AA World Services and the Grapevine – 2025 AA Service Workshop – Part 3 of 27 – Billy N.

good evening everyone i'm billy i'm an alcoholic welcome everyone um we are going to do the chapter on aws and the a grapevine tonight and then i think next week we'll do the glossary of the general service terms and maybe get to the third legacy procedure which is like appendixes a through g um but we'll see um i'll probably ask for questions after each appendix because each is such a separate issue and there are some of those appendixes that really have a lot of great information i'm a big fan of how they broke out the maps how they broke out the picture how they break out the meeting formats the principle of rotation changing delegate boundary areas third legacy procedure the group change form i'm going to try to get through all of them because then we're definitely going to need a week for the original conference charter and the current conference charter um so just throwing that out there um we will open this up at the serenity prayer god grant me the serendipity to accept the things i cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to another difference now as far as the service manual is put together you have any suggestions send them to the report and charter committee or to aws publishing um you could just send them to the general service office and eventually they'll reach it's the report in charter committee that has jurisdiction over the service manual from a conference level from a tweaking editorial format change that belongs to awas through their publishing committee through their publishing department but there is a lot of confusing things around i used to be able to say the aa grapevine is the a grapevine but the general service office isn't a confusing term when it comes to a world services but But Lavinia, although administered by the Grapevine, is paid for by the General Service Board, which has a combined budget with General Service board and AWS. So like I said at the beginning of this, apparently when it comes to the service manual, there is no such thing as the slogan keep it simple or our legal structure or how we do business. there's a lot of nuances to it but before i talk about aws and the grapevine i'm going to try to slowly just from a hundred thousand feet go through those different entities so i'm gonna start at the budget level we have three corporations and two budgets the three corporations are the general service board of alcoholics anonymous inc they are a corporation aa world services inc they are cooperation and the aa grapevine inc they are a cooperation so three corporations lavinia is not a corporation the general service office or gso is not a corporation general service board inc a world services inc a grapevine there are two budgets aws and the general services board have a combined budget that's one budget document a grapevine has its own budget document now where is it a little confusing and without taking a microscope out trying to give you a little information so that you have a basic premise is what we call the GSO budget internally. That's the lingo, the director's throw around is the budget for the General Service Board Inc and AA World Services Inc. The reason that is one budget is because contributions come into the General service board. literature payments come into a world services the trustees move some of their money over to a world Services Inc throughout the year to fund the services that the fellowship needs because those employees work for a World Services Inc I know I get some people they'll go down a google rabbit hole they'll get to guide star or some other place and they'll see our tax returns the tax returns the i-90s can be confusing because each corporation files its own tax return even though a world services and general service board have one budget And I'll say right now, only two of the three corporations have employees. AA World Services Inc. and AA Grade Planning. That's from a legal perspective. If you looked at the, some of you are familiar. If you are not, companies, partnerships, LLCs, corporations, instead of having a Social Security number, have an FEIN number, a Federal Employment Identification Number. That's an FEI-N. Every employee that works for us is either on the FEI N of AA World Services, Inc., or AA Grapevine, Inc. not General Service Board Inc. However, if you go down such a Google rabbit hole and wind up getting a copy of one of our I-90s, you might see on the General Service Board Inc., because it's a question, who are your top five paid employees? So from an accounting accrual perspective, we do apply a cost for the general manager, the services director, and a couple of other people on the General Service Board tax return. That's just from a tax perspective or a no-tax perspective if you want to say that as a non-profit. If the employee were to file a workers' comp or an unemployment claim, it would go to the tax id number for aws now the grapevine has its own employees lavinia employees are grapevine employees on the grapefine fein they report to the grapevine uh management the editor of lavinio reports to the executive editor publisher of the grape Fine, who then reports to the Grapefine board. However, the Lavinia shortfall, meaning the difference between the amount they get in subscriptions and the cost to put out Lavinian goes to the General Service Board. That's a conference advisory action it is funded as a service to the fellowship now that's complicated from a budget perspective so what that really means is and i'm just going to use 300 000 as an example let's say in the budget planning lavinia is planned to lose three hundred thousand dollars That means that the General Service Board is going to have to kick in $300,000 to Grapevine. How that looks from a budget perspective is the AAWS budget is put together. What's the cost for AWS and the General Services Board? however bottom of