Warranty 2 and the Prudent Reserve – AA Service Workshop – 2026 – Part 1 of 2 – Billy N.

a chat question or whatever and it's ugly not only does it get not get red you get removed we say on monday nights all the time you've probably heard of three strike policies we don't have a three strike policy in this meeting we don't even have like a one strike policy we have like half like the minute you look like you're going off the rails you're out of the meeting and you're done um and you know feel free to go to whatever meeting you want um we're not here to bash anyone or anything else we're here to talk about warranty too tonight and a little bit about tradition seven you know there's a lot of things involving the general service structure people who are involved in service there are a lot of money issues out there um and you know one of the things i want to say to start this off is you know i would just give general advice to anyone if if someone is telling you that everything the general service board does is wrong then run away from them okay just run away um and if you're also getting advice from anyone who if you don't agree with them them you can't be in their little social circle you're probably not around the best group of third Legacy trusted servants like at the end of the day we should be able to all agree to disagree but on the other hand you shouldn't be labeled The Troublemaker just because you ask hard questions I also want to get that point across like if you have hard questions to ask anywhere they should be welcomed by anyone who is the trusted servant given a report um and you know some of the information presented tonight might be some information that you have not heard before it's just to get information out there one of the things that i learned as a trustee is that one of the biggest rotation is good but a little bad and maybe jimmy can comment on that in a little bit but there's good and bad in rotation the good is hopefully nobody becomes the king or queen of aa right that's the good we don't have royalty the bad is we have a really really um we do a bad job of tracking institutional history and then what we also do is and i'm pointing the finger at myself just in case any current trustee thinks that i'm I'm pointing the finger at myself, but I know this happens to the board and trustees everywhere is what happens is you think you can fix a problem that no one else has been able to fix. For some reason, you're going to be the person who's going to fix it. And a lot of times when we do that, we're afraid to produce information and give to people that maybe there's some information already out there. But since I'm going to be the guy to fix this, I'm not going to share you some of that past information. I'm not going let you see it because I don't want you to see that like four other chairs of AAWS already decided like this was not a good idea um so i'm i'm very conscious of the alcoholic ego the alcoholic personality and the you know need and and one of the most dangerous things in alcoholics anonymous is legacy building legacy building is when i won't just be happy with being a trustee for four years i want to be famous for something when i rotate out i wantto be able to put back and put my finger on something and say that i did that it's why i love the spanish word for trustee so much which is custodio and if you look up what a custodian's real job is it's to return something the way it was given to them you don't even have to make better but return it to the way you got it um don't make something worse. So tonight I'm going to read a little of Warranty 2, but for Jimmy and I's purposes we really only need the first sentence, which is 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 towards the giving of money presents an interesting contrast. Of course, we give a lot of our time to AA activities to our own projection and growth, but we also engage ourselves in a truly sacrificial giving for the sake of our groups, our areas, and for AA as a whole. Now, if you're not familiar with all of Warranty 2, I would suggest that you read it. But the sufficient operating funds plus an ample reserve is our guiding principle as a service structure. Sometimes we only talk about Tradition 7, but it's really sufficient operating. And there's no doubt, and I know um you know whoever here if there's something that either of us says that upsets you it's not our intention i assure you it is not our attention but listen i myself agree with some things that all kinds of people in aa do and sometimes i disagree whether it's my local inner group whether it'S MY DISTRICT WHETHER IT'S MY HOME GROUP whether it's the general service board so there are some things and you know i was present at my own assembly where there was a visiting trustee and there were some comments made and i have to be very honest and it's it's not personal and it doesn't mean that every trustee on the board has it but there are at least a few and so one of the comments that's being made out there regarding our ample reserve is that we don't need to pay it back or that it's bad language saying pay it back because we don't owe anyone any money it was our money our savings account for lack of a better word or phrase and it's not like a credit card where we owe somebody money so for anyone that's not you know not been in a service that long i just want to give a little history to whoever listens to this now or on the recording in that the best way i can describe that statement is that of course i don't need to give you my own whole service resume but i was a director on the aws board for eight years i served once as treasurer and i served twice as chair of the aws board i served seven years on the trustees finance committee i would consider myself intimately familiar with the finances of the three corporations and our financial history not only balances but how we do things and so of course i know that we didn't borrow money from a bank or a credit card and we don't owe the money back to anybody okay so let me just say that i agree with that statement here is what i probably don't agree with and i would tell you that the institutional history of the general service board is on my side and i'm going to mention a bunch of documents and they're all going to be posted in the monday night service group facebook page but i would ask all of you to just think about a couple of things the first thing i would tell you is we just passed st patrick's day for me i use saint patrick stay as kind of the covid anniversary date that's when coven struck in my life the hardest that day at work and i would tell you that we stand on the shoulders of giants and we are the descendants of giants and when i say giants i am not talking about me or jimmy or any famous speaker or any famous trustee. I'm talking about the craziest person you know in your local clubhouse that the best they could do was just go to a meeting, go to work and put a dollar or 50 cents in the basket. Those are the giants we're descendants of. And because of how cautious they were leading up to March of 2020, we're able to still be in business today because they put enough money aside. And the truth is, and again, I know this goes against what a current one or two trustees have said recently publicly, if we had the same five years now that we just finished we would be out of money now some might say