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 admiration for what A.A.'s alcoholic and nonalcoholic
Trustees have done for us all is boundless. During the
time of our infancy and adolescence, nothing could have
been structurally better than the setup we have had.
Looking at this record, many A.A.'s naturally feel that
what was good for the past will surely be good for the
future; that any change in the induction methods, in the
Trustee ratio of alcoholics to nonalcoholics, or in the
present composition of our Board will prove dangerous
rather than beneficial.

But change has been pressing upon us right along, and it
is still doing so. For example, our Board operated in all
the years between 1938 and 1951 without the support of a
Conference. But it was finally and reluctantly realized
that this relatively unseen and unknown Board could not
continue without a permanent linkage to A.A., something
that Dr. Bob and I could not give it forever. We did not
like to face this change, but we had to. The trusteeship
had to be securely anchored to A.A. or it eventually would
have collapsed. The Conference simply had to come into
being.

This change profoundly altered the position of the
Trustees. Their former authority was modified; they were
firmly linked to A.A. and were thus made directly
accountable to our Fellowship. Nobody today questions the
wisdom of that momentous change, because everybody can now
see that it has provided an essential protection for the
service effectiveness and security of A.A.'s future.
Experience has refuted the idea that changes which are
needed to meet altered conditions are necessarily unwise.

We now stand on the edge of still another great change.
Though we have already solved the problem of the Trustees'
authority, their responsibility, and their linkage to
A.A., we have by no means solved, in my belief, the
question of the Board's future role in service leadership.
Hence it is my deep conviction that the administrative and
A.A. leadership strength of the Board should be
considerably increased; that these and other improvements
can place it in a much better position, practically and
psychologically; that such changes are truly necessary to
meet the conditions which will be certain to follow when
my own world service leadership has been terminated.

Students of history recognize that the transference of the
original leadership of a society to its successors in
leadership is always a critical turning point. This
difficult question of leadership, this problem of
transference, must now be faced.

Let us finally consider what specific personal qualities a
world service leader ought to have. For whatever use it
may be to future generations of our trusted servants, I
here offer a discussion on this subject published in a
1959 issue of "The A.A. Grapevine."



LEADERSHIP IN A.A.: EVER A VITAL NEED

No society can function well without able leadership in
all its levels, and A.A. can be no exception. It must be
said, though, that we A.A.'s sometimes cherish the thought
that we can do without much personal leadership at all. We
are apt to warp the traditional idea of "principles before
personalities" around to such a point that there would be
no "personality" in leadership whatever. This would imply
rather faceless automatons trying to please everybody,
regardless.

At other times we are quite as apt to demand that A.A.'s
leaders must necessarily be people of the most sterling
judgment, morals, and inspirations; big doers, prime
examples of all, and practically infallible.

Real leadership, of course, has to function in between
these entirely imaginary poles of hoped-for excellence. In
A.A. certainly no leader is faceless, and neither is any
leader perfect. Fortunately our Society is blessed with
any amount of real leadership — the active people of today
and the potential leaders of tomorrow as each new
generation of able members swarms in. We have an abundance
of men and women whose dedication, stability, vision, and
special skills make them capable of dealing with every
possible service assignment. We have only to seek these
folks out and trust them to serve us.

Somewhere in our literature there is a statement to this
effect: "Our leaders do not drive by mandate, they lead by
example." In effect we are saying to them, "Act for us,
but don't boss us."

A leader in A.A. service is therefore a man (or woman) who
can personally put principles, plans, and policies into
such dedicated and effective action that the rest of us
want to back him up and help him with his job. When a
leader power-drives us badly, we rebel; but when he too
meekly becomes an order-taker and he exercises no judgment
of his own — well, he really isn't a leader at all.

Good leadership originates plans, policies, and ideas for
the improvement of our Fellowship and its services. But in
new and important matters, it will nevertheless consult
widely before taking decisions and actions. Good
leadership will also remember that a fine plan or idea can
come from anybody, anywhere. Consequently, good leadership
will often discard its own cherished plans for others that
are better, and it will give credit to the source.

Good leadership never passes the buck. Once assured that
it has, or can, obtain sufficient general backing, it
freely takes decisions and puts them into action
forthwith, provided of course that such actions be within
the framework of its defined authority and responsibility.

A "politico" is an individual who is forever trying to
"get the people what they want." A statesman is an
individual who can carefully discriminate when and when
not to do this. He recognizes that even large majorities,
when badly disturbed or uninformed, can, once in a while,
be dead wrong. When such an occasional situation arises,
and something very vital is at stake, it is always the
duty of leadership, even when in a small minority, to take
a stand against the storm, using its every ability of
authority and persuasion to effect a change.

Nothing, however, can be more fatal to leadership than
opposition for opposition's sake. It never can be "Let's
have it our way or no way at all." This sort of opposition
is often powered by a visionless pride or a gripe that
makes us want to block something or somebody. Then there
is the opposition that casts its vote saying, "No, we
don't like it." No real reasons are ever given. This won't
do. When called upon, leadership must always give its
reasons, and good ones.

Then, too, a leader must realize that even very prideful
or angry people can sometimes be dead right, when the calm
and the more humble are quite mistaken.

These points are practical illustrations of the kinds of
careful discrimination and soul-searching that true
leadership must always try to exercise.

Another qualification for leadership is "give and take,"
the ability to compromise cheerfully whenever a proper
compromise can cause a situation to progress in what
appears to be the right direction. Compromise comes hard
to us "all-or-nothing" drunks. Nevertheless we must never
lose sight of the fact that progress is nearly always
characterized by a series of improving compromises. We
cannot, however, compromise always. Now and then it is
truly necessary to stick flat-footed to one's conviction
about an issue until it is settled. These are situations
for keen timing and careful discrimination as to which
course to take.

Leadership is often called upon to face heavy and
sometimes long-continued criticism. This is an acid test.
There are always the constructive critics; our friends
indeed. We ought never fail to give them a careful
hearing. We should be willing to let them modify our
opinions or change them completely. Often, too, we shall
have to disagree and then stand fast without losing their
friendship.

Then there are those whom we like to call our
"destructive" critics. They power-drive, they are
"politickers," they make accusations. Maybe they are
violent, malicious. They pitch gobs of rumors, gossip, and
general scuttle-butt to gain their ends — all for the good
of A. A., of course! But in A.A. we have at last learned
that these folks, who may be a trifle sicker than the rest
of us, need not be really destructive at all, depending
very much on how we relate ourselves to them.

To begin with, we ought to listen carefully to what they
say. Sometimes they are telling the whole truth; at other
times, a little truth. More often, though, they are just
rationalizing themselves into nonsense. If we are within
range, the whole truth, the half truth, or no truth at all
can prove equally unpleasant to us. That is why we have to
listen so carefully. If they have got the whole truth, or
even a little truth, then we had better thank them and get
on with our respective inventories, admitting we were
wrong. If it is nonsense, we can ignore it. Or we can lay
all the cards on the table and try to persuade them.
Failing this, we can be sorry they are too sick to listen,
and we can try to forget the whole business. There are few
better means of self-survey and of developing genuine
patience, than the work-outs these usually well-meaning
but erratic brother members afford us. This is always a
large order and we shall sometimes fail to make good on it
ourselves. But we must keep trying.

Now we come to the all-important attribute of vision.
Vision is, I think, the ability to make good estimates,
both for the immediate and for the more distant future.
Some might feel this sort of striving to be a sort of
heresy, because we A.A.'s are constantly telling
ourselves, "One day at a time." But that valuable
principle really refers to our mental and emotional lives
and means chiefly that we are not foolishly to repine over
the past nor wishfully to day-dream about the future.

As individuals and as a fellowship, we shall surely suffer
if we cast the whole job of planning for tomorrow onto a
fatuous idea of Providence. God's real Providence has
endowed us human beings with a considerable capacity for
foresight, and He evidently expects us to use it.
Therefore we must distinguish between wishful fantasy
about a happy tomorrow and the present use of our powers
of thoughtful estimate. This can spell the difference
between future progress and unforeseen woe.

Vision is therefore the very essence of prudence, an
essential virtue if ever there was one. Of course we shall
often miscalculate the future in whole or in part, but
that is better than to refuse to think at all.

The making of estimates has several aspects. We look at
past and present experience to see what we think it means.
From this we derive a tentative idea or policy. Looking
first at the nearby future, we ask how our idea or policy
might work. Then we ask how our policies or ideas might
apply under the several differing conditions that could
arise in the longer future. If an idea looks like a good
bet, we try it on — experimentally when that is possible.
Later we revalue the situation and ask whether our
estimate is working out.

At about this stage we may have to take a critical
decision. Maybe we have a policy or plan that still looks
fine and is apparently doing well. Nevertheless we ought
to ponder carefully what its longtime effect will be. Will
today's nearby advantages boomerang into large liabilities
for tomorrow? The temptation will almost always be to
seize the nearby benefits and quite forget about the
harmful precedents or consequences that we may be setting
in motion.

These are no fancy theories. We have found that we must
use these principles of estimate constantly, especially at
world service levels where the stakes are high. In public
relations, for example, we must estimate the reaction both
of A.A. groups and the general public, both short-term and
long-term. The same thing goes for our literature. Our
finances have to be estimated and budgeted. We must think
about our service needs as they relate to general economic
conditions, group capability, and willingness to
contribute. On many such problems often we must try to
think months and years ahead.

As a matter of fact, all of A.A.'s Twelve Traditions were
at first questions of estimate and vision for the future.
Years ago for example we slowly evolved an idea about A.A.
being self-supporting. There had been trouble here and
there about outside gifts. Then still more trouble
developed. Consequently we began to devise a policy of "no
outside gifts." We began to suspect that large sums of
this kind would tend to make us irresponsible and could
divert us from our primary aim. Finally we saw that for
the long pull, outside money could really ruin us. At this
point, what had been just an idea or general policy
crystallized firmly into an A.A. tradition. We saw that we
must sacrifice the quick, nearby advantage for long-term
safety.

We went through this same process on anonymity. A few
public breaks had looked good. But finally the vision came
that many such breaks eventually could raise havoc among
us. So it went: first a tentative idea, then an
experimental policy, then a firm policy, and finally a
deep conviction — a vision for tomorrow.

Such is our process of estimating the future, and
responsible world leadership must be proficient in this
vital activity. It is an essential ability, especially in
our Trustees. Most of them, in my view, should be chosen
on the basis that they have already demonstrated an
aptness for foresight in their own business or
professional careers.

We shall be in continual need of these same attributes —
tolerance, responsibility, flexibility, and vision — among
our leaders of A.A. services at all levels. The principles
of leadership will be the same whatever the size of the
operation.

Maybe this seems like an attempt to stake out a specially
privileged and superior type of A.A. member. But it really
is not so. We simply are recognizing that our talents vary
greatly. The conductor of an orchestra is not necessarily
good at finance or foresight. And it is quite unlikely
that a fine banker could be a great musical performer. So
when we talk about A.A. leadership, we only declare that
we ought to select that leadership on the basis of
obtaining the best talent we can find.

