General Service and Corporate Structure – 2025 AA Service Workshop – Part 7 of 27 – Billy N.

good evening i'm billy i'm an alcoholic welcome everyone thanks for being here um as usual if you can have your camera on please do if not we understand but um we open this with the serenity prayer god grant me the serendipity to accept the things i cannot change the courage to change things i can and the wisdom to know the difference so welcome everyone tonight we're going to be talking about we'll see how far we get the board's operating corporations um i would uh tell everyone um i don't even know if d is in here she might not be she's traveling to the other side of florida Okay. I am going to send, hold on one second. What is Pamela? I just sent you a note to be a co-host if you can accept that. awesome that way if god knows i get disconnected the meeting can still stay on and i can come back on um so we talked about the general service board last week and we got to remember we're a spiritual organization that has some legal structure so that we can do business in the real world that's why we have a legal structure we don't have it so thatwe can use the legal to finagle things or anything we have the legal so we cando business inthe outside world you can't sign contracts unless you're a corporation or an llc otherwise you get a sign as a person or a partnership if you want to be a non-profit you have to apply to the irs to get a 501 c3 designation if you wanna do business with people you have to be able to sign contracts if you wanna have employees you have to have an ein and then you know a federal employee identification number um so that you can pay employees and have them work for the cooperation so those are the reasons um that we have that wehave copyrights to protect and trademarks to protect we need something that owns them the rest of the world doesn't care that we're spiritual they want to know who is the legal organization that owns those things but in the end of the day spiritual is how we do business inside aa so the general service board that we talked about last week the 21 trustees who will soon be 22 they are basically the holding corporation the parent company the spiritual parent and 21 trustees can get a little unwieldy that's why they only meet three times a year and the trustees do all their business through committees as we went through last week but that's kind of the spiritual business the literature the public information the cooperation with professional community all that stuff and conference approved literature member has to go from the trustees literature committee the general service board referred to the conference so there's all these things that the trustees do but what they don't do is operate aaa for lack of a better phrase throughout the year they watch over the operations of aa because they have two what we would call spiritual subsidiaries they are not legal subsidiaries the individual trustees own aaws and own the aa grapevine those 21 people but spiritually they are subsidiaries the people accountable to the fellowship directly are the trustees per concept i mean per long form of tradition nine they're the guardians they're the receivers of the voluntary contributions they have a duty per their bylaws to uphold and be the guardians of the traditions the concepts and the steps and they approve who sits on the boards of AA World Services and AA grapevine those are our two operating corporations and it says in the service manual that the general service board custodial oversight of these corporations which is which it exercises by electing the directors of each and concept 8 is very clear about that that's the trustees job as trustees they elect the nine or ten people who are going to serve on each board there is a call it a carve out an exception to the custodian oversight that's talked about in concept 8. it says under two conditions the trustees might have to get a little involved with the corporate boards the first is if they're not getting along together now i can say over the last 15 years or so we've reached a new time in aa when the corporations get along with each other better than they ever have leading up till 2010 2011 the corporations didn't get along so well sometimes they did not play well in the sandbox it still drives me crazy that i can't order a language of the heart and a big book in one box sooner or later we have to solve that problem like why should the fellowship have to pay two shipping costs but i will tell you we've made progress up until 2011 their literature wasn't even in each other's catalog there was no mention of a grapevine literature in the gso publishing catalog the other exception is if they exceed a budget constantly then concept eight says the trustees have a duty to kind of look into it um it says the makeup of the two boards is a good example of concept four which has resulted in well-informed that highly unified board of directors and ruled out authoritarian and institutional operating styles. So we basically have two boards, AA World Services and AA Grapevine. And those two boards meet eight times a year about. They meet the four times the trustees meet, and they have four or five other meetings throughout the year. so about once every seven eight weeks members of the grapevine board and the aws board are getting together and they're a more small smaller nimble board that can deal with the daily issues that each executive of each corporation has to deal with the general manager of gso reports to both aws and to the general service board But they have way more contact with the AWS board on a regular basis. The executive editor to the publisher of the grapevine reports to the grapefine board. So these every eight week meetings are important because there's lots of business that gets conducted every day. There are over 80 employees at the GSO and at the grape vine who come to work every day, That means there are paychecks to cut every two weeks. There are contracts to be signed, things to be edited, things to be translated. Then we have the literature orders for new literature for groups. We have