well we had covid that might not happen again well as someone who was on the trustees finance committee for seven years i would tell you never expected to have a pandemic so we don't get to say things like well that'll never happen again nobody ever thought that would happen to begin with but the bottom line is if we had the same five years going forward that of the same 5 years we just finished we're out of money we're not sustainable and so we owe a debt of gratitude the other thing i want to say is whether you're a family or a single person or whoever you are this logic of not repaying back the reserve fund many families lost income during covid people were laid off the economy took a hit if a family has an emergency and uses their savings account to get through that emergency when it's all over and done they start saving for the next emergency. That's what they do. They say, wow, we just spent our emergency fund. We got this emergency under control. Now we're going to save a little bit money now to start our new emergency fund, so for a trustee or two to be traveling around the country saying that we don't have a duty or a responsibility to pay it back i would argue is semantics i would argument is just a lot of bending of the english language i also hear people saying regarding ample reserve that we don't have a minimum limit. Now, while I served as a trustee and a director and as a delegate, we always said it was nine to 12 months and we always had a minimum of 12 months and we said 12 months is the maximum that the conference will allow. We never set a minimum by conference but we always said it was nine to twelve months now now i hear some people traveling around the country who are acting like that nine to 12 months was never in writing anywhere just because the conference never said it so i want to point out a couple of things to everyone first of all the reserve fund was such an important part of what we do that we used to get a separate audit just for the reserve fund its own audit and I want to read something because I know I can see some of the areas that are present here I know where some of you live I know some of your delegates i know that i have to hear it i have to hear somebody tell me that our auditor last year said other non-profits would be lucky to have what we have that's a very spiritually bankrupt statement i just want to be clear on that and not true. I just was with a delegate who said they wish the people who repeat that story would repeat the next sentence the auditor said at the conference last year, which was, but they're not Alcoholics Anonymous. AlcoholicsAnonymous has always handled their prudent reserve, their reserve fund a different way. I want to read from you the audit report from 2010. This is the General Service Board's auditors, okay? Their external auditor where it says, in recognition of the fact that the 12 months represents the upper limit of the fund, And we believe that the question of funding an ample reserve, the auditor uses the warranty language, might be more appropriately expressed as a range somewhere below that level or say 10 to 11 months. such a level of funding would be near enough to the upper limit to provide the financial strength traditionally enjoyed by AA to avoid debt, fund capital improvements and retain a prudent reserve against any unforeseen circumstances in the future. The person who wrote that COVID-19 wasn't even invented but he predicted it Any unforeseen? And our outside auditor says that 10 to 11 months is probably where we should be. Now, this will be posted tomorrow. I'm reading from the report that was presented to the Trustees Finance Committee in January of 2010. Attached to it is a report called the GSB and Warranty 2 Prudent Financial Principles. inside this report it says the following the principal purpose of the reserve fund is to provide the funds necessary to continue the essential services of gso in the event of a substantial reduction in the norm of revenues of the organization whether that be caused by a severe economic recession or a disruption within the fellowship or in the publication and distribution of AA literature. You know, it says it right there, what the reserve fund's purpose is. And if you... Let me just move on to one more document that I want to just make sure that you are clear where I'm getting my information from. And like I said, they will be posted. Let's see. So I'll move on for a second regarding the reserve fund. in november of this year a document was released showing the reserve fund balance it was created in december but said the reserve fund balance as of november 30th of 2025. now this is my experience in ethics and governance and non-profit leadership And I've already said to a couple of people that this document is faulty. It's not transparent. It was sent out to send a message or a narrative that was not true. So, on boards that I serve on, this document that shows the reserve fund balance as of November 30th, 2025, all it does is show you the cash balance. it has no footnotes on it that let the fellowship know or somebody reading the document have there been withdrawals that have been authorized that just haven't been taken out of the bank yet that's what is on this document it says as of november 30th There is $11,527,860. But that just happens to be the money in the bank account that day. It makes no footnote or asterisk of the $2 million approved in August to take out. It makes not footnote asterisks for the $750,000 that was authorized to take out for operational expenses in December. all i would tell you is if you're asking questions of your delegate or anyone else that's an important question when it comes to the reserve fund there's two important things to know what's the current cash balance and what money has been approved by the trustees finance committee and the general service board to remove and authorize to remove it If you were to take those authorized removals out, then you would have a much different amount of months left with the reserve fund. So I just want to point that out. I want to talk about sufficient operating expense. Sufficient operating expense in best practice means that you spend less than your revenue. Now, I want it to be loud and clear. so that for whatever hate mail I get for this at least I've made a disclaimer or two every family every company every not-for-profit has difficult financial times that's a part of life there's nothing wrong with difficult Financial Times I've read the letters that have come out the last couple of years especially the ones in November asking for more contributions I am not here to take a position on those letters but we have to admit that by our own words we've characterized the last few years the last several years contributions as record setting not low record setting that's the words of theirs not mine once an organization goes through a year or two of difficult times and has used some of their savings to get through those difficult times it's a board of directors responsibility if revenues don't improve to spend within your current revenue i work for a profit-making company full-time i'm the chair of the board of a non-profit around the same size as the General Service Board's organization. If revenues, I want more revenue in both sides of my life, that profit and that nonprofit. But if revenues don't come in, I don't get to keep