While this article was first thought of in connection with
our world service leadership, it is possible that some of
its suggestions can be useful to anyone who takes an
active part in our Society.

This is true particularly in the area of Twelfth Step
work, in which nearly all of us are actively engaged.
Every sponsor is a leader. The stakes are about as big as
they could be. A human life and usually the happiness of a
whole family hang in the balance. What the sponsor does
and says, how well he estimates the reactions of his
prospects, how well he times and makes his presentation,
how well he handles criticisms, and how well he leads his
prospect on by personal spiritual example — these
qualities of leadership can make all the difference, often
the difference between life and death.

We thank God that Alcoholics Anonymous is blessed with so
much leadership in all of its affairs.



CONCEPT 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.



Nearly all societies and governments of today exhibit
serious deviations from the very sound principle that each
operational responsibility must be accompanied by a
corresponding authority to discharge it.

This is why we have been at such pains in preceding
discussions to define the several authorities and
responsibilities of the A.A. groups, the Conference, the
Trustees, and our active service corporations. We have
tried to make sure that authority in each of these levels
is equal to responsibility. Then we have tried to relate
these levels one to another in such a way that this
principle is maintained throughout.

An outstanding characteristic of every good operational
structure is that it guarantees harmonious and effective
function by relating its several parts and people in such
a way that none can doubt what their respective
responsibilities and corresponding authorities actually
are. Unless these attributes are well defined; unless
those holding the final authority are able and willing
properly to delegate and maintain a suitable operational
authority; unless those holding such delegated authority
feel able and willing to use their delegated authority
freely as trusted servants; and unless there exists some
definite means of interpreting and deciding doubtful
situations—then personal clashes, confusion, and
ineffectiveness will be inevitable.

The matter of responsibility and its necessary and co-
equal authority is of such urgent importance that we might
profitably recapitulate what has already been said,
meanwhile taking a bird's-eye-view of our entire structure
to better envision how this principle does, and always
must, apply in our every activity and attitude.

The first characteristic that any working structure must
have is a point, or succession of points, where there is
ultimate responsibility and therefore an ultimate
authority. We have already seen how, for A.A.'s world
services, this kind of final responsibility and authority
resides in the A.A. groups themselves. And they in turn
have apportioned some of their ultimate authority to the
Conference and the Trustees.

We have observed how the Conference Delegates, directly
representing the groups, are actually in a position of
ultimate authority over the Trustees. We have seen further
how the Trustees are in ultimate authority over the
General Service Board's wholly-owned service
corporations—A.A. World Services, Inc. and The A.A.
Grapevine, Inc. Likewise we know that the directors of
these corporations are in ultimate authority over their
officers who, on their part, are in like authority over
their staffs.

The principle of ultimate authority runs clear through our
structure. This is necessary, because all of our service
affairs and activities have to head up somewhere for final
responsibility. Ultimate authority is also needed so that
each worker or each classification of servants knows where
and who the final boss is.

If however, ultimate authority is not carefully qualified
by delegated authority, we then have the reverse result.
Were there no delegated authority, the groups would be
directing their Delegates on every important vote, the
Delegates would similarly turn the Trustees into a timid
committee which would receive point-blank direction on
just about everything; the Trustees would then install
themselves as the sole directors of the service entities
and would commence to run them by directives. The
corporate executives would become small czars, pushing the
working staffs about. In short, such a misuse of ultimate
authority would add up to a dictatorship wherein nearly
every classification of A.A. servants would have large
responsibilities but no real or certain authority, and
hence no capability of effective decision and leadership
with which to operate. Big or little tyrannies and buck-
passing would be the inevitable penalties.

Therefore it becomes clear that ultimate authority is
something which cannot be used indiscriminately. Indeed
ultimate authority should practically never be used in
full, except in an emergency. That emergency usually
arises when delegated authority has gone wrong, when it
must be reorganized because it is ineffective, or because
it constantly exceeds its defined scope and purpose. For
example, if the groups are dissatisfied with the
Conference, they can elect better Delegates or withhold
funds. If the Delegates must, they can censure or
reorganize the Trustees. The Trustees can do the same with
the service corporations. If a corporation does not
approve of the operations of its executives or staff, any
or all of them can be fired.

These are the proper uses of ultimate authority, because
they rightly discharge a truly ultimate responsibility.
The influence of ultimate authority must always be felt,
but it is perfectly clear that when delegated authority is
operating well it should not be constantly interfered
with. Otherwise those charged with operating
responsibility will be demoralized because their authority
to do their work will be subject to arbitrary invasion,
and because their actual responsibility will be made
greater than their real authority.

How have we structurally tried to restrain the natural
human tendency of those in ultimate authority to usurp and
take over the needed operational or delegated authority?
Well, this has been a large order, and several structural
devices have been required. Let us review them, noting how
they apply.

In our structure we have tried to create at each level
accurate definitions of authority and responsibility. We
have done this (a) by legal means, (b) by traditional
means, and (c) by principles under which doubtful and
seemingly or really conflicting situations can be
interpreted and readily resolved.

Take the Conference Charter. It is not a legal instrument,
but practically speaking it is the substance of a contract
between the A.A. groups and their Conference. The Charter
makes clear in a general way that the A.A. groups have
delegated some of their ultimate authority and all needed
operational authority to the Conference, which includes
the Trustees and the active services. It is further
suggested, in these present articles, that each Conference
member on a final vote be entitled to cast his ballot
according to the dictates of his own conscience; that the
Conference itself also be granted, under the traditional
"Right of Decision," the privilege of choosing which
matters it will decide by itself and which it will refer
back to the groups for their discussion, guidance or
direction. These are the traditional definitions which can
check the natural tendency of the groups to over-instruct
Delegates. This gives the Conference an authority equal to
its real responsibility.

Consider next the position of the Trustees. In previous
articles we have made it clear that although the
Conference has the ultimate authority, the Trustees at
most times must insist on their legal right to actively
administer our service affairs. Their legal right has been
further strengthened and its use encouraged by the
traditional "Right of Decision." In these articles we also
recognize that the Trustees have a legal right of "veto"
over the Conference when, in rare cases, they feel this
should be used. By these means we have guaranteed the
Trustees an administrative authority equal to their actual
responsibility. This has of course been done without
denying in any way the ultimate authority of the
Conference, or of the Delegates, should it really be
necessary to give the Trustees directives or censures, or
to reorganize the Board. It should also be noticed that
the position of the Trustees is still further strengthened
by their "voting participation" in the Conference and by
the recognition that they are A.A.'s primary world service
administrators.

Much care has also been taken to guarantee the Directors
of A.A. World Services, Inc. and the A.A. Grapevine, Inc.
an ample operating authority that fully matches their
responsibility for the routine conduct of our active
services. The Charter provisions of their corporations
legally protect their rights; the tradition that the
Trustees must elect non-Trustee experts to these boards
strengthens them further. Besides, the traditional "Right
of Decision" adds still more substance to their position.
In these Concepts the perils of turning the General
Service Board back into a "departmentalized" operating
corporation have also been emphasized.

These are the extraordinary precautions we have taken to
maintain the operating authority and integrity of the
active services themselves. These safeguards are necessary
because the General Service Board owns these corporations.
Therefore the authority of the Trustees over them is not
only ultimate, it is absolute the moment the Trustees want
to make it that way. They can elect new boards of
directors at any time; they control the corporate budget;
they can withhold operating funds. All these powers are
needed and right. Nevertheless, so long as things go well,
it is highly important that the Trustees do not
unnecessarily interfere with, or usurp the operating
authority of these entities. Hence the care we have taken
in constructing these definitions of delegated authority.

To a considerable degree, the standing committees of the
General Service Board— Policy, Finance, Public Relations,
and the like—have a similar latitude. Under the principle
of the "Right of Decision," each primary committee may
choose what business it will dispose of on its own and
what matters it will refer to the Board. The position of
these committees is also fortified by the appointment of a
generous proportion of non-Trustee members. Here, too, we
try to make the authority of these committees equal to
their responsibility.1

Now we come to the matter of conflicting authorities and
to the question of how these conflicts are to be resolved.
Most routine conflicts in the active services are easily
settled, because we have provided ready communication
between all service corporations and the committees of the
General Service Board. For example: at every meeting of
The Grapevine Boards or staff, a representative of A.A.
World Services, Inc. is present, and vice versa. The
General Policy Committee always contains one or more
members of the Finance and Budgetary Committees, and vice
versa. Such interlocking provides easy communication. Each
entity knows what the other is doing. This practical
arrangement irons out many conflicts of authority—but not
all.

Suppose, for example, that the framing and execution of an
important A.A. policy is involved. In such a case the
General Policy Committee naturally assumes the primary
jurisdiction, taking on the job of planning and of making
recommendations to the Board of Trustees.

Let us suppose, however, that a considerable sum of money
will be needed. In such a case, the plan also will have to
be placed before the Finance and Budgetary Committee. If
this committee agrees that the expenditure is warranted
and is in line with the over-all budget, it tells the
Policy Committee to go ahead and make its recommendation
to the Trustees. But if the Finance and Budgetary
Committee objects, then it must file its objection with
the Trustees, who will settle the issue. Or if they think
it necessary, the Trustees will refer the matter to the
Conference.

The principle of a primary and a secondary jurisdiction
also works the other way round. If the Finance Committee,
for example, proposes a large expenditure that may
strongly affect A.A. feeling and policy, it must be sure
to check with the Policy Committee, even though the main
jurisdiction still lies with the Budget and Finance
people.

In all matters of joint or conflicting authority,
therefore, a senior jurisdiction must be established. The
junior jurisdiction must be heard and, regardless of the
question involved, there must be an understood point or
body where a final settlement can be had. It is understood
that lesser conflicts are not to be loaded upon the
Trustees for final decision. But it should always be clear
where the point of final decision is located.

A condition to be avoided at all costs is double-headed
business or policy management. Authority can never be
divided into equal halves. Nowhere does such split
authority or double-headed management so bedevil a
structure as in its executive departments. The vital need
of avoiding double-headed executive management will be
fully discussed under Concept XI.

In addition to the methods we use to make delegated
authority equal to delegated responsibility, we have two
more guarantees—the "Right of Appeal" and the "Right of
Petition." As we know, a bare majority is apt to
constitute itself as a pseudo-ultimate authority on many
occasions when it should not do so. Likewise, executives
are apt to over-boss their assistants. Therefore we use
the concepts of appeal and petition to insure that every
minority, and every worker doing a job, has an authority
and a status commensurate with the responsibility
involved.

To sum up: Let us always be sure that there is an
abundance of final or ultimate authority to correct or to
reorganize; but let us be equally sure that all of our
trusted servants have a clearly defined and adequate
authority to do their daily work and discharge their clear
responsibilities.

All of this is fully implied in A.A.'s Tradition Two. Here
we see the "group conscience" as the ultimate authority
and the "trusted servant" as the delegated authority. One
cannot function without the other. We well know that only
by means of careful definitions and mutual respect can we
constantly maintain a right and harmonious working
balance.



