Tradition Eight and Non-professionalism – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 19 of 27 – Billy N.

Welcome, everyone. Billy Alcoholic. Sorry, we're like what a minute late, but I'm waiting for like an ark with two of each animal to float by because it has not stopped raining for like six hours where I live, like five hours of straight rain, pool overflowing, whatever. first world problems for sure but uh all right so welcome everyone i would remind everyone um in case you don't know you forgot or no one reminded you that today is a significant day in aa history it's may 12th means that 90 years ago today bill met bob for the first time time May 12 1935 was Mother's Day was a Sunday uh just like yesterday was Mother day um but that meeting happened today 90 years ago we're all here tonight and uh the course of history regarding alcoholism and alcoholics was changed like more than it had ever changed ever before and still is and that's why what we have here is important so um i just do want to go over um just the schedule for everyone so that everyone if you haven't looked at it in a while um let me just pull it up and i will just uh so tonight is concept eight and tradition eight the 19th is tradition nine and concept nine and then may 26th um the last monday of may we switch to a pamphlet and this time it'll be problems other than alcohol so again next week uh tradition nine and concept nine the week after that will be problems other than alcohol we're on tradition eight tonight i am going to read the long form alcoholics anonymous should remain forever non-professional we define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or higher but we may employ alcoholics where they're going to perform those certain services for which we might otherwise have to engage non-alcoholics such special services may be well recompensed but our usual aa 12-step work is never to be paid for this is one of those things where the language used in today's world especially because the last sentence can sometimes make you not a popular person in an aa meeting or in your local community which is fine but that line but are usually a 12-step work is never paid for if i just start there i don't know about where any of you live but in certain places of the country there are places and like part of their like mission statement is we're not a treatment center we just take people through the steps we're just a facility that houses people and puts people through the steps and that's all well and good it's just not aa 12-step work is never to be paid for ever um and this is where you can get you know um the modern world is very different than the world of 1946 or even 1935 90 years ago today bill met bob that means that 90 years ago and six months ago today actually the 12th very funny that may 12th is uh was mother's day in 1935 because december 12th is the night of bill w's spiritual experience in town's hospital so six months later he meets bob but when bill left towns hospital a didn't look like it did today first of all because a8 didn't exist that's number one there was no a but there were also not a lot of other things like there were no life coaches in december of 1934 there uh were no um uh sobriety coaches we didn't have them in 1934 either um we have all these things in the world today that didn't exist for a long time and if you're an aa member engaged in those activities you're supposed to be able to separate your aa activity from that activity so if the job of one of those coaches is just to like live with somebody wake them up tell them to go to a meeting travel with them maybe that's a valid job i don't know i've never done it and i've ever had a sober coach um but if it's to like sponsor somebody or take somebody through the steps the way i read this tradition it's not okay like you can't be paid for taking someone through the steps that is part of 12-step work um but again the world is very different today um you know it's funny because obviously those things cost money um but I'm just going to share my personal experience with one I guess you would call A-list celebrity is how they would be best be described my own personal experience in AA with one A-List celebrity obviously his experience is not the same as every other person um in his you know there are other a lot of men and women that are A-list celebrities like him and maybe they don't have the same experience but I can tell you his experience every time he tried to buy sobriety he didn't stay sober that's number one number two when he would try to go to meetings and like pull a baseball hat his eyes or keep his hoodie hood up sit in the back of the room he didn't get sober when he did get sober he sat in the front of the room didn't care who saw him because his life was on the line took a commitment as a greeter took a commitment as the literature table person when he had six months took a commitment as chairing a meeting like these are his words not mine until he was willing to do the things that every ordinary person in aa has to do he couldn't get sober that was his experience i also want to pass on his experience about travel which i find very interesting because again that occupation of sober coach, life coach and traveling with people if there's non-AA activities involved in it that's great but I'm just going to tell you his experience that he relayed to me when he had a paid person like that and he was going on some trip to film that person would chart out all his meetings and where meetings were and where the local clubhouse was and what days of the week in time his experience passed on to me is he told me that didn't work for him you know what worked for him a sponsor telling him to get the goddamn phone number of the local inner group and call them himself that's what worked for him a sponsor he told me a sponsor who finally told him i'm not going to tell you where to go like you need to do what everybody else does there was no meeting guide app at that time but you could go on google and you could google that city in an inner group and you can pull up their website and most in a group