spending like they are. At a certain point, there's a fiduciary responsibility. Yes, we want more money. yes, we'd like to do more projects. But until we get that money, we need to spend within our means. That's best practice in not-for-profit management. Now, I'm going to tee a couple of things up for Jimmy just on bad information that I hear lately. one is when was the last time the grapevine was self-supporting i want to let you know that i want to let you know what you're probably not being told which was from 2011 until 2017 the grape vine was profitable okay i also want to let you know that from 2011 until 2017 the grapevine lost subscribers each year you can have that document there's a issue or a agenda item about the grape vine accepting outside contributions And it's not here for me to tell you, that's for your group and your area to decide. What I do want to tell is the background in that, to me, there's a lot of missing documents. Number one would be what we call the Royal Shepherd Letter. if you are not familiar with the royal shepherd letter you need to be i don't know why it's not in the background for that item but in order to understand the original intention of the grapevine it is impossible to do without the royal shepard letter royal shepherd was the attorney that helped incorporate the grapevine for bill and on march 12th of 1946 bill wrote royal a letter detailing out his view of the grape vine one of those things and you know let me give you a psa about this sometimes people i'm asking you to read the entire royal shepherd's letter I don't have time to read the whole thing, but I'm not worried about what it says. And I'm willing to give you a copy. If you're ever in an AA discussion where somebody is quoting a Bill W or some letter and only reads part of it, but is unwilling for you to see the whole letter, then you know that there's something in there they didn't want you to hear. That's the way it goes. bill's letter to royal shepherd says though never to be operated for the profit of any individual the grapevine ought to be fully self-supporting to ensure its own continuity the grapefine will need to maintain an office staff and even actually a paid editor and then here is the key words The grapevine ought to be so priced that these expenses can be normally met without subsidies. In order that the foundation may keep in close contact with the grapevine finances, it is desirable that the grapevine employ the same auditor as the foundation. In other words, we don't have a subscription problem, we have a pricing problem. the grapevine is not priced to be self-supporting based on its subscribers now that's bill w a couple of other things you need to read because the grape vine has drawn 2.7 million dollars since 2019 that's coming out of group contributions that are in the reserve fund sure every once while if the grapevine had a positive year it put money in but i want to alert you to a couple of things that are not in the background that you never hear people tell you i'll bet you very few of you have ever seen this this is the aa grapevine critical years 1976-84 written by don d chairman of the grapefine board you know what he was doing in 1984 he was doing exactly what we're doing now saying the grapevine is not sustainable what does he say in here just like Bill W I want to read to you from his letter or his report in short the lack of foresight with respect to a price increase illuminated problems that require deep examination a professional board probably would have gone about this all in a much smoother way but we take great pride in the principle of rotation he goes on to talk about at the 1981 conference a price increase was urged upon by the delegates and the board voted that the second increase to 80 cents effective in january the whole question of whether we were going to produce special items was studied at great length and not financially resolved until the 82 conference i want to hear what you to hear with the delegates said in 82. at that time the delegates made it clear that they wanted us to continue pricing special items as long as they were self-supporting he goes on to say in my opinion the prices of both the magazine and the special items were then correct and this was demonstrated in the operating results it's all about pricing now if that wasn't enough you have to read what i basically call the nostradamus report but a man named jack w was the first regional trustee to serve as chair of the grapevine board in september 1995 he sent a letter to the general service board in 1995 basically lying out that maybe the current model wasn't sustainable now i'm not anti-grapevine. I just want you to have all the information that these problems are not new and that we've wanted to fix them for a long time. Now, the other thing that you should have is the March 2005 grapevine strategic plan. Some of you might be familiar with some current terminology the five-year plan you might hear that but you have to know which five year plan the first version or the second version but inside this i would ask all of you to look hard this is the grapevine board saying how they're going to operate in the future based on current issues and one of the things that they lay out in there that they were most scared of which was brought about by a comment by the treasurer of the general service board at the time who is a non-alcoholic trustee named vince keith i can use his last name since he's a non-alcoholic, but Vince was an independent person looking at the grapevine and he found some problems. What Vince found is that the grapefine board and the general service conference was printing new grapevine books as fast as they could print them so that people wouldn't see the money being lost on the magazine side of the house. This is what the Grapevine Board's own strategic report says. During our September 2004 planning committee meeting, the grapevine board reached unanimity on a goal of maintaining at least a 70-30 ratio of grace profit from the magazine versus related items. In other words, 70% of the profit of the grapevine had to come from the magazine. No more than 30% should come from books. Otherwise they would get themselves in big trouble. it says the concern was brought to our attention a couple of years ago by a visit from the general service board treasurer vince keefe he asked how we were going to sustain our operation in the face of cost increases and possible continuing subscription declines he pointed out that we couldn't increase the production of related books and items forever as a result of that excellent question we spent a great deal of time thinking and sharing on this topic so think about vince in 2005 and in 2005 the grapevine board says vince you're right but then because of rotation we're like who cares what vince said and who cares what the 2005 board said we're just going to act like we're just going go along and and i tell you that because i'm not anti-grapevine i just want people to have all the information and so the last thing i'm going to end with and turn it over to jimmy is this and another huge disclaimer the background for the conference is out particularly the background for the Conference Committee on Trustees that shows the slates. The slate of officers for the General Service Board, the slate of trustees and the slate of directors from AA World Services and AA Grapevine. There