IT, information technology, which is a huge part of AA Today, between the meeting guide app and the online catalog for literature. we now have a department that didn't even exist when i got sober there wasn't even an i.t department a real department until about 2014 up until then we had a part-time consultant who served as like our it director in the world we live in today that's just not possible the grapevine didn't have a podcast aws didn't have a podcast we did not have electronic literature there's all these things that daily have a lot of interaction with staff and the chief executive of each corporation and every eight weeks that business is reviewed by the corporate boards um they have the general service board reserve fund so it's important to understand how money works for the grapevine subscriptions and book sales go right to the grape vine for their products the only contribution money that the grapevine receives is whatever shortfall it has on lavinia the lavinya shortfall is funded out of the general fund from the general service board from those contributions each year the grapevine shortfall is funded from the reserve fund if the grape vine makes money at the end of the year it keeps a little in its bank account and it turns over excess to the reserve fund the reserve fund is owned by the trustees by the general service board is not owned by either corporation operating cooperation aaws gets money primarily two ways they get money from the general services board to carry out the services on behalf of the fellowship so the general service board takes those contributions and moves them over to aws to carry out its work aws also has a revenue stream from what we call literature margin or literature profit sometimes you'll hear people say and believe me i'm a big person who believes we have to take an eye on literature profit we can't be overly dependent on it we want to keep it as inexpensive as possible for the fellowship to buy it but sometimes you'll hear somebody say we take in as much money on literature as we do in contributions please please that is just in today's world called gas lighting that is a way to stoke up the flame and throw a grenade in the middle of an assembly or a district meeting half of our money does not come in from literature what they're talking about is literature revenue the money we actually receive but you have to remember about 60 or 70 percent of that money we've already spent making and preparing the literature to be sold so the revenue stream is just the profit on the literature that we make So that's really the two big items of money that come into AAWS. The contribution money that the trustees get and the trustees move it to AAWS to carry out the day-to-day services and literature profit. AAWS, at the end of the year, if they have a shortfall, they don't always have to go to the reserve fund. Neither does the grapevine because it becomes a little complicated and you might have heard this term before or whatever but you have cash versus book book is the strict in and out you keep of all your numbers cash is how much is actually in your bank account the financials that get distributed to the fellowship are book they're telling you the status of our books as a fellowship the profit and loss so at the end of the year if the grapevine still might have lost money but they still have some money in their bank account they don't need money from the reserve fund same with aws however they might not have enough the grape vine just took 350 000 out in august that's the second drawdown they've made this year they made 150 000 draw down earlier in the year um if aws makes money they keep enough to be operating for a month or two and they turn the rest over the reserve fund the reserve fun like i said is owned by the general service board once money goes in the reserve funds aws or the grapevine can't just say hey i need some of that back it doesn't work that way they have to make a request to the trustees finance committee who then has to approve it and send it to the general service board and have them approve it um so once money goes in there it now belongs to the General Service Board not to that corporation um our reserve fund right now according to the latest financials is hovering at about six months But based on the last quarterly financial report, the money to be spent on construction for this year and some next year, but this year in particular, will require AWS to take a cash drawdown of somewhere in the range of $2.1 million. They won't take it all at once. But they do predict that by the end of this year, the reserve fund will be down to 5.1 months. so like i said last week that's 5.1 months with no money coming in with half the money coming in that's like 10 months with 20 of the money come in you're close to 20 months um so i'm not gaslighting i'm saying the world is burning down however the reserve fund is going to be four months less than its proposed minimum which is nine to twelve months nine being the minimum 12 being the max the reason i talk about that and i know i talked about it last week is it really affects aaws because if we have too much money in the reserve fund what we usually do is budget to lose money and maybe we had a project or two that we haven't done lately so we do those projects now while we have some extra money in the reserve fund there has been a situation back in 2001 and 2002 where the reserve funds stayed over 12 months for more than a year there's a conference action that says if the reserve fund is over 12 months for over 12 months for more than a year but the trustees finance committee has to come up with a plan as to how to lower it because our spiritual poverty is our code for sure on the finance department in 2001 and 2 aws had to both lose money and lower the price of literature the first printing of the fourth edition big book was a dollar cheaper than the last printing of the third edition big book because the we were critic at a critical level over 12 13 months and that still takes place today you know the more money in contributions the lower literature can cost that's just a fact um and as