websites at that time had a meeting directory page and it would say click here it was the old website interface so it would saying click here for a PDF downloadable meeting schedule right but he told me until he printed themselves out on his own until he took responsibility for his own sobriety he never got sober and so his lesson to me and and listen i am the first person to know that people with a little bit of personal notoriety have a hard time in alcoholics anonymous not because of themselves because of us because we can't help ourselves like i was in tennessee on a podium waiting for the meeting to start i was on the podium facing the crowd so i because i was speaking when the meeting started so i could see the crowd i saw an a-list celebrity in tennessee in like the fourth row you know what i also saw somebody go up and ask them for her autograph like why would we do that like why can't we just treat the person like a fellow member of alcoholics anonymous you know i myself have a brother who is sober who has six emmys right for tv producing like i know that when he was originally getting sober certain meetings he would go to people in the so-called industry um and if you ever spend time in new york or california you know about the industry um they would wait for him with like a show idea or a script and so i don't want to sound like you know like i understand that probably some of these sober coaches and stuff they can you know there's probably a viable service as long as it's not doing the 12-step work but i also know that there's a hard responsibility on all of us to treat every aa member as if they're only um the same i was glad to see not too many weeks ago right after right after the election like end of december until early february there was um somebody very well known um government official type and i go to a men's meeting on sunday morning and every sunday morning i saw two suvs pulling that parking lot and one would go to the back and i saw this gentleman get out of the other and you know what i loved about it he got out he had a bottle of usually he went and got a cup of coffee he sat down in the front row when they said is anyone visiting from out of town he raised his hand and said my name is so-and-so i'm visiting from this place my home group is this like he was just a regular ordinary aa member and i was even there one week when after the meeting of course somebody couldn't help themselves and brought up a topic to him as he was walking out and he just politely said i don't talk about that here that's not why i'm here um but so i don'T want to say like i'M callous like i i DON'T believe that these people you know sometimes have a harder challenge so the beginning of the eighth uh tradition we define professionalism as the occupation of counseling for fees or higher so counseling is an interesting word because in most states you need a license right you know you used to be called a certified alcoholism counselor and then certified alcoholism drug dependence counselor but counseling was a profession now when i got sober and when i came into aa as a teenager there weren't a lot of treatment centers like there are today um they were like rest and relaxation homes there was a place where i grew up called charlie murphy's some of you might have heard of it if you're from new york or long island but most of the people who you met in the 80s who worked in treatment most of them were on their second career they were 30 or so years sober retired from some job and they got certified and this is how they spent some of their retirement today it's not even about counseling for fear for hire we have a lot of other titles in the outside world that have invaded us we have peer support specialists i've seen that on a business card a lot of peer support specialists a lot of um like i have people who call me and say billy you're not going to believe this i just got offered a job and i get to be doing service at the same time and i will ask them what are you talking about oh well i just talked to the guy the greatest thing about this job is i'll get paid to be a therapy aid at this treatment center and i'll be doing service at the same time so when it comes to you know this line of defining professionalism as counseling for alcoholics or fear for hire the first thing to really remember when it comes to the eighth tradition is it's impossible to be an aa member doing a 12-step work while you're being paid impossible it doesn't matter what job you have you might be an aa member in your regular life but you can't do both at the same time um but we have a lot of that i try to warn people not to do that um because it's such a trap And I'm a guy who has great respect and even empathy, because I can tell you at one of the men's meetings that I go to, we get a lot of young men who are returning to AA, counting days, who are either still working in treatment or burnt out working in treatment like we need to do a better job of that of watching out for people who work in that industry not labeling them or anything else but actually reaching out our hand because i can't even imagine what it's like when your job is for eight hours a day to put up with people like me could you imagine that like i will burn you out if you are working with me eight hours a day in putting up with me i couldn't even imagine your job is to deal with me for eight hours are you going to want to go to an aa meeting that night after dealing with me all day i don't think so like i totally get what goes on there and i'm totally respectful of the low percentage of recovery in professionals and we should do a better job of that of helping these people be regular members of alcoholics anonymous um it then says we may employ alcoholics where they're going to perform those services where we might have to otherwise engage in non-alcoholic now if you read a comes of age you hear of tom the fireman tom the fireman uh got sober at the rockland county psychiatric center first place there was ever an h and i kind of treatment meeting and he was a janitor at the 23rd street clubhouse except he was more like an