is a current Class A trustee who has been put on that to be the treasurer next year. I want to scream from the hilltop as loud as this recording can be played. The name that has been put there, that trustee, she is a very capable person. She is a professional by all accounts a great trustee and I'm sure she can handle being trustee for treasurer for a year anybody can be treasuer for a year if we pick the right people but because a trustee or two are distorting our history we are making a radical departure from our past this new thing that they want to do of just letting someone be a trust treasura for a year is a radical radical departure for years we had a treasurer who served either nine years when the class a was nine or six years when a class when a treasure was six year when a class a were six i can throw out names like gary glenn and art knight and vince keith and Terry Bedian and David Morris. It has always been a critical part of the board's strategy that one trustee serve as treasurer for six years to keep the eye on the financial ball, to not let things slip, to have a handle on institutional history. In fact, all during that time, we brought the new class a on as a consultant now you could say in the early 2020s another we led a treasurer because we didn't replace a six-year treasura in 2018 we just picked another trustee to serve in that spot and then we did pick a treusurer who then left early last year jimmy can comment on it but i would argue we've had some of the worst financial problems in the history of our organization and a lot of them have all started since 2017 or 18 that's exactly now i know covid came in and took four million dollars but that's when we stopped having a six-year treasurer like is it a coincidence that the years we always had a six year treasura somebody whose eye was on the ball somebody like vince who was willing to call the grapevine board out somebody like art knight who was willing to call the aaws board out i would tell you that switching to not having one person serve as treasurer for six years is a radical departure and does not keep an eye on the ball of the financial strategy so with that i'm turning it over to my friend jimmy he can comment on whatever he wants to comment on you should be able to unmute jimny i think i'm good everybody Jim Medina, I'll call it. I'm glad to be here. It's good to see a lot of familiar faces. Billy, thank you. It was good to you. I appreciate the commentary and information thus far. I may start by, I would say just reinforcing. I served on the board with the trustee who is set on the slate to serve as treasurer for 2026-2027 and have nothing but good things to say about our time in service together and her ability to exemplify what I would consider to be leadership skills that we appreciate so much in AA, and she's not a member of the fellowship. uh she assumed a role uh as a regional trustee for a period of time when uh when that region's uh elected trustee went to interim chair of the board but it is a is a radical departure in the policy that i believe we've applied since the inception of the old alcoholic foundation which is 1938 uh i mean from the beginning we looked for continuity in that position we never expected the class a treasurer to you know rotate to some other job on the board and uh and i would say that the absence of that perhaps uh in my time and aws was my corporate board so i served the general service board from april of 2019 until april of 2023 and my middle two years i was treasurer of a world services board and then chair of a world services uh and trustees finance for me was three of my four years i didn't have nearly as long in the barrel as billy did but um i would say that when we talk about these spiritual principles certainly in the context of our group life and our life within districts and in our areas and certainly within the structure of the conference one of the things that appeared to be absent uh in multiple areas when i was a bottom feeder uh was natural stress points and i don't mean friction i just mean stress healthy stress if you think about the concepts as a package uh some of the wording various concepts they really tend to almost contradict one another bill bill will call it out right and he'll say it appears to be this is you know an immovable object right an irresistible force and an imovable object how do these how do these places reconcile one another and and could it be that that because we certainly always pick spiritual over material that bill felt like that was a good way for at least that tip of the triangle maybe different points of the triangle but certainly at the tip it was a way to really get us to a point of talking things out as long as that might take and uh and arriving at a truly informed group conscience informed and yet not instructed uh it is not lost on me that i believe it's been years since conference delegates have really been asked truthfully openly and honestly during the week of the conference what do you think right what do you think and uh and what delegates think from all parts of the united states of canada is vitally important when we're talking about finance when we talk about vision uh we're not talking about anything in alcox anonymous i'm not saying that they exist at a level that's higher or lower than any other level of a member of the conference but uh you know some of the problems that we might identify as let's say material in other words excess spending spending above and beyond uh what uh what we might consider to be prudent which really only exists at that level right so i've been a delegate panel 59. i see a fellow 59 or 60 in here i thought i did and uh honored and privileged to serve the fellowship in that time but when i got to the general service board it was really my first time since i'd been in aaa uh at any level um where uh where the the discussion let's just say around uh budgets our funding uh didn't seem to be as i would say is a real world as it had been anything else i've ever served in right think about your own home group probably functions somewhat similar to mine maybe structure's a little different tradition foreign encourages that but my group's going to have a group anniversary on saturday 23 years we're happy about that right and uh we knew we were flying a woman in from california so we knew we had to pay for a hotel for friday night and saturday night we knew that we had get an airline ticket i mean she wasn't going to take the greyhound bus from la to dallas um we knew we were gonna take her to dinner on friday night and uh and you know we we estimated within a small margin of error based on what we had done in prior years we estimated exactly what uh what we thought that that was going to cost us right let's just say plus or minus a thousand dollars right and the group has been aware and has been informed of that for seven or eight months not weekly we meet once a week for a big speaker meeting not weekly but our treasurer has kept us regularly informed about that and in that the purest form to enable all of us to equally participate in the seventh tradition at home group in our parks anonymous right we understand that we collectively have made this obligation we decided we'd like to throw a little potluck and have a speaker come in from out of town and we're going to assume that mantle of responsibility and yeah maybe