the line we have a three hundred thousand dollar cash offset that is going to get transferred over to a grapevine to pay for the shortfall in lavinia so an easy way to think about that is let's say aws and and the general service board decided to have a break-even budget let's just said they were gonna be ten dollars expense revenue over expenses that means their budget would really have to be positive three hundred thousand and ten dollars because they have 300 000 that has to fund the lavinia shortfall so when people say Today, do group contributions pay for Lavinia? Absolutely. Does the cost of literature going up and down, is it impacted by Lavinya? Absolutely, I'm just giving you the budget facts. Somewhere in their budget, AWS and the General Service Board have to fine that $300,000. dollars. If AWS and the General Service Board made zero dollars, they would have to find $300,000 from the reserve fund. So it is a budget offset. However, the employees report to the grapevine. um so let's talk about a world services is the corporate board that oversees the operations under the aws corporation that is everything except the grapevine and lavinia that's the easiest way to say it what is it it's everything and the kitchen sink except lavinia and the grapevine now if you divided it into two easy costs it's services and publishing um from an aws perspective those are the two major operations And the AWS board, those nine members have a couple of committees that they can oversee things with. But it's a huge operation. That's why the AWS Board meets eight times a year, not four like the General Service Board. And those meetings are one day and all day and sometimes part of the night. the committees meet in the morning officially but everybody goes you just don't vote if you're not on that committee and then in the afternoon the aws board has its technical board meeting um all of the staff members meaning i'm not a big fan of the term staff with a capital s that's kind of a very 1960s term because i don't believe that the staff who are not alcoholic are any less important than the staff, who are alcoholic they're just everybody is a staff member some of the employees have to be a recovered alcoholic or if they like maybe they're recovering alcoholic on the gso application it doesn't ask you to divide which side of the debate you're on in the fellowship uh either is acceptable you just need to be sober for a period of time um but about 12 to 14 staff members have to be alcoholic the general manager does as the director of staff services does. All the staff desk positions have to be alcoholic, and meaning alcoholic, sober, in recovery. And then the other 70 or 80 employees, we don't care what they are. They could be alcoholic-sober, alcoholic-drinking, none of the above none of our business there they do not have a requirement to be a sober member of alcoholics anonymous to be staff member all of those people eventually report to the general manager through their chain of command inside their department the general manger has a bunch of department heads that work for him that's a aws's job and probably the hardest thing to like you know for new board members to learn not only in aa but probably on every non-profit board is the board acts like it has one employee their executive that's who they're responsible for that's who they hold accountable for the effective operation of the corporation. The people who work for the general manager are the general managers business. Now, that doesn't mean somebody can't pick up the phone and call a staff member here or there. But it does mean that a board member does not get in the middle of like giving opposite direction than the general manger. it also should mean that the board members are not involved in discipline of the if it's required of any of the staff it does mean that they don't take corrective action it means that if they have a concern with the office or the staff they should bring it to the general manager and not micromanage the general manager's ability to operate the office. The book goes into detail of the different assignments and everything. What I would tell you is just on the grapevine side, it's the same as the executive editor. and then there is um the senior editor there's the editor of the grape of the of lavinia the grapevine has what they call a operations manager who kind of oversees all their back of the house operations their outside subscription vendor their vendor for taking online digital subscription requests that is all done by the operations manager and the grapevine has its own controller um it's funny because somebody sent me a note before i even asked for questions there is a lot of information about the grape vine and the split with AWS in concept 11. What I would be careful with is that, as you know, there's been a couple of conference agenda items the last couple of years because some people don't like that the narrative that's in there is from 1961, basically. So it might not match what happens today. i am not saying i am against changing the concept or that i should be clear on that the narratives do not require 75 approval of the fellowship the concepts require 75 percent approval for the fellowship to change the conference through the report and charter committee could change the narrative and has they used to be two paragraphs by and i say this it's a laugh so i don't cry um and it's dated for sure but there used to be a special two paragraphs in concept 11 about the danger of female employees right the paragraph started out by saying and now about the woman problem that's how it started that was the first sentence right could you imagine if it said and now about the irish problem or now about the gay problem or now about the black problem or now about i mean it's just hard to even realize and believe me there were some people who didn't want those paragraphs gone but if you ever hear the conversation