitably create the
temptation for the exercise of too much executive
authority, an undesirable condition for us. Therefore we
should strenuously avoid placing too much money or too
much authority in any one service entity. These are potent
reasons for maintaining separate incorporations for each
of our active services.

However, experience dating from our earliest days strongly
suggests that future Trustees and service workers, in the
supposed interests of accounting simplicity, tax savings,
and hoped-for efficiency, will be periodically tempted to
go in for concentrations and consolidations of one kind of
another. Should this be again attempted, we know that the
risk of making an administrative shambles out of the total
operation will be great indeed.

These observations are not intended to bar any future
needful change. It is urged only that we avoid unnecessary
repetitions of those painful experiences and mistakes of
the past which sometimes resulted from too much
concentration of money and authority. It can only be left
on the record that we still see no workable way to convert
the Board of Trustees into an active, "all-purpose" service
corporation.



---------
1 In 1997, about 95% of the trustees live "out of town."
---------





CONCEPT IX



Good service leaders, together with sound and appropriate
methods of choosing them, are at all levels indispensable
for our future functioning and safety. The primary world
service leadership once exercised by the founders of A.A.
must necessarily be assumed by the Trustees of the General
Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous.



No matter how carefully we design our service structure of
principles and relationships, no matter how well we
apportion authority and responsibility, the operating
results of our structure can be no better than the personal
performance of those who must man it and make it work. Good
leadership cannot function well in a poorly designed
structure. But weak leadership can hardly function at all,
even in the best of structures. But once we have created a
basically sound structure, that job is finished, except for
occasional refinements.

With leadership we shall have a continuous problem. Good
leadership can be here today and gone tomorrow. Furnishing
our service structure with able and willing workers has to
be a continuous activity. It is therefore a problem that
in its very nature cannot be permanently solved. We must
continuously find the right people for our many service
tasks. Since our future effectiveness must thus depend
upon ever-new generations of leaders, it seems desirable
that we now proceed to define what a good service leader
should be; that we carefully indicate in each level of
service, especially in our Board of Trustees, what special
skills will always be required; and that we review our
present methods of finding and choosing that leadership.

First let's remember that the base for our service
structure rests on the dedication and ability of several
thousand General Service Representatives (G.S.R.'s),
several hundred area Committee Members, and nearly a
hundred Delegates. These are the direct agents of the A.A.
groups; these are the indispensable linkage between our
Fellowship and its world service; these are the primary
representatives of A.A.'s group conscience. Without their
support and activity we could not operate permanently at
all.

When making their choices of G.S.R.'s, the A.A. groups
should therefore have such facts well in mind. It ought to
be remembered that it is only the G.S.R.s who, in Group
Assembly meetings (or in caucus) can name Committee
Members and finally name the Delegates. Hence great care
needs to be taken by the groups as they choose these
Representatives. Hit-or-miss methods should be avoided.
Groups who name no G.S.R.'s should be encouraged to do so.
In this area a degree of weakness tends to persist. The
needed improvement seems to be a matter of increased care,
responsibility, and education.

As the G.S.R.'s meet in their Assemblies to name
Delegates, an even greater degree of care and dedication
will be required. Personal ambitions will have to be cast
aside, feuds and controversy forgotten. "Who are the best
qualified people that we can name?" This should be the
thought of all.

Thus far our Third Legacy method of naming Delegates by a
two-thirds vote or by lot has proved highly satisfactory.
This system of choosing has greatly reduced political
friction; it has made each Delegate feel that he or she is
truly a world servant rather than just the winner of a
contest. In Committee Members and Delegates alike, our
Third Legacy methods have generally produced people of a
high level of dedication and competence. In this area of
service we are in good shape. Our Area Assemblies need
only to continue to act with care and in selfless good
spirit.

It should be reported that some members still doubt
whether choice by lot is ever a good idea. They say that
the best man does not always win. In answer it must be
pointed out that each time we have abandoned the "two-
thirds vote or lot" in naming Delegates, there has been a
sense of defeat and disturbance in the minority camp which
is nowhere nearly offset by the advantage of naming the
supposedly best man. Indeed the second-best man can often
be as good a Delegate as the Assembly's first choice; he
may even be a better Delegate.

We now come to the principal theme of this particular
Concept: How can we best strengthen the composition and
leadership of the future Board of Trustees, the Board
which in years to come will have to exercise A.A.'s
primary leadership in world service administration, the
trusteeship which will in fact have to assume most of my
former duties and responsibilities in connection with
A.A.'s world services?

As previously noted, the actual transference of authority
and responsibility from me to the Trustees has been going
on for a long time. I am still around and still serving as
an adviser, and I have also been finishing a few remaining
chores (for example, the development of these Concepts)
which were left over from the 1955 St. Louis Convention.
But the time approaches when I shall have to withdraw from
nearly all world service activity. This is why I feel a
great interest now in doing everything possible to
strengthen the administrative composition and A.A.
leadership of our General Service Board, so that future
Trustees may be better able to cope with the problems and
dangers which time will no doubt bring.

My admi