somebody threw three dollars in the basket instead of just two for two or three weeks if they could um and that's the way we budgeted texas state convention when i chaired the texans state convention we sat around and i don't know somebody on the committee said i'd really like you know some really uh super duper helium balloons like a balloon arch or whatever right i said okay let's just write that down put a pin in that then the following month the report came back and they said going to cost 800 for a helium march i said that's a lot of crumpled dollars in an aa basket for a bunch of balloons that people are just gonna you know stare at uh probably not a prudent use of aa expense right we formed a conscience a group conscience from that same thing with with districts or areas and so then we get to uh you know what are sufficient operating funds at the at the bottom of the triangle right what do we d what do we deem sufficient we seem to be having mixed messages around vital services seems like every letter that i've read that's come from my trusted servants that's let's just say closer at the bottom of the triangle everything is deemed vital uh i don't know that i can necessarily agree or disagree with that but uh but certainly um i think we all are encouraged to consider the level of sacrifice that's involved in every single penny that runs through this thing called alcoholics anonymous because we don't we're not a non-profit like united way or salvation army or girl scouts or whoever who's got a list of the top 50 donors and when our monies get a little thin we just work the list and call our 50 people and say hey we need you to throw in just a little bit more right and that's vital import vitally important information for our auditor When they determine the efficacy of the reserve fund of the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, the auditor needs to know we're no normal nonprofit in the purest definition because we are not soliciting contributions from our own members or certainly not anybody outside AA. We don't solicit contributions from Our Membership. we we get real and consistent information around what services cost and ultimately the fellowship the group the district the area the conference the boards determine the absolute best use of a dollar i think we've taken a more casual approach to the a dollar because we've looked the reserve fund in a light in which it was never designed to be looked at the reserve find is no ordinary savings account the reserve found is an example of decade upon decade upon decades of prudent fiscal principles that have been excess exercise sometimes i think with great sacrifice not that services have been withheld from the fellowship without ample communication around exactly what those services are and and what they cost aa it's a simple discussion it's not about you know revealing secret data it's just a simple discussion i can't find a single aaa member that uses meeting guide that isn't over the moon about meeting guide just over the moon about it oh my god meeting guide like i got an intergroup meeting guide i got the meeting guide meeting guide i'm i'm excited about meeting guys well there's a cost to meeting guy right there's cost it's a it's significant cost i mean compared to the cost of my home group or yours it's uh it's as significant cost to be supported and organized through the general service office in new york i'm not calling out the cost but i think every aa member would be more than happy to understand and know what that number is and what it represents it's a service to the fellowship to potential members of aas we can take ownership of that if for example we print a book and we make a little mistake in that book and that book seems to infringe on a particular tradition or traditions in alcoholics anonymous if the fellowship deems it the wisest approach to uh to discontinue actively marketing that book and to try to cut our losses wouldn't it be a wonderful thing we just had a conversation in these groups in districts and areas and we said okay it's going to cost us 60 000 in kansas city to get rid of those books and the fellowship takes ownership of that the problem goes away the financial problem goes way we tend to be more and more disinclined to have any conversation that appears to have perhaps more than one side to it seems like every single conversation has to have two sides right so that ample reserve it means what it says and because the low end of the reserve has never actually been advised by the general service conference of alcoholics synonymous doesn't mean that maybe not by mandate but certainly by tradition small t tradition we've always assumed that nine months was the low end of our bank account 12 months was the high end and we know what to do there's heads in the room been sober a lot longer than me i'm 28 years in this deal everybody remembers what we did when the fourth edition of the book was published when the 4th edition of The Book Alcoholics Anonymous was published we were at the high end of the reserve balance and so we cut the amount of profit that we made on that book so we can spin down some of our reserve we didn't want the reserve to go too far up because we did have a high level limit right and uh and it seems to me that there's there seems to be more and more uh of an aggressive approach to uh to funding which is a word that i wasn't sure that i would ever use as a member of aa i don't know that we think about alcoholics anonymous from the perspective of funding aa i think we think about it certainly materially and spiritually from the perspective of actively participating in it but i know about funding it uh i know that we understand what those when we understand what the needs are we've always fulfilled those needs i was on the board zombie apocalypse in the middle of that whole deal right 2020. and uh and we had depended on literature profits and again those who you've been sober for a while that in the room with me How many decades, I don't mean years, how many decades has it been that we've been talking about dependence on literature profits as a disproportionate amount of our total revenue is not a good idea for the fellowship. Not a good ideal. We've had ample reporting from boards and committees ever since I've been sober and certainly long before. And so what happened initially was not so much that groups quit meeting in person and we're trying to figure out how to continue to carry A's message. Those initial drop in contribution dollars from groups and members, that was not really the stopgap, the brick wall that we hit. The brick wall that we hit was we went from selling a million six, a million seven a month in books to $300,000. That's what scared the life out of the office. And so we had an emergency meeting of the General Service Board and in about 15 minutes, we authorized $3 million to be pulled out of that reserve fund to take care of both of pending expenses and to make our payroll for the next two or three periods. We should all be, I think pride is an ugly word in AA, so find another, find a synonym for pride. But we should all puff up to know that we never had to furlough one single employee from the AA World Services General Service Office during the entire course of pandemic because of the reserve fund because of the preserve and the fact that when the fellowship was aware that there was