General Service Board – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 2 of 27 – Billy N.

good evening everyone i'm billy i'm an alcoholic welcome monday night um i know a lot of assemblies last weekend next weekend so anyone going to assembly is wishing you the best and no election assemblies all over so wishing everyone the best on that um tonight we're gonna take up with the chair of the general service board it'll be part two of the general service board um under duties and responsibilities it says presides over the trustees meetings co-chairs the general service conference acts on behalf of the General Service Board between board meetings appoints members of trustees committees subject to GSB approval serves as an ex officio of all trustee committees participates in board meetings in the annual conference participates an all-regional forum so that's a lot what does some of it mean just dive into it a little bit um definitely anytime the trustees get together the chair is the presiding officer for sure um usually with the general manager as the other co-chair and one other cochair the delegate chairperson um those are the three co-chairs usually of the conference sometimes it's different but usually acts on behalf of the general service board between board meetings so any questions from aws or the grapevine or maybe the general manager needs some feedback or something um appoints members of trustees committees subject to general service board approval so how does that really look so here's how it really works If you're a new trustee, meaning you start service after the General Service Conference, you will be assigned to random committees based on which committees need people. That's what usually happens. And the reason for that is that up until the Wednesday of the General Service Conference we don't usually know who the new regional trustees are, right? We never know. Well, that's why I kick, but we don' t know. um if there's a trustee at large election we don't know who that's going to be and then they're the other trustees the general service trustees the class a's and everybody that was elected in previous years they're on the slate um so while we know their names and maybe they'll be approved by the conference we can work with trustee committees for them but the people who are being elected this year at the conference we don't know those names so the chair of the general service board usually does is six weeks or so before the general services conference they will send out a letter to all trustees that are going to still be on after this conference and ask them to rate rank in order of which trustee committees they want to serve on that doesn't mean you get what you ask for in my experience the chair of the board always tries to give everybody their first pick at least um but there might be needs that the chair has that are different than even my opinion back then um you never know what's going to happen i served on the trustee's finance committee for seven out of my eight years as a non-trustee director and general service trustee. There was some tough financial things going on at the time. My last two years, my last three years, I did not put finance as a top contender for me, but yet I got it. The board then gets the list from the chair and the board at the meeting after the general service conference. There is a trustees meeting, a general service board meeting. We'll approve the trust the chair's appointment to the trustee committees the chair also selects who the chair of each trustee committee is going to be that is up to the chair and that is approved by the board as well vice chairs of trustees committee are not selected by the chair of the general service board that is left up to the chair of the individual committee usually at the july meeting the chair of a trustees committee will have called somebody and said i'd like you to be the vice chair that does not mean you're going to be the chair the next year one thing about trustees committees yes some people will stay on committees for continuity but the chair almost always rotates there are a couple of committees where that's not possible the finance committee is always chaired by the treasurer of the general service board the international convention and regional i'm sorry not that committee the international committee which is separate than the international conventional and regional forums committee that goes every other year between the u.s trustee at large and the canadian trustee-at-large says the chair will serve as an officio of all ex-officio of all trustee committees the general manager does that as well so what does that really mean In my experience, the chair does not sit around usually at trustee committee meetings. The trustees sit around a conference table in a conference room. Now, unless it's an executive session of that committee, meaning confidential, any other trustees that don't have a meeting are allowed to go to that meeting. Visitors will sit on the wall outside the table. so it'll be very clear who's a voting member on the committee and who's not in my experience the general manager and the chair of the board usually always sit in the visitor section they rarely vote but they do have a vote if they wanted one they sometimes speak up but only so many meetings can be going on at so many times so that means there's overlap there's usually at least two trustee committee meetings going on at a time so usually the chair of the general service board will look at the agenda of that trustees committee and decide is it something that i really want to hear and i want to be present for or they might go to half one and half of another participate in board meetings at the annual conference meeting i can tell you honestly most of the chairs that i saw they kept their opinions to themselves and they knew their number one job was to chair the meeting. And I would tell you, as much as you want to think it's different, just like we think that a business meeting at a group should be different than a barroom discussion, and sometimes it looks very similar, I'm not going to say that trustees committees are barroom discussions, but if you think there's no difference of opinion or emotions, Emotions, I can assure you there are. Participates in all regional forums. So