---------
1 In the years since Bill wrote on the General Policy
Committee (see also p. 52), its functions have changed
markedly. Now known as the General Sharing Session, it meets
three times a year for about two hours on the Sunday
preceding the General Service Board meeting, and considers
the long-range plans of board committees and other topics of
special interest. Its membership composes all the trustees,
the A.A.W.S. and Grapevine directors and staffs, and the
appointed members of the board committees.
--------





CONCEPT XI



While the Trustees hold final responsibility for A.A.'s
world service administration, 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.



The longtime success of our General Service Board will rest
not only on the capabilities of the Trustees themselves; it
will depend quite as much upon the competent leadership and
harmonious association of those non-Trustee committee
members, corporate service directors, executives, and staff
members who must actively carry on A.A.'s world services.
Their quality and dedication, or their lack of these
characteristics, will make or break our structure of
service. Our final dependency on them will always be great
indeed.

Far more than most of the Trustees, these servants will be
in direct contact with A.A. world-wide, and their
performance will be constantly on view. They will perform
most of the routine labor. They will carry on most of our
services. They will travel widely and will receive most
visitors at the Headquarters. They will often originate
new plans and policies. Some of them will eventually
become Trustees. Because this group will form the visible
image of world service, most A.A.'s will measure our
service values by what they see and feel in them. Members
of this group will not only support the world leadership
of the Trustees; in the nature of the case they will be
bound to share world leadership with them.

Fortunately we already have a sound internal structure of
service in which a very competent group of non-Trustee
servants are now working. Only a few refinements and
changes will still be needed in A.A. World Services, Inc.
and at The A.A. Grapevine, Inc., the latter being a
comparatively recent comer to our service scene. The main
outlines of this underlying structure are now defined, and
the effectiveness of this arrangement has been well
proven. Of what, then, does our underlying structure of
service consist?

It is composed of the following elements: the five1
standing committees of the General Service Board, plus our
two active service corporations, A.A. World Services, Inc.
(including its A.A. publishing division) and The A.A.
Grapevine, Inc. Let's have a look at each of these
operations.

The standing committees of the General Service Board are
Nominating, Finance and Budgetary, Public Information,
Literature, and General Policy — the titles clearly
denoting the direct administrative responsibilities of the
General Service Board. These committees are appointed
yearly by the General Service Board Chairman, and each
committee, as we have seen, includes a suitable proportion
of Trustees, non-Trustee experts in the work to be done, a
Headquarters executive, and a staff worker.

The Nominating Committee: This committee aids the Trustees
in discharging their prime obligation to see that all
vacancies — whether within their own ranks or among key
service directors, executives, staff members — are
properly filled with members and workers of the greatest
possible competence, stability, and industry.

The recommendations of this committee to a large extent
will determine the continuous success of our services. Its
members will have the primary voice in choosing our future
Trustees and non-Trustee workers. Careful deliberation,
painstaking investigation and interviewing, refusal to
accept casual recommendations, preparation well in advance
of lists of suitable candidates — these will need to be
the principal attitudes and activities of this committee.
All temptation to haste or snap judgment will need to be
faithfully and constantly resisted.

Another problem that future committees may have to face is
the subtle tendency toward deterioration in the caliber of
personnel due to the very natural and usually unconscious
tendency of those who suggest nominees to select
individuals of somewhat less ability than themselves.
Instinctively we look for associates rather like
ourselves, only a little less experienced and able. For
example, what executive is likely to recommend an
assistant who is a great deal more competent than he is?
What group of staff members will suggest a new associate
whose capabilities are a great deal above their own
average? The reverse is the more likely. Government
bureaus, institutions, and many commercial enterprises
suffer this insidious deterioration. We have not yet
experienced it to any extent, but let us be sure that we
never do. All of us need to be on guard against this
ruinous trend, especially the Nominating Committee, whose
first and last duty is to choose only the best obtainable
for each vacant post.

The Finance and Budgetary Committee: The main
responsibility of this body is to see that we do not
become money-crippled or go broke. This is the place where
money and spirituality do have to mix, and in just the
right proportion. Here we need hard-headed members with
much financial experience. All should be realists, and a
pessimist or two can be useful. The whole temper of
today's world is to spend more than it has, or may ever
have. Many of us consequently are infected with this rosy
philosophy. When a new and promising A.A. service project
moves into sight, we are apt to cry, "Never mind the
money, let's get at it." This is when our budgeteers are
expected to say, "Stop, look and listen." This is the
exact point where the "savers" come into a constructive
and healthy collision with the "spenders." The primary
function of this committee, therefore, is to see that our
Headquarters operation is always solvent and that it stays
that way, in good times and bad.

This committee must conservatively estimate each year's
income. It needs to develop plans for increasing our
revenues. It will keep a cold and watchful eye on needless
cost, waste, and duplication. It will closely scrutinize
the yearly budgets of estimated income and expense
submitted by A.A. World Services, Inc. and The A.A.
Grapevine, Inc. It will recommend amendments of the
estimates when necessary. At mid-year it will ask for
budget revisions if earlier estimates have gone too much
wrong. It will scrutinize every new and considerable
expenditure, asking "Is this necessary or desirable now?
Can we afford it, all considered?"

This committee, in good times, will insist that we
continue to set aside substantial sums to our Reserve
Fund. It will pursue an investment policy in that fund
which will guarantee the immediate availability of at
least two-thirds of it at any time, without loss, thereby
enabling us to meet hard times or even a calamity.

This is not to say that our Finance and Budgetary
Committee constantly says "no" and fearfully hoards our
money. I can remember an earlier day when we were so
intent on building up the Reserve Fund out of book
earnings that we let the office services run down badly
for sheer lack of enough help to cope with our fast
growth. Confidence was thereby lost out in the groups, and
contributions suffered severely; they dropped by tens of
thousands a year. By the time the office had been
reorganized and confidence restored, we had used all our
current book earnings and a large part of our Reserve
Funds besides. This sort of false and unimaginative
economy can prove very costly — in spirit, in service, and
in money.

Future committees, therefore, will ponder the difference
between real prudence (which is neither fear nor hoarding
and which may indeed require us sometimes to run temporary
deficits) and that kind of persistent recklessness which
could someday result in the severe contraction or collapse
of our vital services.

The safe course will usually lie midway between reckless
budget-slashing and imprudent spending.

The Public Information Committee: This one, too, is of top
importance. Of course most of its members should be
experts in the field of public relations. But emphasis
should also be laid on the fact that sheer commercial
expertness will not be quite enough. Because of A.A.'s
traditional conservatism, reflected in the maxim
"Attraction rather than promotion," it is evident that the
professional members of the committee should be capable of
adapting their business experience to A.A.'s needs. For
instance, the techniques used to sell a big time
personality or a new hair lotion would not be for A.A. The
committee should always include a certain number of A.A.'s
who, because of long experience, really do have "A.A.
sense," that is, a thorough grasp of our total picture and
what it needs public relations-wise.

At the same time let us not overlook the need for high
professional skill. Dealing with the huge complex of
public communications as it exists today is not a job
wholly for amateurs. Skill in this area implies much
technical experience, diplomacy, a sense of what is
dangerous and what is not, the courage to take calculated
risks, and a readiness to make wise but tradition-abiding
compromises. These are the skilled talents we shall always
need.

We are trying our best to reach more of those 25 million
alcoholics who today inhabit the world. We have to reach
them directly and indirectly. In order to accomplish this
it will be necessary that understanding of A.A. and public
good will towards A.A. go on growing everywhere. We need
to be on even better terms with medicine, religion,
employers, governments, courts, prisons, mental hospitals,
and all those conducting enterprises in the alcohol field.
We need the increasing good will of editors, writers,
television and radio channels. These publicity outlets —
local, national, and international — should be opened
wider and wider, always foregoing, however, high pressure
promotion tactics. It is to, and through, all these
resources that we must try to carry A.A.'s message to
those who suffer alcoholism and its consequences.

This accounts for the importance in which we hold the work
and the recommendations of our Public Information
Committee. It is a critical assignment; a single large
public blunder could cost many lives and much suffering
because it would turn new prospects away. Conversely,
every real public relations success brings alcoholics in
our direction.

The Literature Committee: This body is charged with the
revision of existing books and pamphlets; also with the
creation of fresh pamphlet material to meet new needs or
changing conditions. Broadly speaking, its mission is to
see that an adequate and comprehensive view of A.A. in its
every aspect is held up in writing to our members,
friends, and to the world at large. Our literature is a
principal means by which A.A. recovery, unity, and service
are facilitated. Tons of books and pamphlets are shipped
each year. The influence of this material is incalculable.
To keep our literature fully abreast of our progress is
therefore an urgent and vital work.

The Literature Committee constantly will have to solve new
problems of design, format, and content. Here our policy
is to aim at only the best; we firmly believe that cheap
looking, cheap selling, and poorly conceived literature is
not in A.A.'s best interest from any standpoint, whether
effectiveness, economy, or any other.

Like other General Service Board Committees, this one must
be expert in the work to be done. A key figure in its
operation will necessarily be a paid writer and
consultant. The creative work — that is, the initial form
and draft and the final development of new undertakings —
will be for this specialist to make. The role of the other
Committeemen will be of constructive criticism and
amendment of the consultant's effort. Here, too, we should
remember that the committee must certainly include persons
of wide A.A. experience. This matter of getting the "A.A.
feel" into all our writings is absolutely vital. What we
say so well by word of mouth we must also communicate in
print.

The Literature Committee consequently will find it
desirable to test carefully each new creation by asking a
number of A.A.'s who are sensitive to A.A. feeling and
reaction to offer their criticism and suggestions. If the
new material is to affect the nonalcoholic world,
especially the fields of medicine and religion, a
consultation should be held with those nonalcoholic
Trustees or other qualified friends who are knowledgeable
in these areas.

The General Policy Committee: Perhaps this is the most
important of all of the General Service Board Committees,
and it is regarded as the senior one. It can take
jurisdiction of practically all problems or projects which
involve A.A. policy, public information, or A.A.
Traditions that may arise in the other committees or
service corporations.2

Several years ago it became evident that the mass of
business coming before the quarterly Trustees' meetings
had become too big to handle. We therefore had to devise a
committee that could filter all these matters, disposing
of the lesser and fully examining the larger. The object
was to break the jam at Trustees' meetings and to present
the Board with carefully discussed recommendations,
including minority reports, on the more serious issues.
Thus the attention of the General Service Board could be
accurately focused on what it really had to do. This
committee, with ample time at its disposal, could also
strengthen our process of planning and policy formation.
It could avert blunders, both large and small, due to
haste.