indentured servant than a janiter because he didn't get paid and he was just expected to do all this work but it was beyond like cleaning the coffee pot and like putting away some chairs he was actually acting as a janitor and the stories in aa comes of age you know where you know he finally had to say something to bill w and they finally changed that they paid him to be a janiter just because he was an alcoholic doesn't mean he shouldn't be paid to do that job and if you look at our general service structure or even your inner group i'll talk about general service first meaning the a world service employees at the general service office or the aa grapevine employees at the general service some of them don't have to be alcoholic they just need a skill they need a skill that we need maybe we need an i.t director maybe we need a translator maybe we need an editor maybe we need someone who knows accounts payable maybe we need a cfo or a controller but we also have some jobs where you need some of those skills but you also need to be an alcoholic like if you look at aa world services the general manager the director of staff services and the director of aa publishing are all required to be an alcoholic however there are other skills that they need being an alcoholic is just one of the requirements um the aaa staff desks treatment group services, corrections, regional forums and international conventions, cooperating with the professional community, language services, around 12 of them. They all have to be alcoholic as well, but they need other special skills. If you get on average of 600 emails a month, it seems that having to have the ability to respond to an email doesn't sound out of line like you need that special skill set you need the ability to communicate um so it's it's super important now at the grapevine the executive editor publisher has to be an alcoholic the senior editor john he's an elf or the managing editor john he's an alcoholic um paola who's the editor of lavinia she's an alcoholic but you see they're not paid for being an alcoholic they're paid to do their job and being an alcoholic is just one requirement that being an aa member is a requirement for that job now here's the part well let me just talk about intergroups if you call 212-870-3400 i used to call that number a hundred times a week when i was on the board but if you called that number on a weekend when the office is closed and you say you're an and you listen to the voicemail it'll say if you're looking for help please call new york in group if you get one of the staff desks during the week and you're an alcoholic looking for help they might help you quickly but if you need a lot of help looking for meetings they're going to send you to new york in a group because they don't want to be paid for 12-step work at all they don' t want to pay for it there's a man who used to be the executive secretary of new york in a group bob r great great man but he used to say that between 9 00 am and 5 pm he doesn't answer the hotline at intergroup that's the volunteers job the volunteer's job is to help the alcoholic reaching out for help his job was to schedule the volunteers his job was to order the literature make the committee meeting schedule do all kinds of office things now the difficult part about this tradition is this sentence such services may be well recompensed because we become cheap when we get sober and you know I was a young person sober you know I want the cool sneakers at the time the cool jeans two packs of Newports and I'm going to tell you I don't have money to get into your young people's dance right that's the mentality right that is just how it comes right but I hear people say such horrible things about paying our employees it says here well-ranked compensated that means well paid and i can tell you a couple of things happen when we're not willing to pay a fair wage and most of the time i get drawn into questions about intergroups at the general service office in the grapevine we have a pay schedule we do compensation studies every three years we make sure that people who are doing the same thing that other non-profits get paid the same as us you know that we're not too high and too low but if you don't pay someone adequately to do a job number one you're never going to get good employees that's number one it's not good for the fellowship i'll tell you what happens when you don t pay someone adequately especially in inner groups they start to feel like they should get paid somewhere else or somehow else and i'm not talking about like taking a dollar for every big book that's sold i'm talking about in their authority at the office like i've heard him in a group manager say to me a long time ago yeah they hardly pay anything pay me anything so i should be able to say what goes on around here and that's just not the truth being an a special worker is a difficult position because you're always going to report your bosses eventually are always going gonna be volunteer trusted servants the executive editor publisher of the grapevine's boss is the grapevine board which is made up of volunteer trusted servants the general manager of gso bob w his boss is the aws board and the general service board you know i remember one time it's it's just when i was elected the first time i was chair of the a world services board when you're chair of the aws board you fly into the board meeting a day early so that you can meet with the general manager because while you're not the rep while you are not the boss of the general manager you are the representative of his bosses you're the chair of that volunteer trusted servant board and i remember the first time i walked into that office to have that meeting and i i remember being a little blown away like wow like this general manager is a legend to me in aa service like i knew them when they were a delegate and a trustee and now general manager and now i'm there as the representative of their boss but that's how our structure works no paid employee is ever the final authority it's in an inner group it would be usually the inner group body and some inner