there's about four regional forums a year. We have eight regions for a year that chair of the general service board goes to every regional forum. It says the chair ofthe general serviceboard may be a class A or a class B. Currently we have a class b. So that means between meetings, if a request for an interview comes up that's on TV showing a full face and a name, the chair would go to one of the Class A trustees right now because they don't have anonymity problems. They serve a four-year term. The four- year term is over and above the term that they may have served as a Class A trustee up to six years and a Class B trustee up to four years what they don't say here is how the chair of the board is elected which i find interesting but the chair or the board uh must be a current or a past trustee to be considered so usually the year before the chair is rotating so we leave the conference it's the chair's third conference as chair by that july meeting the nominating desk the staff members serving the nominator committee will send a letter out to all current and past trustees and the letter has a box on it are you making your name available to be chair of the general service board do you check yes or no if you check no you just return that letter if you you check yes, you attach a service resume. From there, the trustees nominating committee will go through all the resumes received and we'll whittle it down to about maybe six or seven people they want to interview. The trustees finance, the trustee's nominating committee will interview those seven people. They will have a third legacy election after that For the top two or three contenders, their job is to present the general service board with two or three candidates, not one. After that, usually that happens in October. In January, those three candidates or two candidates are asked to come in to go for an interview in front of the full general service board all 21 or 20 other trustees after all two or three are interviewed then there is discussion before the vote but once the third legacy vote starts discussion is over and they must reach conclusion by third legacy vote meaning somebody must get two-thirds or else just like at your area elections they will come out of the hat that's how the chair of the general service board is elected what are trustee emeriti it used to not be even in the service manual not until about 10 years ago 11 years ago trustee ameritai are usually always have been but there could be a chance um uh It says here, the General Service Board is designated board chairs who are rotated off the board as trustee emeriti. There is some talk, maybe it should be any past trustee, but right now it's chairs. If you are designated a trustee ameriti, which takes a vote of the board, then you get to attend board weekends and you get the chance to attend the general service conference. You are not a voting member. So that means at board weekend, you can attend committee meetings as a visitor, as a guest. You can attend the General Service Board meetings as a visitor. You can speak. You have a voice, but you have no vote. Now, if there is an executive session, meaning confidential, called of any committee or of general service board itself or the sunday afternoon sharing session which sometimes goes into executive session there needs to be a motion to allow those non-voting members to be present sometimes that happens sometimes it doesn't um we have some amazing trustee emeriti that does not mean that myself or other trustees have not agreed with them but their job is really to bring institutional history to the board like why has the board always done something this way why did the board reach this decision 10 years ago um and sometimes they can be extremely useful they are not supposed to be puppet masters they're not supposed to be behind the scenes trying to fix managing control what goes on um they're simply supposed to be there to provide some institutional history so i think with that i'm just going to take questions on the chair of the general service board section before i move on are there any questions about that about this position if you have a question please send it into the chat I am seeing no questions, so I'm going to move on to trustee committees. Do emeriti get their travel attendance covered by the body? Yes they do. Yep for the four for the three quarterly board meetings and the general service conference there uh travel is covered. Any other questions before I move on? Okay. General service board committees, which we often refer to as trustee committees. First one is archives. Second one is cooperation with the professional community treatment and accessibilities. I think those are pretty simple. Archives deals with archives. professional community and accessibility deals with those two things um corrections deals with everything corrections related finance and budgetary they deal they are the watchers for the general service board finance committee is the first place you have to go to if you want to take money from the reserve fund so if aa world services or the grapevine board needs money from the reserve fund they must go to the trustees finance committee um they also look over the budgets remember there are two budgets one for grapevine and the other one is combined general service board and a world services but usually in november or october whenever the board weekend is a lot of times it's halloween weekend or week um usually grapevine and aws will send over their first kind of what we would call a pencil draft budget just the first take let everybody take a look at what we're thinking about for next year give some feedback to each corporation in january the final budget usually comes it's a couple weeks after the start of the year but the final budget comes final budgets and that's where the budget is approved and then sent to the general service board for their approval the money from the reserve fund if the finance committee decides that a request is valid and they think it's worth taking money out of the reserve they will pass a recommendation and vote and if the vote is in favor then that request will go to the full general service board only the full general service ford except for emergency urgent issues can authorize release of any reserve fund