we look now down to 5.1 months and contributions are down 17 from last year um it almost puts the office in a situation where they have to raise literature prices again um they'll have no choice um but for the people who say we make just as much money on literature as we make no we don't um not even close um trademarks logos and copyrights if you have your hand up we take questions at the end by chat just so you know um we own a bunch of trademars a bunch of copyrights you're probably familiar with the blue people on our website that is trademarked you're prolly familiar with The Blue People because lots of other AA entities use it and they're not supposed to uh it's only supposed to be used by gso aws the grapevine and the general service board that's it and there is a legal reason for that that we don't want to look like we're affiliated with an intergroup or a district or an area or a clubhouse and they get sued every once in a while as we do but we don t want anyone saying like we're like mcdonald's and they're a franchise they're not a franchise they're connected to us legally whatsoever but we own the trademark on the blue people you're probably familiar with the circle and triangle it's kind of a trick question we still do own that trademark we just don't enforce it we stopped enforcing it in the early 90s mostly because most of the people who are using it improperly were members of the fellowship you know what we were going to do we're going to like serve legal papers to every person coming to a convention with their circle and triangle earrings or watch or ring or god knows what else um and we were having a tough time for the people we didn't want to use the logo the circle and rectangle because they complained to the court that we were selectively enforcing our trademark that we were letting 99 of the people do it and we were just picking on them so we needed to find a way and our way was to stop enforcing the trademark however we do still own it we have other trademarks the word out the two words alcoholics anonymous are trademarked um if you apply for some name and you try to trademark it and it has alcoholics anonymous in it you know the best example is ikipa the legal name of iqipa is the international conference of young people in aaa inc the reason for that is when iquipa a long time ago first sent in their trademark application they tried to trademark the international conference of alcoholics and of young people in alcoholics anonymous inc sometimes that happens with areas and districts and intergroups um the trademark office will reject that application or we'll ask aws if they are okay with it and they will say no um we also have many copyrights on our literature and people say well we're a spiritual organization we shouldn't do that it's the only way to protect and preserve our message if we didn't have a copyright on it then someone could just print whatever they wanted and say it's the fourth edition of the big book or say it stopped bob in the good old timers and they'd be able to change any words they want now there's plenty of what i would call contraband spiritually but legally it's not first and second edition big books up for sale on the internet electronic versions that's because we lost that copyright we made a mistake in the 70s and we lost our copyright but the fourth edition the third edition and most of our other literature and our pamphlets are all copyrighted and we need an organization a legal entity to own those copyrights so that aa grapevine owns the copyrights to grapevine books aws owns the copyrights to our service material and our conference approved literature that we sell um i'll just handle one thing about the grapevine while we're talking about the corporate board people want to say don't put the grape vine on the same table as conference approved literature i think that's going a little too far myself the grapevines is aa as anything is each individual grapevine conference approved no we only have one conference a year it would be impossible to have a conference every time we want to put out a new grapevine every month what is conference approved is the grapevine is conference approved as our official journal or meeting in print But the grapevine board has the delegated authority and the grapevine editors to select the articles that go in there month to month. Now, grapevine books are not original pieces. The one thing in common every grapevine book has is it's a collection of either prior articles or best of articles. if you see the grapevine book about lbgt or atheists and agnostics or there's a whole bunch of grapevine books those are all articles that were once published in the grapevine if you send in an article to be published in the grapefine they and they select it they will send you a letter where you have to turn over your ownership your copyright of that article to them or they won't print it um the best of are simply best of grapevine articles so that's what grapevine books are they um are not conference approved because they're just the best of great fine articles um some people say well there's bad articles because there's bad meetings and i would just say well we need to pick better articles then like a chairperson picks a better speaker um but we all know a is not a is far from perfect um you're going to read something in the grapevine that makes you want to shake your head or you're gonna read something in the great fine that makes me want to cry and you love it and the truth is you could have the same two reactions from the same article from two different people, no different than a speaker at a meeting or a convention. One person says it's the worst speaker they ever heard. The other person says that person just saved my life. We can't play God. You know, we let God sort those things out. It says the grapevine board, the AWS board meets eight times a year. Who's on the AWS board. There's nine people, the general manager and the staff coordinator. Two employees are on the AWS board. They're always on it. Now, when there's a new general manager, the new general manager is the general manger on there. The staff