groups will have a steering committee but it's so important that we treat our employees well that we treatment them like they would be paid at another non-for-profit if that means getting them a retirement plan or medical insurance and i know people say oh my god it's going to cost so much money well wait a minute how many of us are saying that who have medical insurance who have a 401k or a pension where we work i've actually seen some disgusting behavior at regional forums where unfortunately the law is when you file your 990 as a non-profit you have to list your five highest paid employees and since non-profit tax returns are public people can get them and i hear people say such outrageous things about what people make at the general service office in the aa grapevine and i just i wonder if they'd like if someone else called out their salary like should i get up to the podium and call out your salary whatever job you have should i get to tell everyone what you make do you really need to do that and the other thing is new york city like california and some other places is not a cheap place to live most of the people who take a job at the general service office don't take a big pay increase they either made a lateral move and most general managers took a pay cut most executive editors of the grapevine took a paid cut from wherever they came um they do it out of a sense of duty but you know people hear a hundred thousand dollars and they think it's a million dollars i'm just here to tell you that living in new york city rent just google what's the rent for a studio apartment in manhattan just google that and then you can tell me that people are getting paid a lot of money but we really have to be fair with our employees and their tradition tells us to do that so that's enough of that i'm going to go to tradition to concept eight if you remember when we talked about concept six i said that concept eight is the opposite so i'll just read concept six first for a second the first part on behalf of the aa as a whole the general service conference has the principal responsibility of maintaining our world services, and it traditionally has the final decision regarding large matters of general policy and finance. The conference is responsible for large matters of policy and finance. So what does concept eight tell us? It has two parts. The trustees of the General Service Board act in two primary capacities. Number one, with respect to large matters of overall policy and finance, they're the principal planners and administrators. They and their primary committees directly manage these affairs. So concept six says the conference owns large matters Of policy and Finance. And concept six, you have to remember the conference means the whole conference all 137 of them not just the area delegates but the staff the directors and the trustees that's who has the final responsibility for large matters of policy and finance now what is the trustee's responsibility well it says here with respect to the large matters of overall policy and finance they don't have the final decision they're the planners and the administrators and the managers they plan administrate and manage sometimes people think that the general service conference is kind of the end of the conference year that's how we look at it and from an area perspective as a gsr or a dcm or an area officer It kind of is the end of the conference year. Your delegate came back from last year, told you what the conference voted on. Then you did your business all year. And then in February, your delegate got the agenda for the new conference. And in your area, somehow you come up with a way, however your area does it, of giving your delegate feedback about the conference agenda items. that's kind of like the culmination but when you're a member of the board of the grapevine board the AWS board or the general service board the conference is really the start of the year that's where you get your instructions see the conference votes on these large matters of policy and finance and then for the next 365 days it's the board's job to administer plan and manage all these things and then at the next conference let the conference know how they're going or any updates um it says b but with respect to our separately incorporated and constantly active services the relation of the trustees is mainly that of a full stock ownership of custodial oversight which they exercise through their ability to elect all directors of these entities so it gets confusing the legal and the spiritual when the concept was written this was true legally and spiritually the general service board owned aa world services and a grapevine inc and that's what it says the relation of the trustee is mainly that of full stock ownership now when we got a certain size in the 60s and had to create a pension program and had to have a reserve fund those corporations were made membership corporations so no longer subsidiaries but affiliates so legally the general service board doesn't own the stock of aa grapevine or a world services anymore legally spiritually they do for sure legally they're three independent companies the owner is the legal owners now are the 21 people who are trustees that 21 or 22 people own aws they own a grapevine and they own the general service board now you can't take it with you when you rotate out so whatever rich you are you think you got your 121st slice of pie. It goes away when you leave, okay? But what is this custodial oversight? Number one, I want to stress the word custodian and custodiel. I've said before I love the Spanish word that the Spanish community uses for trustee which is custodio because sometimes we're all so hyped up about doing a service that we want to do the best job ever we want to be the best cookie person that the easy does it group ever had we want to be the best anniversary cake person the one day at a time group ever had we want to be the greatest delegate in the history of the world we want to be the best trustee ever i get it but the true meaning of a custodian is to return something in the condition it was given to you