money the general service conference committee um i see a question just came in i'm just going to see what it is if i should answer it now do you have any thoughts if we want to be providing conference literature to patients in in-profit facilities in for-profit facilities yeah of course I'm like any other AA member I have an opinion intergroups and areas and districts should do the best they can obviously it's a for- profit facility you have to way very you know where do you want those books to go i'm not a big person who complains about our books going to facilities um that's separate from who pays for it only because i hear the rest of aa complaining about all that treatment center nonsense that's coming into our rooms well if we want people exposed to aa well then we have to get them some of our literature there's plenty outside organizations that pay are there places that are really for people who have nowhere to go sure is that money well spent if your area or in a group has the money to do that or your district of course it's money well-spent the general service conference committee works on procedures agenda and theme for the annual general service conference meeting the theme they send a list usually to the conference committee on agenda and let them decide the final consider distribution of workloads among conference members consider innovating leading to more effective communication between conference members so the equitable distribution of work or what we call edw that started a couple years ago that was because committees like literature and public information had way more agenda items than other committees so what was decided is if a new agenda item came in and it needed to go to the conference that it could go to any conference because the delegates are assigned randomly to the committees and so it can be assigned to any committee once a committee starts working on an item it stays with that committee though so if literature or let's say corrections got an item and from literature this year and they started working on it next year it would go back to the corrections committee um they deal with the schedule of the conference they deal with where the conference should be they deal with the dates of the confidence everything general service conference related uh in a rare um instance sometimes no one can decide what trustees committee something sent into the board should go to whether it's an agenda item for the conference or not if it's a gender item for the conference the conference trustees committee will decide what committee will get it international um and by the way each of these has a corresponding conference committee corrections corrections finance finance general service conference committee is their their their trust the general service trustees committee their corresponding committee is the conference agenda committee the international committee does not have corresponding conference community it suggests ways to carry the message internationally particularly in countries where there is no established service structure they provide shared experience support translation of a literature into the languages and encourage the expansion of regional or zonal meetings they're the primary link between the international aa community and the u.s canada general service board and like i said the two trustees at large the one from the united states and the one from canada always serve on the international committee and they take turns chairing it international conventions regional forums committee this like archives is a secondary is a primary committee unlike the conference so archives is its own trustees committee international conventions region forum is its own trustees' committee the trustees do not have primary and secondary committees they might every once in a while establish a special or ad hoc committee to deal with the project but uh the archives committee is the secondary committee for the conference because it doesn't get a lot of agenda items and so is the international convention and regional forums committee that means that nine delegates that serve on each committee also serve on a primary committee the international regional forums committee develops plans for the forthcoming international convention and all regional forums and accesses the effectiveness of these events and suggests future modifications to better serve the fellowship literature their corresponding committee is obviously the conference committee on literature it is a very very large agenda usually they respond to requests to explore the need for new items review existing items to determine the need revisions or discontinuance develop new and revised conference approved literature oversee the annual updates in our revisions of the a service manual 12 concepts world service recommended by the general service conference i see a question came in is there a number cap that they reached then decide to go to edw i don't think there's a number cap in writing per se but they do look at the totality of the agenda obviously there might be an item or two on a committee's agenda that could take up a lot of time like the plain language big book like the fifth edition of the big book the preamble change when it went to the grapevine conference committee um let's see nominating trustees nominating committee corresponding conference committee is the conference committee on trustees let me just see what this other question is what process takes place to withdraw from the general service fund and i think you mean the general fund of the general service board that's the fund that contributions come into um the trustees finance committee gives the cfo of gso some latitude to move money to aaws as it's needed um if other money is needed that request would come to the general to the trustees finance committee the nominating committee reviews procedures for the selections of candidates we have a procedure for everything procedure number seven procedure number 14 procedure number two every election we hold or every position we select has a procedure from the nominative committee review for approval all non-trustee director candidates from a world services and aa grapevine why is that if they're not a member of the general service board that is because the general service