coordinator rotates every three years. When the staff coordinator rotates, the news staff coordinator, it's by position, general manager staff coordinator then there's four trustees on the aws board usually two regional and two general service trustees the two regionals serve for two years on the AWS board their second and third year as a trustee their first and fourth year they just serve on the general service board the general services trustees serve all four years on the corporate board like that's what i was so i was a non-trustee director on aws for four years and a trustee director for four years that is because the general service trustees the two on each corporation are brought for business and professional experience it's so the general service board that elects those directors knows well at least two people on each board should have business and professional experience um the other three people that's of the trustees the other three people who are on that board are non-trustee directors that's another three people with business experience and professional experience they serve for four years and they are the pool of candidates to become a general service trustee you have to have been a non-trustee director to become a general service trustee if you go that route and there's probably somebody here who's applied or somebody who will apply and there is probably somebody here who someday will do it it's a big commitment because you sit down to be a non trustee director you could be there for seven or eight years after your third fourth year you could get called to be a general service trustee it was after my fourth year i got called to being a general services trustee so that's eight years of eight meetings a year and a regional forum in between and eight general service conferences so time commitment is big and i'm a big believer that we should not create more meetings we need more people to be available to have these positions not less and we shouldn't have to be independently wealthy or retired as you all know the retired thing just drives me crazy during election season i don't pick on retired people soon i could be retired myself i just don't like when it's used as an advantage over younger people standing for a position like that that should be some extra thing and reason we vote for you it would be like saying you're independently wealthy so you have the time that's not how our structure was created the average jane and joe a should be able to serve the fellowship or at least be considered and not think that they wouldn't be considered um and the board is meant to be as diverse as the aa fellowship and diverse in a million ways in race in gender age occupation all those things um that's what makes us successful um the aws board it's recent if you i'm not sure how many people recently read the box 459 or the aws highlights um aws has a couple of committees they have tcs technology communication services finance publishing and nominating an internal audit that's how they do their business by committee now tcs used to be just called cs communication and services but technology became such a big deal and we were so behind that we decided to make technology part of a committee that was sometime between 2009 and 2013 however if you read the last aws highlights technology has become such an important deal but they are now separating technology away from communication and services to be its own standalone committee on aa world services and thank god what company today doesn't have an i.t department and a technology committee of their board um the technology committee deals with all the digital content the website all of that they oversee the website they oversee meeting guide app the youtube channel google for non-profit projects the finance committee is responsible for salary budget and audit reviews and self-support initiatives the publishing department deals with pricing reprints translations licensing all publishing concerns they all can they also consider new formats and platforms to carry in the message there is a document you can get it from your delegate it's the authority that the aaws publishing board the aws board has on literature what changes can they make to conference approved literature without conference approval so if an asterisk needs to be updated because we want to update the number of people in aa or the number groups we don't need to go to the conference but there's also that other thing that hangs out there service material that does not require conference approval that will either be approved by uh the general service board or each corporation aaws or the grapevine service material can be updated by the board and the publishing department has to deal with the service material as much as it has to deal with conference proof literature some people ask why do we have service material because if you look at service material a lot of it speaks to our outside audience with professionals or helping aa committees corrections pi cpc um it's so that we can make updates without making it a huge project at the conference um let's see the aa grapevine their corporate board is made up the same way except they only have one uh then not only they do have one class a trustee that they usually ask to sit on the grapevine board why is there a class a on the grapevineboard and not on aws because the grapevine board isn't usually pulling that person for their professional skill as a manager or administrator they're pulling them in because a lot of non-aa people get the grapevine doctors offices probation departments correction departments and so we want someone who has interaction with aa you know on a professional basis to be giving that input into the grape vine board um the executive editor publisher of the grapevine is a member of the great fine board they have the same as aws two general service trustees two regional trustees and they have three non-trustee directors people who are professional or business professionals one question that i hear all the time is because i told you that to become a general service trustee you have to have been a non-trustee director