that's your number one responsibility you don't have to return it better but don't return it worse you may make some improvements and that's great but don t be so blinded by making a lot of times in aa service we get into this thing called legacy building we really want to have our name on something we want to know that 10 years later when somebody is talking about the plain language big book they're going to know that i was responsible for that right or i was responsibility for the new preamble or i wrote this thing or whatever it's all a bunch of bs uh legacy building does nothing good and Alcoholics Anonymous. Returning something in the condition, whether it's your inner group or your group treasury or your district or your area, returning it in the same condition it was given to you and not making it worse is your number one responsibility. Now they say they carry out these custodial oversight by electing the directors. Yes, nine directors on AA World services nine directors on a grapevine board four at least by the bylaws have to be trustees so that's how the trustees keep kind of a watch they don't legally own it anymore but at least four trustees have to be directors on both of these boards on the grapevine they have five trustees who are directors and then there are non-trustee directors and staff or employee directors but the trustees and the trustees nominating committee elects and selects these people and their job remember at the end of the day we're 40 million dollar a year company give or take the reserve fund the pension fund our annual responsibility our annual budget for great fine and a world services and you know later on in the concepts i'll get to it it says we select the best people you know everybody wants to do every job sometimes but we need the best people and those businesses are real businesses and the trustees and the director's number one responsibility is the ordinary and regular business of those corporations. Not writing a new pamphlet, not writing a new preamble, that should come from the fellowship. The board's job is really the day-to-day management of the three corporate entities, the three businesses. now concept eight has a little bit of a loophole if you want to call it or i should say an exception as to when the trustees should not only have custodial oversight custodian oversight means i've been on the nominating committee i've been the chair of the trustees nominating committee custodians oversight means we just elected this person to do this, and I should be able to walk away and not micromanage. We find that difficult in AA. We love to fix, manage, and control almost more than Al-Anon's, right? Like we can't help ourselves, right, we want to micrormanage everything but when we elect somebody it's so funny because i just got something i was just looking at it so hilarious um the gso quarterly reports i finally got a collection of uh all of them and i was looking at the let's see november 2008 believe it or not look at this november 2008 report from gso the old kind of church bulletin type refold out you probably all remember them but november of 2008 here's a little and here's a little read the committee recommended to the general service board that andrea b and william n serve as non-trustee directors on the aa world services corporate board following the 2009 conference me that's me like i was elected by those trustees who are carrying out their custodial oversight and so they're not supposed to be micromanaging me we're supposed to let aws and the a grapevine do their job but there's two exceptions inside the concept the first is except to mediate difficult situations and to see that the service corporations operate within their budgets and within general time frames the work of a headquarters policy so when it says mediate difficulty difficult situations yes there are times in our history when a world services and a grapevine maybe weren't cooperating like they should be you know something some somebody told me a long time ago a past trustee has made a lot of sense to me and it's a sports analogy that the name on the front of the jersey is a hundred times more important than the name on the back i love that analogy the team is most important and so sometimes if i'm wearing my aws jersey with my name on the back there have been times when the boards have not gotten along together i served in 2010 on the first aa grapevine a world services task force to kind of bring us together i served with seven other people um and believe it or not some people were against that they didn't want the chair of the board to create that but the concept talks about it they may have to step in to mediate difficult situations war did that back in 2010 he said enough of this nonsense i'm forming a committee with a couple of people who are not on the grapevine and aws board and a couple or people who and we're just going to lock ourselves in a room and we're going to work it out um the other exception um and to see that the service corporations operate within their budgets so the trustees finance and um budget committee has responsibility for reviewing the budgets that are approved for aa world services and for a grapevine and for every quarter reviewing those budgets and making sure again during 2011 to 2014 or 13 the grapevine was making had a big cash situation and there was a special subcommittee formed for cash control to kind of get the grapevine back on its feet um but the finance committee did that to so-called mediate a situation to try and help it but those are very rare circumstances at the end of the day the general service board the trustees should be able to now i'm not a big fan of the trust the process statement now i believe it for what it really means i don't like it when it's used to tell somebody they don't have a right to ask a question it should never be used like that the trust the process thing really comes from a harvard business review article which was really entitled trust but verify right there's nothing wrong with verifying now i will tell you one thing i've learned as a leader in aa and outside a non-profit