around the changing of concept 11 i want to tell you what really drove it because i was the chair nominating at the time it was not any kind of thing that it was offending i'm sure it did offend but the impetus to change it was a lot of letters from a lot of females in aa who said hey what's what's up with this what really pushed us to change is that we need good quality class a trustees non-alcoholic we need the best and the brightest and one of the things we do to every non-alcoholic who is puts their resume in to be a class a trustee is if they're selected to be interviewed we send them a service manual and we started hearing from a lot of people male and female like is this our welcome to the prospective female class a trustee like is this the organization that we believe we are today um that was the real impetus to change that um so inside concept 11 those two paragraphs were removed but still inside concept11 today is lots of sentences that don't apply today i actually love one the one that says uh the most important trustees committee is the uh general policy committee that's what it says the most important i always say that's the perfect example of change being okay in aa because in 1971 they got rid of what they considered in 61 the most important trustees committee so there are certain things in in that writing in the narratives that over the years are not if you if you read that if you read concept 11 which we will go through the concepts after we go through service manual which will probably be sometime in December to start but if you the service manual, the concepts there is like a hundred foot brick wall between aws and the grapevine like almost like an old-fashioned berlin checkpoint charlie like never should the two play together in the same sandbox they shouldn't share accounting resources they shouldn't share computer resources they should it should be totally self-sufficient and obviously when you look at the finances that it costs today to run these two corporations over the last 20 years there's been some practical sensible let's work together when we can work together still honor each other's individual autonomy but if there are things that we can do together then by all means let's do them together um i'll give you a perfect example or two which is really when you think about it the first is the literature catalog that aaws puts out do you know that up until about 2010 or 11 it never even mentioned the grapevine not even like on the back page nothing and today thank god they mention the grapevine in their books and a subscription but i'll give you a better example we all just went to an international convention now i don't have the analytics yet on registration for this year and detroit didn't happen but i know the analytics on 2015 atlanta and 2010 san antonio and when you think about those 2005 had mail-in registration toronto 2010 had electronic or mail-in over 90 of the people that went to san antonio pre-registered electronically now i know some of you went to the international convention and i know when you registered you had to tell them your name even your last name you had tell them your address you had to give them a form of payment and you had a check a box would you like the aws souvenir book or would you liked the grapevine souvenir official souvenir for this year do you know that even in 2010 we wouldn't ask people who already gave their name and payment method would you like a grapevine subscription if you want to know the greatest amount in any six-month period of grapevine increases and subscriptions it was the six months leading up to the 2015 international convention because finally that question was put on the form would you like a grapevine subscription but i'm just telling you that inside those concept narratives are a very kind of old way of thinking that we can never do anything together and cooperate together um so on one hand i of course encourage anyone to study and read the concepts and the narrative in concept 11 but to also apply a 2025 lens to what you're reading um I guess maybe there will be some changes and we'll have some footnotes, but it is one of this. Now, a common question we get about both corporations is if there is a grapevine conference committee, why is there not an AWS conference committee? i've heard that question many many times and it's a pretty simple answer everything that the great that that aws would do that requires conference approval there is a corresponding trustees committee there's a public information committee there's a corrections committee there's a treatment committee there is a group services committee the grapevine doesn't have that luxury the grape vine there's no trustees committee that deals with the grapevines because the grapevine has its own board and so on the aaws side even though aaws employs the people who do the work and publishes it and prints it and delivers it and puts it in a warehouse on the aaws side there's a trustees committee as an intermediary that has a corresponding conference committee on the grapevine side there is not that now the grapevine conference committee does not approve the articles that are published in the grapevine they'd have to meet the conference would have to me every month six times a year the grapefine is approved by the conference as being our monthly meeting in print our journal so the concept of the grape vine is conference approved the articles are selected by the editors so the articles themselves are non-conference approved but the grapevine magazine itself is um grapevine books are not conference approved because every grapevine book is no original material they are all made up of articles that was submitted to the grapevine or published in grapevine obviously the best of the grapefine books are exactly what their title is the best of the great fine special monthly uh additions they do sometimes whether it's sober and travel lbgtq faith non-faith