however you can be a non trustee director on one board and become a general service trusty on the other when each board is looking for general service trustees they look at all past non-trustee directors or current non-trustee directors not just from their board now most times 80 90 of the time people are like me i served aws as a non-trustee director i served AWS as a general service trustee um but every once in a while it does happen now when i say serve i just want to explain that the bylaws of each corporation which we'll go through when we go through the exhibits each of those corporations has to have at least four trustees on it as directors so of those nine people four have to be trustees the two general service trustees are there to be the eyes and ear of the general service board the regional trustees are there to bring a regional flavor to each board hands-on a lot of contact with the fellowship the three non-trustee directors who are not on the board of trustees but their constituency is the board of trustees that's who put them on that board that's elected them approved by the conference but it was the trustees nominating committee and the general service board itself that approved that person to be a non-trustee director and their constituency is that general service board they are there to do the best work possible on behalf of the general services board um the legal terms are one year so it's four one-year terms as a non-trustee director usually once you're selected you are just put forward by the nominating committee for the next three years after your first year every once in a while someone does not get put forward again that doesn't happen too often it happened like three years ago someone was a non trustee director and then they were not put forward for the following year um i would tell anyone on this call who is has any kind of professional or business experience when the call goes out for non-trustee directors you do not have to be a past delegate that is not a requirement are some non-trustee directors past delegates yes i was but we've had some great non-trustee directors and general service trustees that were never past delegates that were dcms that were area chairs that were corrections chairs or god knows what the requirement is to have solid aa service experience and business or professional experience to bring forward we noticed a long time ago that some delegates only sent those notices to past delegates so we even changed the announcement that goes out to tell them to send it to as wide an audience as possible because when there is an opening i think there's an opening for the grapevine until november your resume goes into that corporate board nominating committee and your corporate board nominatingcommittee will go through those resumes and pick out five or seven that they like and then they will interview those people and then they will make a recommendation to select the final person but i couldn't stress enough to watch box 459 watch the notices that come from your delegate and if you think that you're qualified you should submit it i will tell you i have served with some outstanding non-trustee directors and general service trustees that were not um past delegates i could name them but then i'll get in trouble because i leave somebody out and so it's not worth it i'm just telling you i've served with some great ones have i served with some non-trustee directors and general service trustees that have a little bit of a learning curve like a class a because they don't know our structure as well as the past delegate yeah but that's our job to pass that on to them um what we want them for is their business and professional experience i've noticed this in the fellowship that sometimes we have a pecking order in aa for everything i don't know how many areas are represented here but i know that in certain areas you got to be this before you're that and then you got to bethis and thenyou got tobe a dcm and thenyou got to bethe area secretary or registrar and then you got to become the area treasurer then you've got to become the Area Chair and then you can become alternate delegate and then it can be delegating. I'm not saying that's bad, but that's not a rule. What I have noticed inside the delegate gatherings which I get to go to because I'm a past delegate is sometimes they get a little apprehensive about somebody who's not adult past delegate applying like oh my God, you're jumping down the triangle over me you are leapfrogging down and you are not serving listen if people feel like that they're entitled to their feelings but that shouldn't stop anyone from applying to be a non-trustee director we need the best in the brightest that's what we need um the corporate boards have an immense responsibility their job is to carry out the business we just had an international convention the trustees have a committee called the trustees committee on international convention and regional forums the conference has a committee international convention in regional forums but that's high level guidance like when they made the decision about not using the lord's prayer that came through the conference when they make the selection of where it's going to go that the final three are selected by jointly by the trustees committee and the conference committee but then the final selection is selected by the trustee's committee and approved by the General Service Board. But once that happens, where's the money go? Who signs the contracts? Who negotiates the contracts? who goes and visits those cities on site tours? That all falls to a staff desk at GSO under AWS. That job is so busy. I'll just give you an example. Right now, Patrick is in the middle of rotating out because he was the coordinator for Vancouver. The alternate coordinator for Vancouver will now become the coordinator for St. Louis. Now, for her first two and a half, three years, she'll have another staff job and be that coordinator but when we get two and a half years out from the international convention we will remove those other duties from that person because they need that full two years before the