This was our original concept, and it has worked
wonderfully well. Because this committee is designed to be
super-sensitive to A.A. opinion and reaction, its hard
core is composed of (a) the "out-of-town" A.A. Trustees,
one of whom is traditionally named chairman, (b) two staff
members of the World Service Office, (c) the president of
the A.A. World Services, Inc., who is also general manager
of the World Office, (d) the president of The A.A.
Grapevine, Inc., who is the editor, and (e) those Trustees
and service directors known to be long experienced with
our Fellowship.

All other Trustees, committee members and directors and
staffs are invited to attend meetings — the Trustees
because they can thus get a preview of the questions that
will confront them at their own meeting to follow — the
Committeemen and directors because in this way they will
get a comprehensive picture of what other Headquarters
units have been doing.

This is a large committee, and it operates "town meeting-
style," requiring four to six hours each Sunday afternoon
preceding the Monday quarterly meeting of the General
Service Board. A carefully worked out agenda is always
prepared. The committee issues to the Trustees a full
report of its recommendations, together with any minority
views. Its report also shows the actual disposition of
minor matters.

This General Policy Committee has greatly strengthened our
Headquarters unity. All participants get the feeling they
are "on the team." The size of the meeting is no obstacle.
Many minds, plenty of time, and real sensitivity to A.A.
insure a remarkable effectiveness of policy and planning.

Again it is emphasized that none of these five General
Service Board Committees are executive in character. They
do not manage and conduct the active affairs of the
service corporations. They may, however, make any
recommendations they wish — to the service corporations
themselves or to the Trustees. It will be noted that the
General Policy Committee always examines the quarterly
reports of the corporate services and such reports of the
other General Service Board Committees as may be available
at meeting time. The committee can and does comment upon
these reports and makes recommendations respecting them.

Next to be considered will be our active service
corporations, A.A. World Services, Inc. and The A.A.
Grapevine, Inc. Their activities probably represent nine-
tenths of our direct Headquarters effort.

The General Service Board owns the stock of these
entities.3 Therefore the Trustees yearly elect all of
their directors, seven (at present) in each corporation.
This means that so far as the routine direction of our
established services is concerned, the Trustees have fully
delegated their executive function in these constantly
active service areas.

The directorate of A.A. World Services, Inc. (including
the A.A. Publishing Division) is traditionally composed of
two Trustees for custodial oversight, three non-Trustee
experts in the work to be done, and two executives, the
general manager of the World Office and one of his staff
assistants, who are president and vice president
respectively. The two Trustee directors usually have seen
past service on the Board as non-Trustee experts, and one
of them is customarily named Treasurer. A.A. directors
thus are those thoroughly experienced with these
operations.4

The Grapevine situation is similarly structured, with two
exceptions. The two Trustee directors of the Grapevine are
(1) an ex-editor of the Grapevine, and (2) a finance man
who has previously served on the Grapevine Board. The
latter Trustee traditionally is made its chairman, and he
presides at corporate meetings. This is because neither
the editor, who is traditionally the Grapevine president,
nor his staff member director, the vice president,
ordinarily will have the needed business experience to
chair the Grapevine corporate board. This arrangement also
places the chairman in a favorable position to mediate
differences that may arise between the editorial and
business departments of the enterprise. The Grapevine also
has an Editorial Board which names its own successors,
subject to the approval of the corporate Board.5

The Editorial Board assists the editor and his staff in
determining the editorial policy, slant and content of the
magazine. It relieves the editor (up to now, a volunteer)
of some of his work load. It surveys and makes
recommendations respecting Grapevine promotional material
going to the groups. It gives our makeup men, artists and
writers both status and coherence in their joint efforts.
And it is a training ground for future editors. Our
Editorial Board therefore is the chief guarantor of the
magazine's quality and editorial continuity.

Every new generation of workers will raise certain
questions about these two corporate questions: "Why can't
both of them be consolidated into the General Service
Board?" Or, "Why can't the Grapevine be merged into A.A.
World Services, Inc., thus placing all active Headquarters
operations under a single management?" These questions
have already been discussed under previous Concepts. We
have concluded that the General Service Board is an
unsuitable vehicle for an operating corporation; that
because the Grapevine is such a dissimilar operation, and
because we ought not concentrate too much money and
executive authority in a single entity, there should be no
merger of A.A. World Services and The A.A. Grapevine. Upon
these points we seem well agreed — at least, as of now.

But this question has some other variations. It will often
be asked, "If it is desirable to separately incorporate
dissimilar enterprises, why then shouldn't the A.A.
Publishing division of A.A. World Services be separately
incorporated and managed by a board of directors specially
skilled in book and booklet publishing?" Offhand, this
looks logical.

Today, however, A.A. Publishing is mostly a business
operation. Unlike a commercial publisher, we do not have
to ensure the selection, writing, and publication of a lot
of new books each year. Most of our A.A. books are already
written, and it is probable that not many more will be
published. Of course we shall issue new pamphlets now and
then, and revisions of older material occasionally are
desirable. But this relatively small amount of creative
publishing work can be handled easily by the Literature
Committee. Hence the operation of the A.A. publishing
division of A.A. World Services, Inc., is now mostly a
matter of printing, distribution, accounting, and finance.
For management purposes there is therefore no present need
for a separate corporation; it is only required that the
books of A.A. World Services, Inc. show a separate
accounting for its A.A. Publishing division. Only in the
highly unlikely event of a large and protracted entry into
the new book business would we really ever need a separate
corporate management.

Another question will be this: "Why don't we merge A.A.
Publishing with The A.A. Grapevine, so placing all of our
literature under a unified management?" The answer here is
based on the complete dissimilarity of the two
enterprises. The Grapevine has to produce a brand new
quality product every month, on the dot. By contrast, A.A.
Publishing success largely depends upon what has already
been written.

In the Grapevine the paramount activity is therefore the
creative. The Grapevine requires several paid staff
members and the constant aid of a large number of
specialized volunteers without whose help it could not
operate. Why, then, should we load up these people with a
lot more straight business activity? Obviously we should
not.

Another question often is posed, "Why should A.A. World
Services, Inc. not take over all the Grapevine's
accounting, finances, promotion, and distribution. Would
not such a consolidation of financing, employees, and
routine business be more efficient and economical? Would
not this relieve the Grapevine of all business headaches?"

This plan, too, looks reasonable at first glance.
Nevertheless the chances are it would work poorly. It has
serious structural defects. It would violate the basic
good-management principle that whoever has the
responsibility for a given task must also have the needed
authority, funds, personnel, and equipment to carry it
out. The A.A. Grapevine, Inc. unquestionably holds full
responsibility for its own solvency, promotion, policy,
and the management of its circulation. It is supposed to
have four business directors, expert in these phases of
magazine operation. The Conference and the General Service
Board will always hold them accountable. If, therefore,
any large part of the Grapevine business functions are
transferred to a completely different corporate management
over which the Grapevine has no authority, what then? This
certainly would be double-headed management and a source
of continuous conflict. The Grapevine Board would become
virtually impotent.

Such a situation also would tend to demoralize the editor,
his staff, and the Editorial Board, all of them
specialized volunteers. This group now has a
representation of three directors on the Grapevine Board.
In such a corporate body it is now possible to reconcile
the editorial desire for excellence in the magazine with
the financial realities of the Grapevine situation. But if
the business function of the Grapevine was transferred to
A.A. World Services, Inc., the status and influence of the
GV editorial people would be reduced to almost nothing.
World Service directors would be mostly interested in
business efficiency and solvency, while the GV editorial
representatives would still be looking for quality and
magazine improvements. There would be no practical way of
reconciling these differences. The business directors of
A.A. World Services, Inc. would dominate the editorial
workers and therefore the editorial policy. The editorial
group would find that they had become a mere committee,
taking directions from A.A. World Services. "Who pays the
piper calls the tune" would become the actual working
arrangement. Having so split the management of the
Grapevine in halves and having abandoned the principle of
"Participation," it is doubtful if we could make this
setup work at all, especially with all those volunteers.
We might save some money, but we probably could not save
the magazine.

Joint arrangements between The A.A. Grapevine and A.A.
World Services for routine operations such as billing,
mailing, etc., are not necessarily precluded, though to a
lesser degree the same kind of frictions above described
can be expected to develop unless there is the clearest
possible understanding of "who controls what and when."

We who now work at A.A.'s Headquarters are pretty much in
agreement on the foregoing operations. They are recorded
in some detail for whatever future benefits they may be.
We deeply realize that we should be on guard always
against structural tinkering just for money-saving
purposes. These departures can often result in so much
disharmony and consequent inefficiency that nothing is
really saved, and there can often be a real loss.

A detailed description of the active operational side of
our General Service Board Committees and active service
corporations is too lengthy to set down here. But we
should take note, however, of several more principles and
problems which are common to both A.A. World Services,
Inc. and to The A.A. Grapevine.

1. The status of executives — executive direction and
policy formation distinguished: No active service can
function well unless it has sustained and competent
executive direction. This must always head up in one
person, supported by such assistants as he needs. A board
or a committee can never actively manage anything, in the
continuous executive sense. This function has to be
delegated to a single person. That person has to have
ample freedom and authority to do his job, and he should
not be interfered with so long as his work is done well.

Real executive ability cannot be plucked from any bush; it
is rare and hard to come by. A special combination of
qualities is required. The executive must inspire by
energy and example, thereby securing willing cooperation.
If that cooperation is not forthcoming, he must know when
real firmness is in order. He must act without favor or
partiality. He must comprehend and execute large affairs,
while not neglecting the smaller. He often must take the
initiative in plan making.

The use of such executive abilities implies certain
realizations on the part of the executive and those who
work with him, otherwise there is apt to be
misunderstanding. Because of their natural drive and
energy, executives will sometimes fail to distinguish
between routine execution of established plans and
policies, and the making of new ones. In this area they
may tend to make new plans and put them into operation
without sufficiently consulting those whose work is to be
affected, or those whose experience and wisdom is actually
or officially needed.

A good executive is necessarily a good salesman. But he
often wants the fast sell and quick results on those very
occasions where patient consultation with many people is
in order. However, this is far better than timid delay and
constant requests to be told by somebody or other what to
do. The executive who overdrives can be reasonably
restrained by the structural situation, and definitions
within which he has to work. But a weak and wobbly
executive is of little use at any time.

It is the duty of the good executive, therefore, to learn
discrimination of when he should act on his own and when
limited or wide consultation is proper, and when he should
ask for specific definitions and directions. This
discrimination is really up to him. His privilege of
making these choices is structurally guaranteed by the
"Right of Decision." He can always be censured after his
acts, but seldom before.

In our world services we still have two more important
executive problems. One is the lack of money to hire full-
time top executives for A.A. World Services, Inc. and for
the A.A. Grapevine. In our World Services Office, we can
now afford only a part-time general manager. In the
Grapevine we must rely on a volunteer.6 Of course each of
these executives has paid staff assistants. But the fact
that one of our top executives can only give half his time
and the other one considerably less is by no means an
ideal situation.

A chief-executive-in-fact should be constantly on the job,
and ours cannot be. Someday we may be able to correct this
defect. Even then, however, we should not make the mistake
of hiring full-time executives who, lacking the necessary
experience and caliber, are willing to work cheaply. No
more expensive blunder than this could possibly be made.
Outstanding ability in a volunteer, or a part-timer, is
definitely preferable to that.