non-believers those all come from articles that were published in the grapevine now something else you might notice if you are really into all this stuff is you might open up the big book one day and you might start at page one with a sponsee the blank page and you might go page by page and you'll notice the copyright page that says some or most of these stories the copyright is owned by a world services Inc. However, some of the stories and it'll tell you which ones the copyright is owned by the grapevine because it was published in the grapevine and if you submit a story to the grapevine and they like it and want to publish it they will make you sign the copyright and ownership over to the grapefine corporation and the titles of the grape vine stories or articles probably the most famous one we can deal with in today's fourth edition is called acceptance as the answer now i know there are some third edition variety alcoholics on this call if you were a third edition alcoholic that story was called dr addict alcoholic now there are some people who hate that they change the name some people that love to change the name but every once in a while i see somebody write somewhere or say something like i like the original name dr alcoholic addict better that's not the original name i hate to disappoint everyone the grapevine article was titled golden moccasins that story first appeared in the grapevine so um it's just another place where they intersect um now it's interesting from a budget or a revenue perspective because for sure people are concerned about the losses in the great fine over the last 10 years or so the losses at lavinia but i can tell you um i'm not saying those losses are okay by no means anyone who knows me knows i don't think so but i also have to be fair when i used to have my aaws board member hat on that we haven't always been fair with the grapevine if we publish a book where they own some of the stories well in the regular world they would get some of income i mean i'm just throwing something out there that in the rest of the regular world if we use a couple of their stories you don't get to use them for free um there's all kinds of things with that um the preamble is owned by the grapevine that appears in a lot of our literature so this kind of hundred foot wall what i could tell you is the financial implications are not the worst we're not the worse part of it the worst part of it was creating almost two cultures inside the same spiritual organization um you know and i give past chairperson ward ewing a lot of credit for in 2009 starting the first aws grapevine special committee to find places where we could work together and act like we're on the same team you know a lot as you know the world series was just over but you know athletic uniforms are a good symbolism of tradition one meaning that as tommy lesauder once said the name on the back is not really that important it's the team you play for on the front that is important the name on the back is secondary which is kind of like aws and the grapevine we all spiritually report to the general service board of alcoholics anonymous the 21 trustees that the conference holds as the guardians of the tradition the safe keepers of contributions it's it's really interesting in relation to aws and the grapevine tradition 9 is all about aws and the great fun the long form the trustees are the receivers of the voluntary contributions so the money doesn't just go to gso it goes to the trustees and they are the elected representatives of the fellowship whose job it is to watch that money and to make sure it's being spent correctly by AWS. And then it goes on to say, because sometimes you go to a grapevine thing or a forum and people say well the editors have the ultimate authority for grapevine stories that's 99.9 of the time true but the long form of tradition 9 has a check and balance there the trustees are responsible for the integrity of the grapevine that's the trustee's responsibility financial integrity spiritual integrity there's also a little thing at the end of concept nine that probably in the last couple years when we've had a let's just say a few differences of opinion in the fellowship on a couple of different issues plain language big book preamble resignation of a board chair there's such an important line in the long form of concept 9 about mutual trust mutual trust and i always spell that out when i hear trusted servants say trust the process it's not only the responsibility of the fellowship to trust their trusted servants the long form of tradition nine makes it the responsibility of those trusted servants to have as much mutual trust for the fellowship um sometimes i wish that line was in one of the concepts because it's such an important thing at the end of the day that trust is a two-way street. And if it's broken on either side, it affects the other. Obviously, the website is a big part of both organizations today, AWS and The Grapevine. Now, it's interesting to know that when the website was first created the aws website aa.org it was only to be used as a pi tool public information if you get a hold of an old service manual go to the section on the website it's kind comical if you would bring up using the website to like help the fellowship or groups or anyone else people say oh no it's just a pi tool now on the aa grapevine side you have the grapevine website and today you have the app and the podcast um but as technology builds and we don't even know it'll exist in 10 years we didn't know what we have now would exist 20 years ago so a lot of our guidelines are not written to kind of embrace new technology we have to apply the traditions and the concepts and the steps to anything new like this but because we have two organizations we have to be careful they don't cannibalize each other like what is the purpose of the a.org website and what is the purpose of the grapevine website um and then