international convention because of how much work there is so the day-to-day the contracts don't say general service board of aa they say a world services when you send your money in the same thing so the corporate boards have such an immense responsibility um and let's face it we have over 90 employees give or take we have a duty to take care of our employees we have a duty to pay them fairly we have a duty to provide them with benefits like they would get anywhere else we have the duty to prove them with a retirement after they work a long time for us we have responsibility to provide then with a safe work environment all the same responsibilities as any other employer in the world that has to follow state local and federal law the aws board and the grapevine board are responsible for all of that overseeing their executives the other thing i just want to talk about from a corporate board perspective is that like any board and if you're really into you know board um organization board best practice um i would tell you two books to read when it comes to spiritual and the type of leader you should be in AA, the Robert Greenleaf Foundation produces a small little booklet on servant leadership. That is a great book. That's more from 100,000 feet about how to be a true servant leader instead of a dominating leader. But if you're really interested into board mechanisms and how boards should work, there's a book by Dr. John Carver called Boards That Make a Difference, and that book is excellent. It really spells out how a board can be effective, and one of the biggest mistakes boards make is sometimes they're like, well, I could call the general manager, but I know Susie on this desk and John on this desk. And it's not a problem to call them if you're just looking to get some information, but if you are going around the executive, you've caused a big problem. Like the board of the grapevine and the board of the AWS act as if they only have one employee, the general manager for AWS and the executive editor publisher for the grape vine that person reports to them. when they give directives or have a vote and decide on a policy, they give that to the general manager. And it's the general manager's job to carry that out with the employees. Another way of looking at this, having served on the AWS board for eight years and the general service board for four, is the board's job where we are like today, you could call that point A on a timeline. And then we have a new project or something we want to do. And when it's finished, that will be point B. And that's the board's job policy. What's not the board job is micromanaging the staff getting from point A to point B That's why you employ an executive who employs a staff. It's their job to do that. you know and i could tell you and this goes for areas and districts as well and i hear about it and get the calls and but if there's one thing we get a failing grade for at the district and area level there's certain things districts and areas do better than the boards i'm not going to say they don't but there's certainly things that the boards do much better areas and districts are like and sometimes in the groups like the kings and queens of micromanagement they want to micrormanage everything anybody does but yet that's not their position if they wanted to do that they should have stood for that position and the other thing that we don't deal with at the board level in aa that seems to dominate areas is service sponsorship. Nobody at the board says, oh, you know what? Can we take a break so I can call my service sponsor? No, we can't. You know why? Because we selected you and we really don't care what your service sponsor says. Their job is to help you with the traditions and the concepts, and maybe they have some experience in serving in a position. But at the area and district level, I have people tell me all the time, oh, but my service sponsor said I can't do this. I'm like, have you checked in with the chairperson of your committee? Because that's really who you report to, not your service sponsor i actually see emails inside areas and districts where people copy their service sponsor like they're writing an official email to the area chair or the delegate and they copy their surface sponsor like this sir who cares the job of the service sponsor is to provide guidance and help with the traditions and the concepts and give you the tools to make your own decisions but i'm sure you all know like inside areas you put a change through or try to there will be calls behind the scenes all the past delegates talking talking to their service sponsors i'm just telling you that doesn't happen at the board level i have someone super close to me who serves on one of the boards we've been close for a long time um he does not talk to me about anything that is current on that board whatsoever like i honor that boundary he asked me a question about something to do with boards which i'm glad to answer based on my experience but he doesn't ask me how do you feel about this initiative or agenda item b or anything like that because that's his job it's not it's it's the same not my job to micromanage and guess what as a past aws member i don't get to just show up at an aws meeting and sit in the back and like text my service sponsors that are on the board if i don t like what's going on and we all know that goes on in areas all the time it drives me crazy um if there's one thing the general service board and the corporate boards have is extreme rotation when you're done you're done and um micromanagement not only is it a time killer but from a servant leadership point of view it is the biggest morale killer in service in the world i had somebody tell me one time that their service sponsor checks the font they're putting on flyers i don't know what page of any service sponsorship guide that is on but that is absolutely insane insane um we don't need morale killers in a service and by the way if somebody happens to make a mistake it's not going to be the end of the world we don'T need to hang people out to dry we DON'T need TO cut them off at the knees um actually