stress on the machine because of the pandemic we made record contributions and i don't know what about your respective towns and cities but i can tell you every single group most of the groups in dallas fort worth most of the groups in my state in any metropolitan area are meeting in storefront space leased space they're not clubs or groups they look like clubs but they're groups some two thousand three thousand four thousand five thousand dollars a month rent meeting three or four times a day landlord said you can't come in this building anymore make sure we get your check by the third of the month and those groups continued to make those contributions they continued over and above by really minimal i would say minimal contra uh communication from from certainly from us as board members they just knew that there was a need a financial need an inherent financial need and uh and they responded to that need in kind so one would expect that when we actually learned through the course of the pandemic that the fellowship could would pay any reasonable bill that was presented to it that we would budget accordingly i really as a member of trustees finance really felt like we would have some substantive changes in the way that we looked at money and the way we spent aa's money at those levels and as with so many things my perception was off because as soon as we started to come out of the pandemic every penny was committed to project a or b or c or d or z and uh and we just continued on status quo and uh i think that that probably was an unfortunate uh sequence of events my third year on the general service board in the trustees finance committee meeting i got in cahoots in the hallway i'll own it now with another regional trustee whose name will not be mentioned and i said i don't care if it's only ten thousand dollars but we've got to send some message to the fellowship that we really care about all this money that we've withdrawn because the fellowship has pride of ownership in that proven reserve and uh we got in there and i asked for two hundred fifty thousand dollars i thought the other regional was going to fall out on the floor he thought it was best 10 000 250 000 and we did it. And we did. And it wasn't painful. It wasn't financially painful. It became part of the budgeting process. When we think about vision and repaying really what we owe back, what we own back, and the reason we owe it back is because nobody who's in authority has told us that any policy has changed in other words because we had to use all those millions of dollars in order to get through the pandemic we didn't make any official policy change about anything we didn t change the definition of the prudent reserve reserve. We didn't change the purpose of the prudent reserve. We didn t change the way that the prudent reserve has always been looked at as basically an emergency cash call only. But now it seems that if we're a little short in our accounts, we don't have any problem just passing a memo down the hall, general service board approves it and there's another half million dollars, $750,000 drawn. I want to speak a little bit about the two corporations, AA World Services and AA Grapevine. And I'm a supporter of both, but the AA Grakevine, and again, I'm not going to say anything that has to do with the agenda item that is going to be on the committee, Grapevine Committee agenda at this upcoming conference. The concept eight tells the General Service Board that it's supposed to make sure that there's working capital available for either one of the two corporations. You know, AWS GSO doesn't take any money from us either. They don't get any some traditional contributions directly from us. Excuse me. They don'T receive any of that. The General Service Board is the keeper of all funds that are contributed, $11.7 million in 2025. And it's the General Service Boards responsibility to make sure that those dollars we get the most bang for our buck with those dollars, right? And so it's not about who contributes to whom as far as Grapevine or AA World Services, but AA Grapevine budgeted $200,000 loss for 2026 and had to turn right around and ask for $20,000 from the reserve fund to offset that loss for for 2026 for this this year i think we were paying attention to our own concepts the general service board would have said grapevine needs that 200 000 aws can't have it so that's a completely an internal flaw in the way that we've actually handled aa's money we've allowed one corporation really to sit over and above the other corporation when it came to the needs of working capital now whether we agree or disagree with why they need the money and why they're losing the money that's a different conversation a world services has had and continues to have some issues with expenses i don't think we have any revenue problems i think we've got expense problems What do we do in our own home groups, in our districts or in our areas when we need to kind of constrain our efforts? We make maximum use of the resources that we have available to us. We utilize technology. I've been at a board meeting where we had some discussion about some kind of card or something that was going to be produced pi 10 or 12 000 in expense excuse me which was nominal uh considering the numbers that we normally talked about and then i went to an area assembly just tell my story i went down there's any kind of service dude that's put down there to tell my tale of woe And they had a PI chair in that area who was over the moon excited about this 3x5 card that they had produced that anybody could download and use for their own public information in various districts within the area. And he said, but it was a little bit expensive. It's going to cost us about $400 to get all that put together, right? And so it's all about the mindset and understanding what you need to do about your maximum return on investment. And I think that's all within the spirit of the spiritual principles that we're here to discuss tonight, which is certainly as warranty to as we quote unquote operate these different entities in AA. and the last thing i'll talk about is this pass-through money it really got a lot of traction during the pandemic uh and pass-though money is this if if my home group has its own little pie chart about how it decides it's going to distribute funds that are over and above whatever its normal operating expenses are in other words to down the down the aa food chain to the district, to the area, to the General Service Board. We have an intergroup here that serves groups in the Dallas metro area and we have percentages that we use for contributions. So if my district, which came up recently, District 53 and Area 65 Northeast Texas, they had a motion on the floor, district had too much money. Now we don't have a policy to offload the money but the district had too much money so they determined that they would pass on some of the district's funds spend it down by making a contribution to the general service board so the dcm is a member we're members same home group i took my opportunity as one of her constituency to have a conversation and she said well you're just mad at new york i said i'm not mad at anybody but i said you're making a you're attempting to make a decision that's in conflict with every group conscience for every group that's a member of this district the groups have contributed to this