we have meeting guide app which that is now owned by a world services Inc. And now they put news on there and other things. We actually have a director of it. We didn't need a director of it in 1995. And, you know, if you ask yourself, or if someone asks you like, why was a so behind in technology it's a simple answer the people who are voting on technology between 1995 and 2010 the majority of them did not use the technology they were voting on that's a huge problem if if the people who are voting and have the authority aren't using that technology then they don't know its benefit they don't know they don t use it day to day today we're in a much different situation today technology is used by people of all ages of all socio-economic groups but i would mention this you know if you are reading the individual lists of what does each corporation publish um you know the one thing about a website is you can only put so much on the home page i don't care what company you are you can't put everything everything won't fit on one web page so it's linked to branch as you need more information you click and you click and you click and you click the problem with that is it's not all on the home page so as much as I am so pro technology I also know that at a basic level at the AA group level we've lost some you know while we don't do promotion outside of AA It's okay to promote AA inside AA, but one page on each website or the landing page on Meeting Guide app, there's only so much you can promote to other members of AA in that restricted space. i know people who became trustees because they saw a box 459 and picked it up and read it while getting a cup of coffee in the meeting i know i know people who learned about archives because they picked up a markings on the journey on a literature table i know people who learned about um public information work because they read one of the public information newsletters so i'm super pro technology but i also know that there's power in something on our literature table especially if it forces someone to see it if if to get to box 459 i have to click three or four times on a website the power of seeing it right on a table you know when i was a gsr which i know is a lot of years ago when i as a delegate was a lot of years ago but i would get 10 box 459 sent to me to put out at my group today gsrs don't even get one box four or five nine and so have we talked about like i even think reading the service manual each year as it changes know should we be talking about printing out some things to put on our literature tables like is that a missing piece in the technology side of both aws and the grapevine about suggesting that there are certain things you might want to put out there the other thing i want to throw out there especially about the aa.org website because the grapefine has only grapevine material on it, so it's a little easier to navigate. Whether it's an area or a district, I just want to throw out there, during the pandemic, I saw two online workshops that I thought were awesome. I saw a lot of workshops during the pandemic that were great but the two that caught my attention was just one district and one area who had separate workshops and all it was was somebody who really knew the aa.org website taking other people through it about how to easily find certain information and where is certain information in the search bar and I thought it was so super helpful this one young kid did one that was so amazing um because if you just tell someone to go to aa.org i don't know if that's really a helpful way and so i think about reading the service manual today and i tell all you a lot of area assemblies and other area events have event have sessions called like gsr bootcamp or dcm boot camp or welcome orientation for first timers or something like that and i wonder how come we don't see a.org a grapevine.org helpful sessions about about letting educating people on what they can really find on there and i got to tell you like i know people complain i have my own list but we've made so much improvements the search engine optimization has never been better yes are there people who are spending lots of money to beat us out sometimes yeah let me tell you something if i look at aaws a common question i get is about um conferences and conventions if i put aa conferences and in google i always get in the top three hits a's guidelines on conference conventions and roundups and if i click on that it's right there and then it tells me do i don't want to download the pdf that's amazing every single document basically we publish is available and by the way a little aa history just because it's getting lost now that we're becoming you know it's not 1965 anymore and it's definitely not 1995 you know uh there's no difference between a conference a convention and around up as far as the name is concerned some people think we should only have one conference the general service conference the problem with that is many aa conferences existed before we came up with the general service conference so we weren't the first i do want to talk about the roundup term term. The roundup term event initially was created by the gay and lesbian community decades before there was ever any LBGT acronym. You go back in AA history or you read some gay and lesbian history in AA, that was kind of their code word to let people know that it was gay friendly that's where roundup came from um there's a couple of good real scholarly papers about there about the history of special interest groups and alcoholics anonymous and you know that's one thing that's talked about a lot um you know the term roundup now today is not 1975 anymore so if you go into a roundup and you expect it to lb to just be lbgt it's not going to happen there's lots of events now that use the term roundup because they like the word roundup better than convention better than conference my point i'm making is we really have come