board officially elects those people to be a director on those corporations so aws and a grapevine will search for their own non-trustee directors but once they select somebody it has to go to the trustees nominating committee general service trustees also must be approved um by the trustees nominating committee because they're obviously going to serve on the general service board for four years so aws and a grapevine when they put a name forward to be a general service trustee one of their past or current non-trustee directors the trustees dominating committee must approve that it says they serve as part of the conference sessions that select regional trustees and trustees at large yes for area election for regional trustee elections the voters are an equal number and what's it equal to the areas in that region so if you had 14 area delegates voting for a regional truste then 14 members of the trustees nominating committee and the conference committee on trustees. Now, I use 14 as my example because that's easy. Seven from trustees nominating, seven from the conference committee on trustees. How do they pick them? Out of the hat right there at the election. Put all the names of each committee into a hat and pick those seven out what about if it was 15 so now we can't have seven and a half members of each committee so the conference always defers to the conference delegates so in that situation seven would be from trustees nominating and eight would be from the Conference Committee on Trustees. The Board always steps aside and lets the conference area delegates have the one greater number. Public information, the corresponding committee is obviously public information. Provide oversight for the development of policies and projects related to public information activities. Implement pending advisory actions of the General Service Conference related to public information, create greater public understanding of the AA fellowship by carrying the message through public media, electronic media, public information meetings, speaking to community groups, films, radio and television public service announcements. They do public information work. I saw a question come in. It's a good one. I thought the service manual updates were dealt with by the report and charter committee, not the literature committee. remember i'm reading here the duties of the trustees committee when we get to report and charter you will see um that they do not have a corresponding trustees committee because that's a conference committee so since publishing works with report and shorter on the new service manual those anything that has to be dealt with by a trustees committee comes to the trustees literature committee because the service manual is conference proof literature so it's kind of a little confusing there but an excellent excellent question audit trustees audit committee i served on this for six years no corresponding conference committee they meet at least once a year with the independent auditor to receive the audit reports and discuss the adequacy of internal controls, the independence of the auditor, and any other matter that the auditor wishes to bring to the attention of the general service for the committee. Annually recommend the selection of an independent auditor to the General Service Board so every, the audit committee always meets during the conference. They will make a recommendation whether we should stick with the auditor maybe have an RFP process like the new auditor uh that gets presented to the general service board at the meeting after the general services conference compensation committee no corresponding conference committee they meet annually with compensation consultants to assure that the compensation practices of the affiliate corporations are appropriate matters covered include all overall compensation philosophies and policy annual salary increases best compensation practices and executive compensation actual compensation decisions are made by the boards either aa grapevine or a world services so we try to make sure that we are paying our people appropriately how this looks is usually about once every two or three years we do all the executives and directors and about once every four or five years we do all the other employees and we want to make sure for each skill set each job description are we paying the irs looks at it in the upper or lower percentile are we overpaying our ceo or are we underpaying and always every year i was on this committee we were always right where we were supposed to be not underpaying not overpaying legal affairs no corresponding conference committee meet when needed to over oversee the handling of any legal matters that require the attention of the board so a lot of a lot what this happens is if there is a significant legal issue the board will appoint a legal affairs committee so that in between board meetings if day-to-day decisions need to be made and the lawyers for us need feedback this small committee can handle them if it's a large policy decision or like a settlement whether we're suing somebody or somebody's suing us or arbitration or god knows what else those would go to the full board employee retirement no corresponding conference committee act as the plan administrator of the employee retirement plan establish and adopt an investment policy defined by specific objectives and guidelines with respect to the fund in consultation with the board's investment advisors and one thing to remember now is we really have two kinds of retirement committees now inside the retirement committee because we have two programs we have what is called a defined benefit program that is for any employee hired prior to january the 1st of 2013 they are on the old traditional pension program where they get a pension check from gso the other type of retirement is a defined contribution plan so this is more like a 401k except with a couple of differences number one it's called a 403b that's what most government and non-profits use this is where an employee can take money out of their check and they can direct the percentage that is given to uh the fund administrator that is then invested now on top of that to replace the pension we give i want to say five percent of an employee's salary that goes into their defined contribution plan