entity the district specifically for that district's purpose and if the district can't spend the money then certainly some type of communication needs to come back to say we're over and above our reserve right we're in a whole pattern we're all over 18 we understand what you mean by that we're not going to leave you alone forever right it's not mixed messaging and what we did is when they went back and actually looked at their budget they did they didn't have service committee chairs had a hundred dollars a year but what in the hell can anybody do with a hundred dollar expense budget for a whole year nothing i mean i don't know where you live but that's like three good dinners in dallas texas i mean i'm not saying we're paying them to eat but come on a hundred dollars a year and we're gonna send twenty five hundred dollars to new york because we think we've got too much money when i was on the general service board when i was the treasurer of aws we have a cfo at gso great guy amazing employee for us non-alcoholic he was just beginning to learn he'd been at helen keller so he knew about nonprofits but he doesn't know anything about aa it's beginning to learned about aaa brought a spreadsheet into the meeting and said oh my god you wouldn't believe we've got you know 185 000 dollars extra i said what in the hell is extra what does extra mean and he showed me this little list well it was district blah blah area so-and-so offloaded money areas such and such offloading money such and intergroup offload money okay keeping aa money within aaa all right but actually passing money from one service entity to a different service entity that seems like poor communication to me seems like poor communication from whatever entity is the recipient of the money and or maybe that entity if it actually is in a position where it's got more than it thinks that it could spend maybe that Entity hadn't sat around and thought about look at all the things we could do to help carry the message alcoholic who still suffers right how can this money actually reinforce our service efforts which are exactly the reason why we're doing everything that we're doing right now too right the only reason that anybody has put up with listening to this old croaky voice for the last 25 minutes is because you believe that at some point some of this information might make us more effective as members of alcoholics anonymous and uh more effective for whatever we're doing when we're trying to carry the message uh the finances are messed up at the bottom of the triangle there's no malfeasance nobody's taking money out in brown paper sacks or any of that other kind of stuff none of that stuff is happening there's an absence of the natural stress that should be existing between trustees finance and budgetary between the aa world services board and the general service board between the a grapevine board and general service board certainly between the executives in both of those corporations and the General Service Board and or the chair of the General Services Board I'm not talking about I'll meet you at the back rack at five o'clock like we did when we were in high school i'm just talking about there's an absence of effective communication that really is impacting the higher levels and alcohol synonymous and that absence of effective communication also manifests itself in uh in an absence of detail and transparency that i believe all of us as aaa members have the ability to avail ourselves and if we don't want to look at it we don't have to look out so anyway i hope i at least staying somewhere around my topic today billy will let me know there's no question about that thank you we've lost the host maybe he's letting me know no i'm back thanks jimmy thanks very much a couple of things that jimmi said that i just want to like reinforce so because you know jimny was on the board during probably a very difficult time for a couple reasons we won't rate the difficult times or what the difficult issues were but it does seem that because of one of those issues a bunch of past trustees wrote a letter that's just a fact that letter bothered a lot of current trustees that's a fact but i strongly feel like you can be an agent of change and service we want people with new ideas we don't want to be stuck doing things the same way over and over again all the time if it doesn't work but on the other hand we don'T need change just for change sake because of that letter and the bad feelings on all sides there's almost been like a narrative presented by a current trustee or two that everything a past trustee says is evil or bad or we know better and i would tell you as a person who was always in favor of change that as a trusted servant, you have to walk a fine line between change that's good and having respect for the past of things that have always worked and why we did it that way. Not just saying, well, don't listen to him, he's a malcontent. The original service manual called the Third Legacy Manual instructs the delegates to examine the finances with a microscope those are not my words those are the words in the original service manual called the third legacy manual and jimmy's point about we are different we can't do the things you know i don't know how many of the people that are here tonight have visited gso for those that have never done i can tell you that i used to like to have the spot at the aws meeting on fridays that faced the glass wall because i could see people coming into gso off the elevator so for those of you that have never been there the reason i like to sit there is because i would often catch first-time visitors when they get off the elevator upset visibly emotionally upset because they just saw the serenity prayer in a bunch of different languages on the wall okay you know why i tell that story you know what's not on the wall who are the platinum donors last year who are the gold level donors or this is the so-and-so wing of our archives like that's how other non-profits you see when other nonprofits are down money they call their 10 largest donors and just say hey i need you to write a new check and Jimmy's point about pass-through money. Could you imagine? It's none of my business who anybody in this meeting makes donations to, okay? I'm sure there's lots of people here who donate to lots of different organizations. But how would you feel if you sent your money to one nonprofit it and they decided to send it to another without talking to you if a group is sending money to a district or an area it's because it's one it wants the local services carried out there if it wanted to send the money to the general service board now sure in a pandemic if we need some extra money it's a one-time thing of course but not on a regular basis you know i got on the board at a very difficult time in 2009 and i want to tell you a little story before we end here because it's so easy for us i know this game i know this game so well instead of answering somebody's question I'm just going to label them a troublemaker. That way, I don't have to answer the question. So I haven't told this story in a long time, but it's worth telling. There was a delegate in Louisiana, and long before he was a delegate, his name was Randy H., okay? In the early 2000s, randy h was a thorn in the side of anybody to do with finances at the general service office because at every regional forum and every