The second executive difficulty is inherent in our A.A.
situation. Our key people at Headquarters are A.A.
members; they have to be. Therefore the executives and
their staffs are friends in A.A., members of the same
club. This sometimes makes it hard for an executive to
give firm guidance and equally hard for his A.A. friends
to accept it. Our A.A. executives find that they not only
have to run a business; they must also keep their friends.
In turn, those working under them have to realize
seriously that we really do have a business to conduct as
well as a cooperative spiritual enterprise to foster.
Therefore a reasonable amount of discipline and direction
is a necessity. Those who cannot or will not see this are
not well suited for Headquarters work. Although excessive
apartness or roughshod authority is to be rejected in an
executive, nobody should complain if he is both friendly
and firm. These problems are not insoluble; we do solve
them right along, mostly by the application of A.A.
principles.

Problems of this sort occasionally crop up, but General
Service Headquarters is not constantly beset with them.
Because of the exceptional dedication of our people, a
degree of harmony and effectiveness prevails that is
unusual in the conduct of an outside business.

2. Paid workers, how compensated: We believe that each
paid executive, staff member, or consultant should be
recompensed in reasonable relation to the value of his or
her similar services or abilities in the commercial world.

This policy is often misunderstood. Many A.A.'s no doubt
regard A.A. world services as a sort of necessary charity
that has to be paid for. It is forgotten that our
particular charity is just as beneficial to us as it is to
the newcomer; that many of those services are designed for
the general welfare and protection of us all. We are not
like rich benefactors who would aid the sick and the poor.
We are helping others in order to help ourselves.

Another mistaken idea is that our paid workers should
labor cheaply, just as charity workers often do elsewhere.
If adopted, this concept would mark our service workers
for unusual financial sacrifices, sacrifices that we would
ask no other A.A.'s to make. We A.A.'s would be saying to
each worker, "We send Headquarters $3.00 apiece every
year. But it would be just great if you would work for
A.A. at $2,000 a year less than you would be worth
elsewhere." Seen in this light, the low-pay theory appears
as absurd as it really is, especially when we remember
that A.A.'s world service overhead is about the smallest
per capita of any large society on earth. The difference
between fair and poor pay at World Headquarters is a
matter only of a few cents a year to each of us.

We should also consider the well-known fact that cheap
help is apt to feel insecure and be inefficient. It is
very costly in the long run. This is neither good
spirituality nor good business. Assuming that service
money is readily available, we should therefore compensate
our workers well.

3. Rotation among paid staff workers: At A.A.'s World
Office, most staff members' assignments are changed
yearly. When engaged, each staff member is expected to
possess the general ability to do, or learn how to do, any
job in the place—excepting for office management where,
because of the special skills involved, rotation may
sometimes be limited to part of the A.A. staff. But the
basis of compensating all staff members is identical. Pay
increases are based on time served only.

In the business world, such an arrangement would be
unworkable. It would practically guarantee indifference
and mediocrity, because the usual money and prestige
incentives would be lacking. In our entire operating
situation, this is the sole major departure from the
structure of corporate business. Consequently there should
be proved and compelling reasons for such a corporate
heresy, and there are.

Our primary reason for the adoption of rotation and equal
staff pay was the security and continuity of the office.
We once had the conventional system of one highly paid
staff member with assistants at much lower pay. Hers had
been the principal voice in hiring them. Quite
unconsciously, I'm certain, she engaged people who she
felt would not be competitive with her. Meanwhile she kept
a tight rein on all the important business of the place. A
prodigy of wonderful work was done. But suddenly she
collapsed, and shortly afterwards one of her assistants
did the same. We were left with only one partly trained
assistant who knew anything whatever about the total
operation.

Luckily a good A.A. friend of mine, a fine organizer,
pitched in and helped to put the office in order. We saw
that we had to install a paid staff that simply couldn't
break down. Next time there might be no one around to give
the necessary amount of time for its reorganization.
Besides this breakdown had cost us much confidence out in
the field — so much so that we must have lost $50,000 in
three years of group contributions.

Thereafter we installed the principle of rotation in a
considerably larger staff. Since then we have experienced
sudden departures and collapses of A.A. staff members,
each of which would have demoralized the place under the
former conventional system. But since the remaining staff
members always knew every assignment there was, no trouble
at all was experienced. Under such a condition
replacements can be carefully chosen and trained at
leisure. And the usual tendency to select less able
associates is largely overcome.

By thus putting our staff members on a complete parity,
the removal of the usual money and prestige incentives did
not really damage us at all. We A.A.'s had what the
commercial venture often lacks: a dedicated desire to
serve which replaced the usual ego drives. At the same
time many of the temptations to destructive competition
and office "politicking" were also removed. The spirit of
Headquarters improved immeasurably and found its way out
into the Fellowship.

In the future — at those times when the rotation system
does not work perfectly — there will be the natural demand
to throw it out in the supposed interest of efficiency.
Certainly our successors will be at liberty to try, but
past experience surely suggests that they may be jumping
from the frying pan into the fire. One more aspect of
rotation: the matter of time. We already know that the
more responsible the assignment, the longer the term of
service must be, if we are to have effectiveness. For
example, a group secretary can be changed every six months
and an Intergroup committeeman every year. But to be of
any use whatever, a Delegate has to serve two years, and a
Trustee must serve four.

In the World Service Office, we have found it impractical
and unfair to set any fixed term of employment. A staff
member has to have several years training. Are we then to
throw her out, just as she is getting top grade? And if
she realized that she could only serve for a fixed period,
could we have hired her in the first place? Probably not.
These posts are hard to fill because they require just the
right ingredients of personality, ability, stability,
business and A.A. experience. If we insisted on a fixed
term of service, we would often be forced to engage A.A.'s
really not qualified. This would be both harmful and
unfair.

But we need not fear too many staff members' getting "old
in the service." The emotional pace of "A.A. around the
clock" is too strenuous for most of them to take for a
very long period of time. Already they come and go for
this and for other personal reasons. Within reason, most
of them can and must rotate from assignment to assignment.
But we should attempt no more rotation than this.

Because of certain unusual skills required, rotation among
Grapevine staff members is more difficult. If the magazine
ever gets a part-time editor who can insist on and help in
their training, we may someday bring this about. But in
the Grapevine there will never be safety in numbers, as in
the World Office. The present Grapevine paid staff of two
could serve a circulation of many times today's size.

4. Full "Participation" of paid workers is highly
important: We have already discussed the necessity of
giving key paid personnel a voting representation on our
committees and corporate boards.8 We have seen that they
should enjoy a status suitable to their responsibility,
just as our volunteers do. But full participation for paid
workers cannot be established by voting rights only. Other
special factors usually affect the extent of their
participation. Let's see what these are, and what can be
done about them.

The first is the fact of employment for money — the
employer-employee relation. In human affairs, authority
and money are deeply linked. Possession or control of
money spells control of people. Unwisely used, as it often
is, this control can result in a very unhappy kind of
division. This ranges the "haves" on one side of the fence
and the "have nots" on the other. There can be no
reconciliation or harmony until a part of that fence is
taken down. Only then can proper authority join hands with
a responsible willingness to get on with the job.

In our A.A. structure of service we therefore must do more
than give our paid workers a place at the A.A. council
table. We ought to treat them in all respects as we would
volunteers, people who are our friends and co-workers. So
long as they work well, the fact that they are dependent
upon the money they receive should never, consciously or
unconsciously, be used as a lever against them. They must
be made to feel that they are on the team. If, however,
they cannot or will not do their jobs, that is something
else again. We can and should let them go.

Women workers present still another problem. Our
Headquarters is pretty much a man's world. Some men are
apt to feel, unconsciously, that they are women's
superiors, thus producing a reflex reaction in the gals.
Then, too, some of us—of both sexes—have been emotionally
damaged in the area of man-woman relations. Our drinking
has made us wrongly dependent on our marriage partners. We
have turned them into our "moms" and "pops:" and then we
have deeply resented that situation. Perhaps maladjustment
has taken still other turns which leave us with a hangover
of hostility that we are apt to project into any man-woman
relatedness that we undertake.

It is possible for these forces to defeat the good working
partnerships we would like to have. But if we are fully
aware of these tendencies, they can be the more easily
overcome, and forgiven. We can be aware also that any
sound working relation between adult men and women must be
in the character of a partnership, a non-competitive one
in which each partner complements the other. It is not a
question of superiority or inferiority at all. Men, for
example, because they are men, are apt to be better at
business. But suppose we replaced our six women staff
members with six men? In these positions, could the men
possibly relate themselves so uniquely and so effectively
to our Fellowship as the women? Of course not. The women
can handle this assignment far better, just because they
are women.9

Such are the realizations which we can all use every day
of our working lives. Add to these the further thought
that no organization structure can fully guarantee our
Headquarters against the depredations of clashing
personalities, that only the sustained willingness to
practice spiritual principles in all our affairs can
accomplish this, and we shall never need to have any fear
for our future harmony.



----------
1 In the years since this was written, seven other
specialized committees have been added: Cooperation With the
Professional Community, General Service Conference,
Archives, International Convention/ Regional Forums,
Correctional Facilities, Treatment Facilities and
International.
2 The Policy Committee is now known as the General Sharing
Session, and its makeup and functions have changed, as
explained on p. 47.
3 Both A.A. World Services, Inc., and The A.A. Grapevine,
Inc. are now membership corporations; their members are the
trustees.
4 The directorate of A.A. World Services, Inc. is now
composed of: the G.S.O. general manager, who is the
president of A.A.W.S.; a G.S.O. staff member, who is a vice-
president; two regional trustees; two general service
trustees; three nontrustee directors. Its rotating
chairperson is a trustee.
5 Today A.A. Grapevine, Inc., has ten directors. The
Corporate Board is publisher of the magazine; the chief
operating officer is president. Two members of the board are
general service trustees; two are regional trustees; one is
a nonalcoholic trustee; five are nontrustee directors.
Production and management of the Grapevine are given over to
a full-time paid staff. Two staff members are members of the
Corporate Board.
6 Today there is a full-time editorial staff of two people
and a part-time art director.
7 In order to meet the changing conditions since the writing
of this section, A.A.W.S., Inc., with the approval of the
General Service Board, has implemented a two-year rotation
of assignments for most staff members.
8 As a director of the A.A.W.S. Board, the staff member
serving as staff coordinator has a vote.
9 The restrictions no longer apply. In 1997, seven women and
three men serve as G.S.O. staff members.
----------





CONCEPT 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.



The Concept here considered consists of Article 12 of the
Conference Charter. There are good reasons for placing it in
this context.

Taken as a whole, our Conference Charter is the substance
of an informal agreement which was made between the A.A.
groups and their Trustees in 1955. It is the agreed basis
upon which the General Service Conference operates. In
part, the Charter is an elastic document; its first eleven
Articles can be readily amended by the Conference itself
at any time.