what'S helpful is to talk to them in private and share your own experience so with that i'm going to go to questions next week we'll go to gso let's see from this year's quarterly one report from gso the grapevine reduced 20 of its staff is that common um no they probably were restructuring to fit into their budget another question is what do you mean by lose money i'd ask that person to after i give my answer to send something back in i mean that i mean you lost money you were not a custodian you were not a good fiduciary now does it happen every once in a while yes but when you start to lose millions of dollars people confuse non-profit with losing money i want to make that point about both of our boards non-profit in the a world and the outside a world does not mean lose money that it's spiritual to lose money what non-profit means is that no one is allowed to benefit from any excess money you make you have no dividends you pay out to owners or shareholders you instead take that money and reinvest it in the mission of that non-profit organization so that's what i mean by lose money would you kindly post the authors of the two books you referred to um sure uh put it in in the main chat. It's John Carver on boards that make a difference. And it's Robert Greenleaf servant leadership what are some of the projects that aws gso grapevine use google for non-profits um there's been a lot of talk at the finance committee about this could get complicated so google has a thing called google grants where they can because you can buy ads on google and if you've ever googled alcoholics anonymous and you saw like eight aid recovery places come first it's probably because those organizations bought certain words in that zip code or for the whole united states and so then yours goes to the top. You come back first in the search. Google established Google grants where they would give a grant of $5,000, $10,000 to certain non-profits that meet a certain requirement so that you could designate some of those words so that your results come back higher in search engine optimization. this was uh some people feel it's controversial and everything else i would just give some background and say our first psa went on tv our first public service announcement in 1966 sure every once in a while an aa entity buys some time on a radio or a tv network but a lot of times we get free ad space like other non-profits and we give them our psa's when they have time to run them they do and the conference approved this that this was not outside the seventh tradition because these networks gave it to everybody not just aa and it's a requirement of their license to give away so much space I really can't see the difference between a Google grant and taking airtime. All it is, is identifying words so that you come back higher in a search so that a newcomer can actually find Alcoholics Anonymous. Let's see, since AA Grapevine doesn't typically turn a profit, does it ever actually turn over dollars to the reserve fund? If so, on average, how much does this amount to? So what I would say to that person is, you could ask your delegate for a history of all the years that document exists. Over the last 20 years, the grapevine has not turned a lot of money at all over to the reserve fund. It has had a very difficult time. In years past, did the grape vine put some money into the reserve fun? Yes. but if you look especially the last 15 years we have had some real hard years um but yes the grapevine has put money into the reserve fund any other questions because next week we're going to really dig into the details of gso and grapevines okay here's one if groups districts and areas have the power of the purse doesn't Should that get canceled out by AAWS raising literature prices? Should contributions be down? Not really, for a lot of reasons. Maybe to make up a couple of dollars you could raise literature prices. But if you raise them too high, groups and people aren't going to be able to buy them. Like while we are a spiritual organization, we are subject to the law of supply and demand. and if we outprice ourselves, then we'll sell less books. So we're always walking a fine line. The last I checked, about 70% of AWS's budget is coming from contributions. The other 20 or 30% from margin. So the power of the purse is still the powerofthepurse. I would not be concerned about that I would really be concerned about if you decide to exercise that power of the purse have you communicated that to your delegate and to the trustees the reserve fund is down to 5.1 months contributions are down 17% I'm not saying a group does not have the right to hold back funds of course it does the concepts talk about it but it shouldn't be the first action the first action should be maybe a letter saying hey we're a little concerned about this could you let us know any other questions i'll give it a minute didn't bill w have someone guest on a radio show to promote the big book uh yeah of course um the big Book was a colossal failure when it was published we forget that hundreds of them sat in a warehouse in New Jersey and New York it was only when the saturday evening post article came out by jack alexander that the book started to really pick up in sales but we did informational things on the radio we should we can still do them today our class a trustees can use their full name on radio a class b trustee can only use their first name and last initial a class B trustee is usually a not good person for an interview because interviewers like to see a face so we can use class a um trustees for that because they don't have anonymity problems they can show their face and use their last name um but yes we can go to radio shows and talk about the big book now we have to be careful because while it's okay to promote aa inside aa we have a tradition that tells us we're about attraction not promotion so we don't do gimmicks and all kinds of things we can go out and talk about the big book or other literature as an attractive message to somebody who's dealing with an alcoholic or an alcoholic let's see does aws highlights in box 459 come out monthly or only