light years ahead on both websites it's just for the new gsr or a new person who's never used it before we could probably do a better job of helping them navigate it and finding out ways to do that um that's it i'm going to go to questions next week we will start on the glossary of and the um exhibits um i'm not gonna tell you you have to read all the exhibits except you should read the original conference charter and the conference charter um but we won't get there for another week or two for sure um and then the bylaws of the general service board aws and the a grapevine those are worth reading as well but i'm gonna does anyone have any questions okay all right i'll give it a minute or two for people to think about their questions and send them in by chat here's a question who does the general manager report to the general manager has dual reporting to both the general service board and the aws board primarily most of the time the general manger is reporting to the awos board but the general manger does do some work directly for the general services board as well The AWS board prepares the employee evaluation of the general manager, but they get input from all the trustees as well. And then usually the way that works is the current AWS chair with the next AWS chair will sit down and give the general manager their review in kind of an intimate setting the way it would be in any other workplace? It's a good question. The grapevine executive editor or the publisher reports to the grapevine board. Okay. Should AA groups sell AA literature? Well, if they didn't, don't know who else would um yes of course yes this kind of militant approach of don't put it on the same table as the big book i don't know where any of that comes from um we should support aaa the grapevine is AA so but I don't blame you for that question because believe me I've had many people call me who say Billy is it true I can't put grapevine stuff on the same table as conference approved literature whoever just sent me this question clarify what you said that i said aa literature yeah i think all a literature should be on any aa table grapevine conference approved service approved. I do not know why we would, unless you needed two tables because you had so much, but there's definitely no rule. If the grapevine cannot accept contributions, why is it okay for the grape vine to accept money from the general service fund mainly made up of contributions? So let's talk about the general surface board reserve fund. there's actually three things mainly in their contributions excess from international conventions in the past and then any access to grapevine or aws make in a current year um but they're part of us the 21 trustees are the owners technically legally of the grapevine um that's why the reserve fund makes it up now there i'm kind of sticking up when people say group contributions aren't used to support the grapevine that's not true anymore every year we budget the grapevine to use lose money some group contributions are either coming from the aws side or out of the reserve fund that's a fact or we're going to have to raise literature prices because we're losing too much money on the grapefine side is there a legal reason the grape vine cannot accept contributions no not as far as non-profit law it's because we don't want to cannibalize from each other and our money and believe me there could be someone in this meeting tonight who has put on that grape costume and walked around an aa event and loves the grapevine and i have total respect but contributions primary purpose is to carry the message that is still sick and suffering alcoholic and that is primarily done through aws the grapevine from its beginning next week i'll make sure it's put up in the chat if you've never read the royal shepherd letter you need to in march of 1946 bill wrote a letter to royal shepherd who was the attorney who incorporated the grapevine and he set down in three pages the future of the grape vine and what it's supposed to be and not be and that it should clearly be supported by subscriptions and listen we keep changing the line in the sand in 2005 the chair the treasurer of the general service board was very concerned that too much grapevine book profit was being used to support the grapevine in other words the magazines were failing they had to keep publishing books and the general service board at that time said we should make sure it's never more than 30 it's way over 30 today way over thirty percent um but no it's so that we don't cannibalize each other that the grapevine and i love the grape vine but it's a cherry on top it's gravy for an a member. It's not the big book or the 12 and 12. And so we don't want to cannibalize from each other. So if you'd like a grapevine, you get a subscription. Can a non-AA member buy literature from aa.org yes they can who serves on the committees if you are talking about the conference committees nine delegates usually serve on each conference committee if you're serving on the if you talk about the trustees committee trustees committees have about nine people made up of trustees non-trustee directors or appointed committee members if you're talking about the corporate boards aws and the a grapevine they're made up of the directors of that corporation could you repeat the original name of acceptance as the answer story sure the golden moccasins someone just told me the grapevine's offering multi-book discounts with mixed titles yeah but the content of all those grapevine books is articles i know they're um i feel bad for how much financial trouble uh we are in at the time um if you i'll also publish next week the profit and loss from the start of the first grapevine up until last year and whether they made money or didn't make money um again i am not uh anti-grapevine i'm pro grapevine i've written i've submitted articles for the grapevine i do struggle with the current financial model i just want