But Article 12 of the Charter stands in a class by itself.
An amendment or a cancellation of any of its vital
Warranties would require the written consent of three-
quarters of all the directory-listed A.A. groups who would
actually vote on any such proposals, and the considerable
time of six months is allowed for careful deliberation.
Although changes in the Warranties of Article 12 thus have
been made difficult, they have not been made impossible.

It is clear that all of these Warranties have a high and
permanent importance to A.A.'s general welfare. This is
why we believe we should permit change in them only upon
positive evidence of their defectiveness and then only by
common consent of the A.A. groups themselves. We have
ranked them therefore with A.A.'s Twelve Traditions,
feeling that they are quite as important to A.A.'s world
services as the Traditions are to A.A. as a whole.

The Warranties of Article 12 are a series of solemn
undertakings which guarantee that the Conference itself
will conform to A.A.'s Twelve Traditions; that the
Conference can never become the seat of great wealth or
government; that its fiscal policy shall ever be prudent;
that it will never create any absolute authority; that the
principle of substantial unanimity will be observed; that
it will never take any punitive action; that it never will
incite public controversy; that it can serve A.A. only;
and that it shall always remain democratic in spirit.
These Warranties indicate the qualities of prudence and
spirituality which our General Service Conference should
always possess. Barring any unforeseen defects, these are
the permanent bonds that hold the Conference fast to the
movement it serves.

There are significant aspects of these Warranties which
should be considered. Notice, for example, that all of
them are counsels of prudence — prudence in personal
relatedness, prudence in money matters, and prudence in
our relations with the world about us. For us, prudence is
a workable middle ground, a channel of clear sailing
between the obstacles of fear on the one side and of
recklessness on the other. Prudence in practice creates a
definite climate, the only climate in which harmony,
effectiveness, and consistent spiritual progress can be
achieved. The Warranties of Article 12 express the wisdom
of taking forethought for the future based on the lessons
of the past. They are the sum of our protection against
needless errors and against our very natural human
temptations to wealth, prestige, power, and the like.

Article 12 opens with this general statement: "In all its
proceedings the General Service Conference shall observe
the spirit of the A.A. Tradition..." Of all bodies and
groups in Alcoholics Anonymous, the Conference should
above all feel bound by the A.A. Tradition. Indeed the
Conference is named "the guardian of the Traditions of
Alcoholics Anonymous." The Traditions themselves outline
the general basis on which we may best conduct our
services. The Traditions express the principles and
attitudes of prudence that make for harmony. Therefore
A.A.'s Twelve Traditions set the pattern of unity and of
function which our General Service Conference is expected
to exemplify at the highest possible degree.

The Warranties of Article 12 are as follows:

Warranty One: "The Conference shall never become the seat
of perilous wealth or power." What is meant by "perilous
wealth or power"? Does it mean that the Conference should
have virtually no money and no authority? Obviously not.
Such a condition would be dangerous and absurd. Nothing
but an ineffective anarchy could result from it. We must
use some money, and there must be some authority to serve.
But how much? How and where should we draw these lines?

The principal protection against the accumulation of too
much money and too much authority in Conference hands is
to be found in the A.A. Tradition itself. So long as our
General Service Board refuses to take outside
contributions and holds each individual's gift to A.A.'s
world services at a modest figure, we may be sure that we
shall not become wealthy in any perilous sense. No great
excess of group contributions over legitimate operating
expenses is ever likely to be seen. Fortunately the A.A.
Groups have a healthy reluctance about the creation of
unneeded services which might lead to an expensive
bureaucracy in our midst. Indeed, it seems that the chief
difficulty will continue to be that of effectively
informing the A.A. groups as to what the financial needs
of their world services actually are. Since it is certain
therefore that we shall never become too wealthy through
group contributions, we need only to avoid the temptation
of taking money from the outside world.

In the matter of giving Delegates, Trustees, and staff
enough authority, there can be little risk, either. Long
experience, now codified in these Twelve Concepts,
suggests that we are unlikely to encounter problems of too
much service authority. On the contrary, it appears that
our difficulty will be how to maintain enough of it. We
must recall that we are protected from the calamities of
too much authority by rotation, by voting participation,
and by careful chartering. Nevertheless, we do hear
warnings about the future rise of a dictator in the
Conference or at the Headquarters. To my mind this is an
unnecessary worry. Our setup being what it is, such an
aspirant couldn't last a year. And in the brief time he
did last, what would he use for money? Our Delegates,
directly representing the groups, control the ultimate
supply of our service funds. Therefore they constitute a
direct check upon the rise of too much personal authority.
Taken all together, these factors seem to be reliable
safeguards against too much money and too much authority.

We have seen why the Conference can never have any
dangerous degree of human power, but we must not overlook
the feet that there is another sort of authority and power
which it cannot be without: the spiritual power which
flows from the activities and attitudes of truly humble,
unselfish, and dedicated A.A. servants. This is the real
power that causes our Conference to function. It has been
well said of our servants, "They do not drive us by
mandate; they lead us by example." While we have made
abundantly sure that they will never drive us, I am
confident that they will afford us an ever-greater
inspiration as they continue to lead by example.

Warranty Two: "Sufficient operating funds, plus an ample
Reserve, should be its prudent financial principle."

In this connection we should pause to review our attitudes
concerning money and its relation to service effort.

Our attitude toward the giving of time when compared with
our attitude toward giving money presents an interesting
contrast. Of course we give a lot of our time to A.A.
activities for our own protection and growth. But we also
engage ourselves in a truly sacrificial giving for the
sake of our groups, our areas and for A.A. as a whole.

Above all, we devote ourselves to the newcomer, and this
is our principal Twelfth Step work. In this activity we
often take large amounts of time from business hours.
Considered in terms of money, these collective sacrifices
add up to a huge sum. But we do not think that this is
anything unusual. We remember that people once gave their
time to us as we struggled for sobriety. We know, too,
that nearly the whole combined income of A.A. members, now
more than a billion dollars a year, has been a direct
result of A.A.'s activity. Had nobody recovered, there
would have been no income for any of us.

But when it comes to the actual spending of cash,
particularly for A.A. service overhead, many of us are apt
to turn a bit reluctant. We think of the loss of all that
earning power in our drinking years, of those sums we
might have laid by for emergencies or for education for
the kids. We find, too, that when we drop money in the
meeting hat there is no such bang as when we talk for
hours to a newcomer. There is not much romance in paying
the landlord. Sometimes we hold off when we are asked to
meet area or Intergroup service expenses. As to world
services, we may remark, "Well, those activities are a
long way off, and our group does not really need them.
Maybe nobody needs them." These are very natural and
understandable reactions, easy to justify. We can say,
"Let's not spoil A.A. with money and service organization.
Let's separate the material from the spiritual. That will
really keep things simple."

But in recent years these attitudes are everywhere on the
decline; they quickly disappear when the real need for a
given A.A. service becomes clear. To make such a need
clear is simply a matter of right information and
education. We see this in the continuous job now being
done with good effect for our world service by Delegates,
Committee Members, and General Service Representatives.
They are finding that money-begging by pressure
exhortation is unwanted and unneeded in A.A. They simply
portray what the giver's service dollar really brings in
terms of steering alcoholics to A.A., and in terms of our
over-all unity and effectiveness. This much done, the
hoped-for contributions are forthcoming. The donors can
seldom see what the exact result has been. They well know,
however, that countless thousands of other alcoholics and
their families are certain to be helped.

When we look at such truly anonymous contributions in this
fashion, and as we gain a better understanding of their
continuous urgency, I am sure that the voluntary
contributions of our A.A. groups, supplemented by many
modest gifts from individual A.A.'s, will pay our world
service bills over future years, in good times at any
rate.

We can take comfort, too, from the fact that we do not
have to maintain an expensive corps of paid workers at
World Headquarters. In relation to the ever-growing size
of A.A. the number of workers has declined. In the
beginning our World Service Office engaged one paid worker
to each thousand of A.A. members. Ten years later we
employed one paid worker to each three thousand A.A.'s.
Today we need only one paid helper to every seven thousand
recovered alcoholics.1 The present cost of our world
services ($200,000 annually as of 1960) is today seen as a
small sum in relationship to the present reach of our
Fellowship. Perhaps no other society of our size and
activity has such a low general overhead.

These reassurances of course cannot be taken as a basis
for the abandonment of the policy of financial prudence.

The fact and the symbol of A.A.'s fiscal common sense can
be seen in the Reserve Fund of our General Service Board.
As of now this amounts to little more than $200,000 —
about one year's operating expense of our World Office.2
This is what we have saved over the last twenty years,
largely from the income of our books. This is the fund
which has repeatedly prevented the severe crippling, and
sometimes the near collapse, of our world services.

In about half of the last twenty years, A.A. group
contributions have foiled to meet our world needs. But the
Reserve Fund, constantly renewed by book sales, has been
able to meet these deficits — and save money besides. What
this has meant in the lives of uncounted alcoholics who
might never have reached us had our services been weak or
nonexistent, no one can guess. Financial prudence has paid
off in lives saved.

These facts about our Reserve Fund need to be better
understood. For sheer lack of understanding, it is still
often remarked: (1) that the Reserve Fund is no longer
needed, (2) that if the Reserve Fund continues to grow,
perilous wealth will result, (3) that the presence of such
a Reserve Fund discourages group contributions, (4) that
because we do not abolish the Reserve Fund, we lack faith,
(5) that our A.A. books ought to be published at cost so
these volumes could be cheapened for hard-up buyers, (6)
that profit-making on our basic literature is counter to a
sound spirituality. While these views are by no means
general, they are typical. Perhaps, then, there is still a
need to analyze them and answer the questions they raise.

Let us therefore try to test them. Do these views
represent genuine prudence? Do we lack faith when we
prudently insist on solvency?

By means of cheap A.A. books, should we engage, as a
fellowship, in this sort of financial charity? Should this
sort of giving not be the responsibility of individuals?
Is the Headquarters' income from A.A. books really a
profit after all?

As this is written, 1960, our Headquarters operation is
just about breaking even. Group contributions are
exceeding our service needs by about 5%. The A.A.
Grapevine continues in the red. Compared with earlier
days, this is wonderful. Nevertheless this is our state in
the period of the greatest prosperity that America has
ever known. If this is our condition in good times, what
would happen in bad times? Suppose that the Headquarters
income were decreased 25% by a depression, or that
expenses were increased 25 % by a steep inflation. What
would this mean in hard cash?

The World Service Office would show a deficit of $50,000 a
year and the Grapevine would put a $20,000 annual deficit
on top of this. We would be faced with a gaping total
deficit of $70,000 every twelve months. If in such an
emergency we had no reserve and no book income, we would
soon have to discharge one-third of our thirty paid
workers and A.A. staff members. Much mail would go
unanswered, pleas for information and help ignored. The
Grapevine would have to be shut down or reduced to a
second-rate bulletin. The number of Delegates attending
our yearly General Service Conference would have to be
drastically reduced. Practically and spiritually, these
would be the penalties were we to dissipate our Reserve
Fund and its book income.