the benefit of that is that we're not promising to pay something later on We're taking the money this year and putting it in the employee's account this year. And there's a vesting period, I'm sure it's somewhere between three and five years now, that the 5% we give, if you leave after a year, you don't get to take it. But if you're there for a couple of years, it's yours. But we're more in line with what most other organizations do now. I see a question, so I'm just going to go to that. is the order selected an alcoholic or at least familiar with aa or is it better if they are more objective and know nothing of the substance of what we do it's a really good question so number one we don't care if they're a member of aa and that's not even in the question and it's really an audit firm we just call it the auditor we go out looking for really good audit firms like any other organization they have to learn something about aa because we're different than every other organization we don't take donations we only take contributions we only take contributions from our members we're self-supporting we don'T take things for free so it takes people to grasp those ideals the other thing that's different about us is that i'll use myself as an example right now i'm the chair of a board of a large non-profit that's not aa if we're having a money problem it's easy for me to call somebody at the office and say you know what, send me the list of our top 20 donors last year. And I can put their names on a list and take a couple of nights and call them all, let them know what's going on and let them know that we need some money. We don't deal with individual donors and we cap what people can give so that's very different um i think one of the things people forget about the reserve fund when we're talking about auditors because i know that's why this question came up is because our auditors said the reserve fund being low is not like other organs we're just like other organizations we have some differences so on one hand i would i would suggest caution that we can't fundraise like other people can so the announcement lately is that the reserve fund is predicted to be down to 5.1 months by the end of the year lower than it's ever been in a long long time but even though i want it to be back over nine months make sure when you're talking about it that you're really talking about what that is that's five months at zero money coming in okay if something happened in the world and our contributions went down by 50 we have 10 months if we're only funding half of our monthly needs if they went down 20 percent we're only you know i think you get my point it's five months if there was zero dollars coming in i'm not suggesting that it shouldn't be nine to twelve i'm just making sure people understand that the general sharing session this is not really a trustees committee it's a meeting after the saturday afternoon lunch at board meeting there is a trustee who is selected to share it that trustee will select usually two people to present sometimes three on a current hot topic in aa and then once they give their like 10-minute presentations then the rest of the people from the board and all three boards and staff can share on their thoughts on those presentations there's a note here on appointed committee members what is an appointed committee member we have all these things ntd non-trustee director but you have to remember non-Trustee directors have a vote on one of the corporate boards they're a director on AWS so great fun They also have a vote at the General Service Conference. They also are put on three or so trustee committees. Appointed committee members are different. They're AA members who only serve on one trustees committee, committees that have a lot of work usually, PI, literature, sometimes CPC accessibilities. appointed committee members announcements go out to the fellowship that the delegates in box 459 saying that a committee is looking for what we call an acm an appointed committee member and they get resumes but they keep it at the committee level the staff member and the chair of that trustees committee will go through the resumes with the committee and they will decide who they want to interview usually on zoom they'll interview a couple of people and then they'll use third legacy procedure and decide who there will be their new acm acms can serve one to four years if the project is done then we usually don't keep the acm usually they're brought on because there is a big project going on on one of those trustee committees. ACMs have a full vote and voice at that committee level. That's important to know they are not a guest or a visitor at that trustees committee meeting. They're an actual voting member. They cannot chair that trustees community because they're not a member of the board and neither can non-trustee directors. Only trustees can chair a trustees committee. they could chair a subcommittee that's up to that committee they go to the general service conference but only to the joint meeting at the start of the conference between their committee and the conference committee they do not get to attend the full week they are not voting members of the general service conference um let's see i'm going to see if there's any questions there are quite a few is there a number cap no i already read that one uh legal affairs does not exist in the new service manual that does not surprise me only because it doesn't always exist usually it needs to exist when there's a hot topic we're all talking about copyrights trademarks the manuscript litigation the uh lawsuit against aa for the woman who was killed by somebody she met at an aa meeting um Um, so it's kind of good news that there's no current legal affairs committee actually. Could you give an example of a normal or routine legal matter that would take place beyond sued being sued that creates additional expenses? Yeah. i mean there could be an employee who makes a claim against us that could be an employee who is terminated who says they were improperly terminated and goes to maybe the eeoc the equal opportunity uh commission um or some other in canada the ontario division of human rights um so there could be expenses that way there could be copyright or trademark infringements and they might not be