when information needs to be communicated uh box 45 9 is like quarterly you can go right to the gsoa.org website and sign up for it you can put your email in and get it automatically if you're a gsr or dcm or another service position most times you get it automatically because your name's in the system but you can sign up for it aws highlights comes out after every aws board meeting about eight times a year that goes out to all the delegates and some of the servants that are in the system let's see do you think gso needs to encourage members to be individual contributors rather than giving dollars in the meeting basket like they started out in the beginning one dollar per member well we didn't start out maybe a dollar per member but um so i think it's a slippery slope that we have to watch out for if i did easy math with the 7 500 limit i just want to tell you what that really means So just take, if you want use 18 million, but really services are about 14 million. I'll use 18 just to be even high. And you divide that by 7500. need 2 400 people to give 7 500 each to not need group money but when you take that 20 2400 right you know 2 400 um and divide it by our areas that would mean we would only need like 25 people per area to give the max that troubles me a little bit because with the right promoter you would be easy to find 25 people in a whole area who could afford to give that so i don't think raising the individual contribution the other thing is that there's a good slide they show at regional forums about how many people do give the max it's not a lot of people it's very small the other thing that worries me about the 7500 is people claiming that they should have some influence if you look at big charities or non-profits the people who give a lot of money have a lot influence um so i understand but individual contributions is not the solution to our answer to our problem is there a limit that a group can contribute no there is not and i say that to people all the time if you have so much money that you gave 7500 that's great if you want to give more throw it in your basket every week does grapevine inc go gimmicks not that i'm aware of um not that i'm aware of is it okay for the grapevine to do gimmicks i don't think it's okay for any of us to do anything that's gimmicky um if it's something to make the grapefine look attractive and to let people know about the grape vine that's great um but gimmicks have a long history of aa not really being um it's why we don't make coins anymore you know when you look at the outside organizations that sell coins i mean i live in florida the chip capital of the world right we give chips to everybody thank god those are just plastic right but when you add up all the anniversary coins and all that money that gets paid to an outside company imagine aaa still made them and sold them but we gave that up it's not our primary purpose our primary purpose is to help people get sober anytime any district group area in a group or the general service board try to rely on anything else besides contributions from groups and individuals it's never sustainable why are new groups having a hard time lately because less literature is being sold more people are using electronic literature it's it's very simple okay that is it great seeing everyone oh you know what i did want to announce some for anybody that's in the northeast region because we try to tell people uh the northeast regional forum is in december in providence rhode island um and you don't have to live in the southeast region to go to it. But a regional forum is one of the greatest things to go to as a new person in service or somebody that's not had a lot of exposure to GSO. It's kind of like a knower's arc, but instead of two of everything, there's one of everything. It' s like an AA arc. They bring a regional trustee, they bring a general service trustee. They bring a grapevine editor. They bring a gso general manager they bring a staff member from each corporation they bring in trustee at large they bring class a trustee um it's a real awesome opportunity to really hear some first-hand reporting and more importantly to maybe have breakfast or a cup of coffee um and realize that they're just regular alcoholics just like us um but that is like the second weekend of uh or the first weekend of december but if you go to the aa.org website it is there um and i would tell people in the southeast sasa is coming the southern states a service assembly um that will be in december as well you can search sasa online um and then for those of you that maybe don't know when we get into this late winter narasa the northeast regional a service assembly prasa the pacific regional a service assembly there's lots of events where you can get you know sometimes inside a service it's almost like a parent that doesn't want to let their kid out of the house or out of the village and we all know what happens then the kids dying to get out of the village dying to get out of the house right um sometimes people are so afraid of new ideas but the greatest thing about going to these other to these regional service assemblies is that you really get a taste for what's going on in other areas or what other people are up to um i actually think it's very beneficial to go to other regions events um and i say that because you know sometimes you hear people complain oh this crazy region that crazy region that region doesn't like anything new this region doesn' t like this my experience is if you go to one of those regions gatherings you can get a true sense of the people that go to aa there and why they believe that way and maybe it's just not that they're crazy they have a different way of looking at things than we do and my experience is the broader you can expand your aa mind the better so that's it um i just want to make sure someone put links in the chat um and let's see that's it we will close with the responsibility statement thank you everyone i am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out for help i want the hand of aa always to be there and for that i am responsable have a good night everyone take care