Happily, however, we do not have to face any such slash as
this. Our present reserve and its book income could see us
through several years of hard times without the slightest
diminution in the strength and quality of our world
effort.

It is the fashion nowadays to believe that America can
never see another serious business upset. We can certainly
hope and pray that it will not. But is it wise for us of
A.A. to make a huge bet—by dissipating our own assets—that
this could never happen? Would it not be far better,
instead, for us to increase our savings in this period
when the world about us in all probability has already
borrowed more money than can ever be repaid?

Now let us examine the claim that the presence of our
Reserve Fund discourages group contributions. It is said
that the impression is created that A.A. Headquarters is
already well off and that hence there is no need for more
money. This is not at all the general attitude, however,
and its effect on contributions is probably small.

Next comes the question of whether A.A. as a whole should
go in for what amounts to a money charity to individual
newcomers and their sponsors—via the selling of our books
at cost or less. Up to now we A.A.'s have strongly
believed that money charity to the individual should not
be a function of the A.A. groups or of A.A. as a whole. To
illustrate: when a sponsor takes a new member in hand, he
does not in the least expect that his group is going to
pay the expenses he incurs while doing a Twelfth Step job.
The sponsor may give his prospect a suit of clothes, may
get him a job, or present him with an A.A. book. This sort
of thing frequently happens, and it is fine that it does.
But such charities are the responsibility of the sponsor
and not of the A.A. group itself. If a sponsor cannot give
or lend an A.A. book, one can be found in the library.
Many groups sell books on the installment plan. There is
no scarcity of A.A. books; more than a half million are
now in circulation. Hence there seems no really good
reason why A.A. services should supply everybody with
cheap books, including the large majority who can easily
pay the going price. It appears to be altogether clear
that our world services need those book dollars far more
than the buyers do.

Some of us have another concern, and this is related to
so-called book "profits." The fact that A.A. Headquarters
and most of the groups sell books for more than they cost
is thought to be spiritually bad. But is this sort of
noncommercial book income really a profit after all? In my
view, it is not. This net income to the groups and to
A.A.'s General Services is actually the sum of a great
many contributions which the book buyers make to the
general welfare of Alcoholics Anonymous. The certain and
continuous solvency of our world services rests squarely
upon these contributions. Looked at in this way, our
Reserve Fund is seen to be actually the aggregate of many
small financial sacrifices made by the book buyers. This
fund is not the property of private investors; it is
wholly owned by A.A. itself.

While on the subject of books, perhaps a word should be
said concerning my royalties from them. This royalty
income from the book buyers has enabled me to do all the
rest of my A.A. work on a full-time volunteer basis. These
royalties have also given me the assurance that, like
other A.A.'s, I have fully earned my own separate
livelihood. This independent income also has enabled me to
think and act independently of money influences of any
kind—a situation which has at times been very advantageous
to A.A. as well as to me personally. Therefore I hope and
believe that my royalty status will continue to be
considered a fair and wise arrangement.

Warranty Three: "None of the Conference members shall ever
be placed in a position of unqualified authority over any
of the others."

We have learned that this principle is of incalculable
value to the harmonious conduct of our Conference affairs.
Its application in our structure has already been
extensively discussed under the Concept entitled "The
Right of Participation," which emphasizes that our world
servants, both as individuals and as groups, shall be
entitled to voting rights in reasonable proportion to
their several responsibilities.

Because this right of participation is so important we
have made it the subject of this Warranty, thus providing
insurance that Conference action alone can never overturn
or amend this right. For any such purpose widespread group
consent would be needed, which would probably prove
difficult though not necessarily impossible for the
Conference to obtain. We believe that our whole service
experience fully justifies the taking of this strong stand
against the creation of unqualified authority at any point
in our Conference structure.

It is to be noted, too, that this Warranty against
absolute authority is far more general and sweeping in its
nature than a guarantee of voting participation. It really
means that we of A.A. will not tolerate absolute human
authority in any form. The voting rights urged under our
concept of "Participation" are simply the practical means
of checking any future tendency to an unqualified
authority of any sort. This healthy state of affairs is of
course further re-inforced by our concepts of "Appeal and
Petition."

Many A.A.'s have already begun to call Article 12 of the
Conference Charter "The A.A. Service Bill of Rights." This
is because they see in these Warranties, and especially in
this one, an expression of deep and loving respect for the
spiritual liberties of their fellows. May God grant that
we shall never be so unwise as to settle for anything
less.

Warranty Four: "That all important decisions be reached by
discussion, vote, and, whenever possible, by substantial
unanimity."

Here on the one hand we erect a safeguard against any
hasty or overbearing authority of a simple majority; and
on the other hand we take notice of the rights and the
frequent wisdom of minorities, however small. This
principle further guarantees that all matters of
importance, time permitting, will be extensively debated,
and that such debates will continue until a really heavy
majority can support every critical decision that we are
called upon to make in the Conference.

When we take decisions in this fashion, the Conference
voice speaks with an authority and a confidence that a
simple majority could never give it. If any remain in
opposition, they are far better satisfied because their
case has had a full and fair hearing.

And when a decision taken in substantial unanimity does
happen to go wrong, there can be no heated recriminations.
Everybody will be able to say, "Well, we had a careful
debate, we took the decision, and it turned out to be a
bad one. Better luck next time!"

Like many very high ideals, the principle of substantial
unanimity does, however, have certain practical
limitations. Occasionally a Conference decision will be of
such extreme urgency that something has to be done at
once. In such a case we cannot allow a minority, however
well-intended, to block a vitally needed action which is
evidently in the best interests of A.A. Here we shall need
to trust the majority, sometimes a bare majority, to
decide whether Conference debate is to be terminated and a
final action taken. In certain other cases, the majority
will also have to exercise this undoubted right. Suppose,
for example, that a small minority obstinately tries to
use the principle of substantial unanimity to block a
clearly needed action. In such an event it would be the
plain duty of the majority to over-ride such a misuse of
the principle of substantial unanimity.

Nevertheless our experience shows that majorities will
seldom need to take such radical stands as these. Being
generally animated by the spirit of "substantial
unanimity," we have found that our Conference can nearly
always be guided by this valued principle.

In passing it should be noted that the Conference will
sometimes have to decide, with respect to a particular
question, what the requirements of substantial unanimity
are going to be — whether a two-thirds, three-quarters, or
even a greater majority, will be required to settle a
particular question. Such an advance agreement can, of
course, be had on a simple majority vote.

Concluding the discussion on this Warranty, it can be said
that without question both the practical and spiritual
results of the practice of substantial unanimity already
have been proved to be very great indeed.

Warranty Five: "That no Conference action ever be
personally punitive or an incitement to public
controversy."

Practically all societies and governments feel it
necessary to inflict personal punishments upon individual
members for violations of their beliefs, principles, or
laws. Because of its special situation, Alcoholics
Anonymous finds this practice unnecessary. When we of A.A.
fail to follow sound spiritual principles, alcohol cuts us
down. Therefore no humanly administered system of
penalties is needed. This unique condition is an enormous
advantage to us all, one on which we can fully rely and
one which we should never abandon by a resort to the
methods of personal attack and punishment. Of all
societies ours can least afford to risk the resentments
and conflicts which would result were we ever to yield to
the temptation to punish in anger.

For much the same reason we cannot and should not enter
into public controversy, even in self-defense. Our
experience has shown that, providentially it would seem,
A.A. has been made exempt from the need to quarrel with
anyone, no matter what the provocation. Nothing could be
more damaging to our unity and to the worldwide good will
which A.A. enjoys, than public contention, no matter how
promising the immediate dividends might appear.

Therefore it is evident that the harmony, security, and
future effectiveness of A.A. will depend largely upon our
maintenance of a thoroughly nonaggressive and pacific
attitude in all our public relations. This is an exacting
assignment, because in our drinking days we were prone to
anger, hostility, rebellion, and aggression. And even
though we are now sober, the old patterns of behavior are
to a degree still with us, always threatening to explode
on any good excuse. But we know this, and therefore I feel
confident that in the conduct of our public affairs we
shall always find the grace to exert an effective
restraint.

We enjoy certain inherent advantages which should make our
task of self-restraint relatively easy. There is no really
good reason for anyone to object if a great many drunks
get sober. Nearly everyone can agree that this is a good
thing. If, in the process, we are forced to develop a
certain amount of honesty, humility, and tolerance, who is
going to kick about that? If we recognize that religion is
the province of the clergy and the practice of medicine is
for doctors, we can helpfully cooperate with both.
Certainly there is little basis for controversy in these
areas. It is a fact that A.A. has not the slightest reform
or political complexion. We try to pay our own expenses,
and we strictly mind our single purpose.

These are some of the reasons why A.A. can easily be at
peace with the whole world. These are the natural
advantages which we must never throw away by foolishly
entering the arena of public controversy or punitive
action against anybody.

Because our General Service Conference represents us all,
this body is especially charged with the duty of setting
the highest possible standard with respect to these
attitudes of no punishments and no public controversy. The
Conference will have to do more than just represent these
principles; it will frequently have to apply them to
specific situations. And, at times, the Conference will
need to take certain protective actions, especially in the
area of Tradition violations. This action, however, never
need be punitively or aggressively controversial at the
public level.

Let us now consider some typical situations that may often
require Conference consideration and sometimes definite
action:

Let us suppose that A.A. does fall under sharp public
attack or heavy ridicule; and let us take the particular
case where such pronouncements happen to have little or no
justification in fact.

Almost without exception it can be confidently estimated
that our best defense in these situations would be no
defense whatever — namely, complete silence at the public
level. Unreasonable people are stimulated all the more by
opposition. If in good humor we leave them strictly alone,
they are apt to subside the more quickly. If their attacks
persist and it is plain that they are misinformed, it may
be wise to communicate with them in a temperate and
informative way; also in such a manner that they cannot
use our communication as a springboard for fresh assault.
Such communications need seldom be made by the Conference
officially. Very often we can use the good offices of
friends. Such messages from us should never question the
motives of the attackers; they should be purely
informative. These communications should also be private.
If made public, they will often be seized upon as a fresh
excuse for controversy.

If, however, a given criticism of A.A. is partly or wholly
justified, it may be well to acknowledge this privately to
the critics, together with our thanks — still keeping
away, however, from the public level.

But under no conditions should we exhibit anger or any
punitive or aggressive intent. Surely this should be our
inflexible policy. Within such a framework the Conference
and the Headquarters will always need to make a thoughtful
estimate of what or what not should be done in these
cases.

We may be confronted by public violations of the A.A.
Traditions. Individuals, outside organizations, and even
our own members sometimes may try to use the A.A. name for
their own private purposes. As A.A. grows in size and
public recognition, the temptation to misuse our name may
increase. This is why we have assigned to our Conference a
protective task in respect to such conditions. The
Conference, as we know, is the "guardian" of the A.A.
Traditions. There has always been some confusion about
this term "guardianship," and perhaps we should try to
clear it up.