lawsuits yet but one may bubble up as being really important um and so the board may ask outside counsel maybe we have an intellectual property person at the office it's part of their job and so if somebody is doing something they shouldn't be doing we write them a letter and say cease and desist if they don't listen to the letter we send them another letter and you know listen a lot of these people are writing are alcoholics so we all know how good we are with letters we get in the mail we we know how that goes um but companies sometimes just avoid it and then the board needs to make a decision do are we just going to let this go away or are we going to get outside counsel involved and are we gonna have a lawyer send a letter so all kinds of things like that will bring costs up well involve costs isn't there a retired medical benefits fund yes there is it still exists it's very overfunded at the moment it was originally created um in the early 90s as you all know um you only become eligible in the united states for government health benefits when you're 65 years old or disabled so what would happen to our employees who retired earlier than 65. um they would have to pay for medical coverage so there is a sliding scale we have a policy where we will provide our health insurance to our retired employees depending on how many years you worked is how the sliding scale works do you get 50 percent you get 80 percent um but we use this retired employee medical plan to pay for the uh medical benefits of employees and a lot of that is for prior to 2013 employees who are hired who there's different rules now today but last i looked it's overfunded which doesn't surprise me because less and less people are taking advantage of this benefit Any other questions. Okay, so what I'm going to do, because it's 910. And because elections are all over and because we're deep into assembly season. We will take 10 minutes of questions about anything in general service as long as it's not crazy confidential or controversial or something that was a conference topic or not but if you have a question about general service elections coming up positions area stuff district stuff now is a good time to ask so i'm going to open it up for any general service questions that anyone we may have because then that way next week we can do the board's operating boards it would be crazy to start in the middle tonight so please send in any questions well here's a question you have to be a GSR to be a delegate so that's a great question unfortunately I have to give the standard answer of you need to check with your area and their guidelines for electing people i know people who are never a gsr or a dcm who have been a delegate i'm not saying that that's what should happen i'm just saying i know a lot of areas have rules that you have to have been at dcm to be elected an area officer um and most areas you have the right to be a gsm GSR before you're a DCM. But that is a good question. Next question, is it realistic for a general service manager to be able to have the duties and responsibilities that were established in 1951 in our current year of 2015-2025? Our growth is so different now. Well, I don't think it has to do with the general manager, I think it has to do with every position in AA. Every position in a every organization should always be looking to improve. I mean, I'm sure at one time there were job descriptions at GSO that talked about measuring stamps, or the weight of an envelope, or things like that. But the world changes and a service changes and every position should be looked at. I noticed that the service desks just rotated. Why do they rotate at this time of year? Is that to give them a head start on their new position before the new panel switch at the end of the year. So it doesn't really have to do with the delegates changing panels. It really has to do what this after the General Service Conference is over, there's a list of advisory actions from that conference agenda. The employees who are on that desk deal with bringing those agenda items or those those advisory actions to the trustees committees in july and say this is your marching orders from the conference this is what they say you have to do so it's better for continuity that it's the person who was before that last conference who's dealing with the results and the advisory actions once that july meeting is over they start a transition and they actually listen we always love to throw rocks at gso but let me tell you there are certain things i was just talking about it on a local call that i was on there are certainly things gso does much better than a lot of areas or districts but especially areas is that is a rotation memo like each person rotating out prepares a memo for the new person in their position and has an executive summary with bullet points of what's really important right now and probably area delegates area chair people committee chair people in areas this is a great idea for your new chair what has been going on and really more about what's in progress it's easy to see what's been voted on that we agreed to do but what have we been talking about doing and we haven't really made a recommendation yet so gso is really good at that my district has excess money over 3 000. any ideas of how to spend that money within the district spend it on literature question mark i mean it's not really my job and the other thing is three thousand to one district could be thirty thousand to another we have some districts that are huge some districts are small um you should really take a look at where can that money serve your duty or responsibility to carry a message in your local geographic footprint And that's really a group conscience decision for your district. Is there a limit to how many non-trustee directors they can request? Yes. Non-trusted directors, each board is limited to three. There's only three on each board at a time and we will cover that next week. acms there is not a restriction but it's usually one or two at the most on any committee is there a roster with new desk assignments i believe one was sent out to all delegates and delegates should be forwarding that on to their dcms about the manuscript suit they yeah we all know this old news they dropped it and still paid the other 300 000 why