to give an example we'll put it in so that everyone can take it next week um but if you go from 1949 until last year the spreadsheet's very simple how much did we make or lose on the grapevine and how many subscribers were there so it's very simply you can see and you know and it doesn't include lavinia because those finances are handled by the general service board but i just want to throw out an example in 2024 the grapevine lost 851 000 in 2022 the grapefine lost 440 thousand dollars in 2021 112 000 in 2020 373 thousand dollars in 2019 44 000 and in 2018 149 000 obviously that's a lot of money but i want to point you to the period of time of 2011 to 2017 in 2011 the grapevine made 22 000 in 2012 257 000 in 2013 315 000 in 2014 325 000 in 2015 240 000 in 2016 144 000 and in 2017 126 000 and inside those years of profits declining subscriptions so i want to repeat that inside those years of profit declining subscriptions in 2011 there was 90 000 subscribers into in 2012 88 000 in 2013 82 000 in 2014 79 000 the reason i'm making that point is to make this point if the magazine is priced appropriately based on the real number of subscribers it's easy for it to be self-supporting sure we lost some subscribers between 2011 and 2018 but the subscription price was the real price to have a subscription according to a trustee at the west central regional forum that was recently in omaha the grapevine is eight dollars below what it costs to be self-supporting an annual subscription so those are just the math facts um if non-aa members can buy literature from aa how are we supported only by passing a hat so let's talk about this first of all literature revenue does not come to us the profit on literature comes to us that's only about 30 percent of our revenue but let me throw out the non kind of math version of that i'm going to guess if i asked and i did a poll which i'm not going to do but i'm gonna just assume that if i did a poll and asked everyone in this room have you ever been in an aa meeting where at least one person one time complained about treatment center language or treatment center this or treatment center that. So what, we don't want people reading our literature? We don't wanna give our book to prospective members? We don'T want pamphlets to go to prospective member locations? um none of us would be sitting here if that big book wasn't mailed out west of the mississippi to a whole bunch of different places um would we really be fulfilling our mission if we only sold our literature to sober members of alcoholics anonymous I mean, it just seems preposterous for me to even say that. Do you think nine members are needed on committees? Could they ease some workload issue by having more committees with fewer delegates and or fewer trustees? I'm so sick of this question. I've finally had it with it. i have total respect for the staff and want them to have a work-life balance like anybody else but i'm sick of hearing the current trustees complaining of workload if they want to stop traveling on the weekends to run elections for areas which is not needed or required if they want to stop going around and appearing on things like the final conference report which is part of their job like if they wanna do all those things I'm all for it but don't accept all this extra assignment and then complain about the workload. And I've never seen more activity than I have in the last two years. And I'm guessing that is because there was a big problem on the board a couple of years ago. I don't really care what side anybody here maybe thought they were on. but maybe the trustees feel that they have to be on a pr campaign and they need to be everywhere possible so that they can boost their image i'm not sure their image needs boosting people need to learn to agree to disagree and accept the group conscience but as far as workload i'm just going to tell you right now i used 150 vacation days between 2017 and 2018 to serve on the aws board in the general service board um you know maybe read a book called death by meeting which is one of my favorite books maybe the ease of having virtual meetings there are too many meetings scheduled but i would hate to decrease the size of a committee because i think the more diverse thought inside a group conscience the better that why would we have committees if everybody felt the same way and few of the people on a committee the less diverse of thought is on that committee so i'm sure i'm going to get an email about the trustee workload but i'm just reporting what i'm seeing in the fellowship why wouldn't we raise the price on the grapevine sees like seems like common sense well that question has been asked at forums and they say they don't want to lose subscribers but when i look at 2011 to 2017 we've lost some subscribers but we kept the expenses below revenue now it did get so bad in 2006 7 8 9 that in 2011 a special committee was created on the trustees finance committee called the cat the grapevine cash flow oversight committee um because there's a trick in in non-profit budgeting not a good one but it's there if i don't want the fellowship to be alarmed i just project the revenue to be more than it should and since it's easier to take money out of the reserve fund than show a bad budget to the fellowship i'll just give a skewed budget to the fellowship and six months later i'll take money from the reserve fun because less people will notice that's why the cash oversight committee was created in 2011 or 2010 um and what was the result it was created in 2010 and from 2010 to 2017 no loss on the grapevine side but what happened it's the downside of one of our traditions rotation between 2011 and 2017 those trustees and directors that were involved by then at all were all rotated and gone um so that's it i will see everybody next week we will close with the responsibility statement 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 responsible. Thank you.