regional event randy would get up to a microphone and he would say the pension at gso is out of control and it's going to destroy us Now, I wasn't on the board at that time. But every time he brought it up, some trustee or some director would label Randy a malcontent or a troublemaker. Don't listen to Randy. You know he's stuck like a dog with a bone on that pension thing. Do you know what happened in 2008? It's not miraculous that the pension problem was solved between 2009 and 2014. What happened is in 2008, our outside auditors put a footnote on our financials of exactly what Randy had been saying. that time our reserve fund was like 12 months and the footnote said um that reserve fund is kind of like a misrepresentation it's kind of telling everyone don't look behind the mirror like you have 12 you have twelve months over here but you're millions and millions underfunded in the pension and you better take a look at that And so I take it a little personal when people ask hard financial questions and those whose job it is to watch over, instead of like really looking at the question, want to go after the person asking the question or want to label them. All these documents will be posted tomorrow. I did bring out the final one to tell you before we get off about this question of lower limit. Attached to the 2000, January 2010 memo is the 2009 report of the audit committee, the audit community of the general service board. I want to repeat that one more time. The audit committee of the General Service Board. So not our outside auditor, actually us. And this is the report that was presented at the January board weekend. And for those who are out there where some trustee has said we've never mentioned in writing a lower limit, it's simply not true. At the end of that report, it says summary. It has four bullet points. bullet point number two says the following a reserve fund has been established to deal with unexpected losses or other changes in the financial condition of the general service board and its operating corporations the general service board attempts to maintain this fund between 9 and 12 months of the most current year's consolidated operating expenses so it has been in writing from the board itself 9 to 12. all these documents will be posted tomorrow i really you know thank everyone who is involved in service and and you know i'll i'll say it out loud the general service board and our staff every day are out there working hard to keep the doors open for tomorrow and i have the greatest respect for that the problem that i'm probably troubled by and jimmy as well is ignoring our past history or almost like telling current trusted servants that it doesn't exist or it never existed or it was never in writing or that the grapevine can't be profitable when i read those results to you from 2011 to 2017 if you need something before we get off right now that you can use as an example it's the easiest a example i can give you i don't know how many of you went to vancouver but using my aa crystal ball if you're the kind of lunatic that's here at 10 30 on a tuesday night listening to this there's a good chance you'rethekindoflunaticthatwasinvancouver there's probably a goodchance that at least 50 percent of this room was in vancouver okay vancouver was 180 dollars to register you know why because the trustees take the estimated the total cost of the event and they divide it by the estimated number of attendees and that's what they have to pay we don't take 30 out of the reserve fund and say you know what billy it really is 180, but we're only going to charge you 150. We're going to use some group contributions to help you go to Vancouver. You know why? Because the Vancouver is extra. It's a cherry on top. It'S not going to make me super sober or extra sober. I'd be just as well served at my neighborhood clubhouse or the meeting at the Salvation Army down the street. So we don't use group money to help people go to Vancouver. That's what our current method of the grapevine has been for the last eight or so years. I love the grape vine. I've read some great stories in there. There might be some I've taken a little offense to, but I like the grapevine. But the grape Vine is a cherry on top for me. I don't need it to stay sober. all we have to do is price it the right way, which is what Bill said in 1946, what the grapevine chair said in 1976, what another grapevine share said in 1994. And Vince Keefe not only said that in 2005, but he went one step further and said, stop using all these books to disguise our shortfall so this recording will be out tomorrow i thank everyone for their service to alcoholics anonymous don't be afraid to ask questions and also by the way one final disclaimer i'm sure jimmy agrees with me don't use a personality in an AA group conscience discussion no one cares what I said and no one cares what Jimmy said they just don't in fact with certain people it's going to work against you to begin with I tell people all the time if somebody says well I heard Billy say vote against them just on that principle alone vote against them use the literature use our history use our own documents the black part in writing so my thing is just to get as much of those documents in people's hands so that they're armed with the facts and they can engage in group conscience discussions so i really uh jimmy i really thank you for coming out tonight um we will close with the responsibility statement um you know jimny's here i'm just gonna i haven't seen him in a little bit um but since we've last seen each other in person jim and i we both lost someone we really cared a lot about and um we've lost a couple of people we really cared a lot but uh one person very recently um one person who served as the chair of the conference finance committee um just you know two years ago um and uh you know she was a you know i would just ask you you know um before we say the responsibility statement we'll take a moment of silence um you know suzanne s left behind a son and daughter she was 45 years sober came in at 20. she said when she walked in the doors of aa one night a biker that she was scared of said you'll be okay little girl she doesn't even know his name or who he is but says that that little statement from that guy walking in the meeting like helped her stay one more day going to AA. And as you think about a moment of silence for her two kids, I'll pass on something her daughter said at her funeral. Her daughter was talking to the individual groups of people like in her mother's life, her work friends, her neighborhood friends, and her AA friends. And she said to the AA community, not only were you my mother's largest community but the most important one to our family and the community that gave me a mother so with that we'll have a moment of silence and then close with the responsibility statement i am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out for help i want the hand of a always to be there and for that i am responsible jimmy thanks again good seeing you thank you sir i'll see you soon yes all right yeah definitely don't say billy and jimny said this yeah either or both yeah how about george and stan would be better i heard from george or stan yeah are you in florida no i'm at my house in jersey i have some meetings in new york for work so all right okay take care all right man see you later thank you very much