um the official answer is that the fellowship did not have the will to be in embattled in this very public controversy the total cost was around five hundred thousand dollars that's our legal fees and we agreed to pay the legal fees of the person we sued to get the book where are we with the five-year plan with the grapevine i'm hearing announcements at some meetings telling members there is a free app yeah well an announcement just went out from the grape vine if you don't have it ask your dcm your delegate for it if i remember somebody can remind me we can post it in the monday night facebook group the grapevine just had to take another 350 000 from the reserve fund the grape find and lavinia are in pretty bad financial trouble have been for a while um the general service fund or the reserve fund has been paying the difference um the five-year plan i would suggest you go to your delegate or dcm and get the updated five-year plan we are obviously still behind it have you heard of areas that allow proxy voting for groups in smaller communities that have fewer members and therefore fewer members to hold gsr positions i don't want to we now have some areas that have hybrid i'm aware of an area or two that allows proxy voting at elections i'm not aware of this of where an area just can't send somebody so they let someone else vote twice for them but we have 93 areas it would be impossible for me to say never all right we already answered the rotation question we'll give another couple of minutes for any other questions that come in what's your thoughts on elections coming up and having to give a quick service resume to stand points best to mention so i don't have anything original i just know when i've done it wrong and I was told by people who are wiser than me. And after listening for a long time, I realized how wise that person was. Maybe one person here will remember I got to give credit to Jimmy D from the Bronx who's now Jimmy D. from Connecticut. So a lot of times you go to these election assemblies and all you hear is two minutes of what each person has done for aa in their life that's what you hear that's a jimmy pointed out to me it all sounds the same oh you were gsr you were dcm you did this you did this number one i would tell you we don't care who your service sponsor is keep that to yourself but number two the best advice I've been given is that instead of talking about what you've done for AA talk about what AA service has done for you that's the best advise I was ever given now that the current owner of the manuscript has died do you know if there are any plans for the manuscript to come to gso archives i am not aware of any plans i would let you know that there are a lot of technical issues involved with that number one we all know the name of the man or you can easily find it whether anonymity concerns are there or not i'm just putting those to the side but i would bet you that if you looked at the legal documents that man the individual did not own it i will bet you like every what very wealthy person that some trust or llc that he is just a controlling member of is actually the owner i'm just going to make that bet number two we don't take donations and we don t buy archives so if the largest let's just say the individual aa member owns it the only tax receipt we would give is seven thousand five hundred dollars for a contribution because that's the max we'll accept so if you look at the last price the manuscript was sold for which had seven zeros if somebody were looking to give it to us but wanted a donation receipt for that amount there'd be a lot of technical questions the board would have to get through so the easy answer is i have heard nothing about it but um it wouldn't be as it wouldn t be a simple process for sure any other questions could you weigh in on a group choosing not to use the new 2021 preamble in the meeting they said they contacted gso and were told they could use the old one if they like i myself was at a regional forum where the grapevine publisher said use whatever you want okay here's my take on it it doesn't matter whether i like the new preamble don't like the new preamble it doesn t matter is if the number one most important tradition that sometimes we say we only have one tradition is unity how unifying is it to go against the group conscience of the united states and canada even if you hate the new preamble your group doesn't have the authority to if you wrote your own preample or used one from 60 years ago that's a whole different subject but there is no current aa preamBLE with the old wording the aa preamble has people and i think you know i i try to tell people especially you know I have some very excitable friends in aa just so you know who are very passionate I myself I've told this story before was in the woods in the middle of Texas with like 300 guys at a men's AA event. I was the speaker on Saturday night. Of course, a young newcomer was asked to read the preamble. When he said Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of people, a whole bunch of people screamed out, men and women, that drowned him out, okay? but i want to tell you the conversation i had with them outside is i think part of being spiritually responsible is not being a hypocrite and i asked them i said do you love the big book and believe me these guys love the big book you're not going to find a big book without a leather cover without their name like stamped into it you know like these are big book thumpers thumpors okay and i said to him does it drive you crazy when someone changes the language in the big book if they're reading it in a meeting or do you think everybody should have the same authority as you to just change whatever you want because if i think i have the right to change the preamble then why don't you have the right to change a bunch of words and how it works when you read it in my meeting? It just sounds so hypocritical to me. And with that, we will call it a night. I thank everyone for coming. The recording will be out there tomorrow or the day after. I'll try to get that grapevine letter and put it in there. um and next week we will do the board's operating corporations and 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 accountable thanks everyone have a good night have a great week