To the minds of some A.A.'s, "guardianship" of the A.A.
Traditions implies the right and the duty on the part of
the Conference to publicly punish or sue every wilful
violator. But we could not adopt a worse policy; indeed
such aggressive public acts would place the Conference in
the position of having violated one A.A. Tradition in
order to defend another. Therefore aggressive or punitive
action, even in this area, must be omitted.

Privately, however, we can inform Tradition-violators that
they are out of order. When they persist, we can follow up
by using such other resources of persuasion as we may
have, and these are often considerable. Manifested in this
fashion, a persistent firmness will often bring the
desired result.

In the long run, though, we shall have to rely mainly upon
the pressures of A.A. opinion and public opinion. And to
this end we shall need to maintain a continuous education
of public communications channels of all kinds concerning
the nature and purpose of our Traditions.

Whenever and however we can, we shall need to inform the
general public also; especially upon misuses of the name
Alcoholics Anonymous. This combination of counter forces
can be very discouraging to violators or would-be
violators. Under these conditions they soon find their
deviations to be unprofitable and unwise. Our experience
has shown that continuous and general education respecting
our Traditions will be a reliable preventive and
protection in the years to come.

Feeling the weight of all these forces, certain members
who run counter to A.A.'s Traditions sometimes say that
they are being censored or punished and that they are
therefore being governed. It would appear, however, that
A.A.'s right to object calmly and privately to specific
violations is at least equal to the rights of the
violators to violate. This cannot accurately be called a
governmental action. Some deviators have suffered rather
severe personal criticism from individual A.A. members,
and this is to be deplored. However this is no reason for
us to stop reminding all concerned of the undesirability
of breaking A.A.'s Traditions before the entire public. It
can be said in all fairness that the difficulties of those
who contravene the Traditions are chiefly troubles of
their own making.

Another kind of problem that merits consideration is the
occasional severe internal disagreement among us that
comes to unwelcome public attention. For example, we once
hit the headlines with a pretty hardbitten lawsuit wherein
two factions of A.A.'s were competing for the possession
of the A.A. name for Intergroup use, the name having been
incorporated by one of them. In another instance in an
overseas area there was some rather bad publicity when a
considerable section of the groups there became convinced
they ought to accept money subsidies from their country's
government to promote A.A. work, the A.A. Tradition
notwithstanding. This internal difficulty should not have
surfaced before the public because there was certainly
nothing about it that mutual understanding and good temper
could not have readily handled.

Fortunately this sort of episode has been infrequent and
relatively harmless. But such difficulties do pose certain
questions for the future. What should our General Service
Conference do about this sort of thing?

Always remembering group autonomy and the fact that A.A.'s
World Headquarters is not a police operation, the most
that can be done in most cases is to make an offer of
mediation. What the Tradition in this respect means, and
what our experience with it has been, can always be
offered as a matter of information. We can always urge the
avoidance of any breakthrough of such disagreements at the
public level. All parties can remember that unfavorable
criticism or ridicule which might ensue from such
conflicts can so reflect upon A.A. as to keep new
prospects from joining up.

Then, too, a great many of these difficulties with the
Tradition are of strictly local concern, there being no
serious national or international implication. Many of
them represent honest differences of opinion as to how the
Tradition should be interpreted: whether a lenient or
strict observance would be the better thing. Especially
when operating below the public level, our experience with
the Tradition reveals gray areas, where neither white or
black interpretations seem possible. Here the violations
are often so debatable and inconsequential they are hardly
worth bothering about. Here we usually refrain from
offering suggestions, unless they are insisted upon. We
feel that these problems must be solved chiefly by the
local people concerned.

There is, too, a grave problem that we have never yet had
to face. This would be in the nature of a deep rift
running clear across A.A. — a cleavage of opinion so
serious that it might involve a withdrawal of some of our
membership into a new society of their own, or in their
making an alliance with an outside agency in contravention
of the A.A. Tradition. This would be the old story of
split and schism of which history is so full. It might be
powered by religious, political, national, or racial
forces. It might represent an honest effort to change A.A.
for the better. But it would certainly pose the Conference
a question of what to do, or not to do.

Such a development is hard to imagine. We A.A.'s usually
assume that we have too much at stake and too much in
common to succumb to this very ordinary ailment of the
world about us. Yet this comforting assurance is no reason
for refusing to give this contingency some calm
forethought. If it ever came, such a development might be
a terrific surprise and shock. Suddenly aroused passions
could flare, making any truly constructive solution
immensely difficult, perhaps impossible.

Because society everywhere is in such a state of fission
today, many of us have given this subject a great deal of
consideration. Our considered opinion is this: that the
best possible Conference attitude in such a circumstance
would be that of almost complete nonresistance — certainly
no anger and certainly no attack. We have no doctrine that
has to be maintained. We have no membership that has to be
enlarged. We have no authority that has to be supported.
We have no prestige, power, or pride that has to be
satisfied. And we have no property or money that is really
worth quarreling about. These are advantages of which we
should make the best possible use in the event of a
threatened major division; they should make a calm and
considered attitude of nonresistance entirely possible and
highly practical.

Indeed we have always practiced this principle on a lesser
scale. When a drunk shows up among us and says that he
doesn't like the A.A. principles, people, or service
management; when he declares that he can do better
elsewhere — we are not worried. We simply say, "Maybe your
case is different. Why don't you try something else?"

If an A.A. member says he doesn't like his own group, we
are not disturbed. We simply say "Why don't you try
another one? Or start one of your own." When our actors
and cops and priests want their own private groups, we say
"Fine! Why don't you try that idea out?" When an A.A.
group, as such, insists on running a clubhouse, we say
"Well, that sometimes works out badly, but maybe you will
succeed after all." If individual A.A.'s wish to gather
together for retreats, Communion breakfasts, or indeed any
undertaking at all, we still say "Fine. Only we hope you
won't designate your efforts as an A.A. group or
enterprise." These examples illustrate how far we have
already gone to encourage freedom of assembly, action, and
even schism. To all those who wish to secede from A.A. we
extend a cheerful invitation to do just that. If they can
do better by other means, we are glad. If after a trial
they cannot do better, we know they face a choice: they
can go mad or die or they can return to Alcoholics
Anonymous. The decision is wholly theirs. (As a matter of
fact, most of them do come back.)

In the light of all this experience, it becomes evident
that in the event of a really extensive split we would not
have to waste time persuading the dissenters to stay with
us. In good confidence and cheer, we could actually invite
them to secede and we would wish them well if they did so.
Should they do better under their new auspices and changed
conditions, we would ask ourselves if we could not learn
from their fresh experience. But if it turned out they did
worse under other circumstances and that there was a
steady increase in their discontent and their death rate,
the chances are very strong that most of them would
eventually return to A.A.

Without anger or coercion we would need only to watch and
to wait upon God's will.

Unless we make a problem where there really is none at
all, there need be no difficulty. We could still go about
our business in good cheer. The supply of drunks in our
time will be inexhaustible, and we can continue to be glad
that we have evolved at least one formula by which many
will come to sobriety and a new life.

We have a saying that "A.A. is prepared to give away all
the knowledge and all the experience it has — all
excepting the A.A. name itself." We mean by this that our
principles can be used in any application whatever. We do
not wish to make them a monopoly of our own. We simply
request that the public use of the A.A. name be avoided by
those other agencies who wish to avail themselves of A.A.
techniques and ideas. In case the A.A. name should be
misapplied in such a connection it would of course be the
duty of our General Service Conference to press for the
discontinuance of such a practice — always short, however,
of public quarreling about the matter.

The protection of the A.A. name is of such importance to
us that we once thought of incorporating it everywhere
throughout the world, thereby availing ourselves of legal
means to stop any misuse. We even thought of asking
Congress to grant us the unusual favor of a Congressional
incorporation. We felt that the existence of these legal
remedies might prove to be a great deterrent.3

But after several years of deliberation, our General
Service Conference decided against such a course. The
dramatic story of this debate and its conclusion may be
found in our history book "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of
Age." Those early Conferences believed that the power to
sue would be a dangerous thing for us to possess. It was
recognized that a public lawsuit is a public controversy,
something in which our Tradition says we may not engage.
To make our legal position secure, it would have been
necessary to incorporate our whole Fellowship, and no one
wished to see our spiritual way of life incorporated. It
seemed certain that we could confidently trust A.A.
opinion, public opinion, and God Himself to take care of
Alcoholics Anonymous in this respect.

Warranty Six: "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 action and in
spirit."4

In preceding Concepts, much attention has been drawn to
the extraordinary liberties which the A.A. Traditions
accord to the individual member and to his group: no
penalties to be inflicted for nonconformity to A.A.
principles; no fees or dues to be levied — voluntary
contributions only; no member to be expelled from A.A. —
membership always to be the choice of the individual; each
A.A. group to conduct its internal affairs as it wishes —
it being merely requested to abstain from acts that might
injure A.A. as a whole; and finally that any group of
alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call
themselves an A.A. group provided that, as a group, they
have no other purpose or affiliation.

It is probable that we A.A.'s possess more and greater
freedom than any fellowship in the world today. As we have
already seen, we claim this as no virtue. We know that we
personally have to choose conformity to A.A.'s Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions or else face dissolution and
death, both as individuals and as groups.

Because we set such a high value on our great liberties,
and cannot conceive a time when they will need to be
limited, we here specially enjoin our General Service
Conference to abstain completely from any and all acts of
authoritative government which could in any wise curtail
A.A.'s freedom under God. The maintenance of these
freedoms in our Conference is a great and practical
guarantee that the Conference itself will always remain
democratic in action and in spirit.

Therefore we expect that our Conferences will always try
to act in the spirit of mutual respect and love — one
member for another. In turn, this sign signifies that
mutual trust should prevail; that no action ought to be
taken in anger, haste, or recklessness; that care will be
observed to respect and protect all minorities; that no
action should ever be personally punitive; that whenever
possible, important actions will be taken in substantial
unanimity; and that our Conference will ever be prudently
on guard against tyrannies, great or small, whether these
be found in the majority or in the minority.

The sum of these several attitudes and practices is, in
our view, the very essence of democracy—in action and
spirit.

Freedom under God to grow in His likeness and image will
ever be the quest of the Alcoholics Anonymous. May our
General Service Conference be always seen as a chief
symbol of this cherished liberty.

To a man, we of A.A. believe that our freedom to serve is
truly the freedom by which we live—the freedom in which we
have our being.



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1 1996—about one to fifteen thousand, U.S and Canada.
2 In 1996, the $7,421,000 Reserve Fund would have covered
about 9 months' operating expense.
3 However, the name Alcoholics Anonymous and the
abbreviation A.A. were all legally registered in 1972.
4 Bill here, apparently inadvertently, used the phrase "in
action and spirit," instead of "in thought and action," that
appears elsewhere in both the Conference Charter and the
statement of Concept XII.
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Happy Xmas!