boards is it's a good reason to try to be honest with those who you report to because if you break that trust it is very hard to earn back so reporting transparently and honestly and accurately is super important but that is what custodial oversight is is to allow those organizations to basically operate themselves so I will go to questions on Tradition 8 and Concept 8 if you have any please send them in via chat um i have one here bill duffy was bill w has offered a job at town's hospital but declined because of the group conscience why is it different today that it's okay for members of alcoholics anonymous to accept jobs at hospitals and treatment centers for alcoholism okay let's talk about that great question but it's a little bit unfair number one There was no such thing as a certified alcoholism counselor in 1936, okay? You were either a doctor or a nurse. There was not such thing what we used to call a CAC, a C-A-C-C or whatever they called them. That's number one. Number two, AA just started. and you know Bill was motivated by money to do that um and they were trying to get AA off the ground um so there was other things to think about about being distracted could you imagine today I mean let's just be fair could you Imagine if your home group had a vote on your job like we do everything equally and equitably so would it only be people who work in treatment centers or if you got a job at the bakery down the street should we have to vote on that if you just got a part in a play on broadway should we have to vot on that i think we have be respectful um but it was just very different times let's see what determines whether or not a particular intergroup pays any workers trusted servants in my area i'm not going to read the area number there is no paid in a group work that i am aware of okay that's that goes there's some areas sections of the country united states and canada don't have a central officer in the group if you can run it by volunteers that's awesome but what does volunteer really mean a volunteer means i get to say when i come and i get to say when i leave some of you might be familiar with in the outside world the irs has rules about whether you're a salaried employee or a consultant can't be a consultant if they tell you what time to show up you've now become an employee and you know volunteer trusted servants are great but if you know that you need somebody in the office every day from nine to five and they can't just decide to leave because they're a volunteer Well then, if you know you need two people, two part-timers, it's all about the circumstances of your individual in a group. Let's see. What exactly does full stock ownership mean? Is it in the stock market? Great question. So forget about the stock market for a second. Let's just talk about a private company that's not publicly traded. When you incorporate, there's still shares of the company. There might be 10, there might be 100. There might быть 3 or 4 people or 1 person who owns it. There's still share of the stock. There's stock, not stock like a stock market, but equity that you own that. prior to 1961 the owner of a world services and a grapevine was the general service board inc that's who owned it that's what full stock ownership meant it's kind of like having subsidiaries um if you are a subsidiary and have a parent company they have full stock ownership of you um that's a good way to look the the general service board is the spiritual parent company the holding company of aa world services in the aa grapevine And spiritually, the AA groups are the shareholders that own that holding company. Legally, the AAA groups own nothing. The shareholders of the General Service Board are the 21 trustees. So that's what full stock ownership means. Let's see. most corporations have folded their pension plans into 401ks etc due to the cost and liabilities of having one does aws scrape find gso still have pension plans and if so to your knowledge has the topic ever come up oh yeah unfortunately I know way too much I could give you a six-week workshop on this topic so first of all non-profits are not eligible for 401ks they use an instrument which is called a 403b um up until January 1st or December 31st of 2013. the employees remember the general service board doesn't have employees that work for technically. If you're an employee, you either work for AA World Services or the AA Grapevine. The AA Grabevine and AA World Service had a retirement program, a traditional old-style pension. Any employee hired up to December 31st of 2013 is in that old pension. it's funny to think like that's now 12 years ago i got on the board when we were in the middle of doing all of this um so aa did after the pension guarantee act in 2009 we were underfunded millions of dollars in our pension and we had to work very hard to rebuild it and to get it properly funded and then we created a separate retirement program for employees hired after 2000 they're january 1st of 2013 um and they're in a 403b where they get a set percentage given to them every year and they can also save some of their own money now some people ask why didn't we just end the whole pension in 2013 so when it comes to pension conversion there's a hard freeze which means the pension's over no more credit even if you already worked here you're going to go into the 403b program and your pension will only be calculated up till december 31st of 2013 or there's a soft freeze that's where all the employees who are already there stay in the old pension and all the new employees go into the new system we're aa we're a spiritual organization yes we have to be good business people but when our employees went to work there they were offered a pension and we believe that's the ones that the onesthat had that should have that until the day they leave. And that was the right AA thing to do. That's how we felt. Now, 12 years later, probably 50% or more of the staff are not in the old pension system now. They're all in the new. The unfunded pension liability was paid off in five years almost today i recently read something from the general service board treasurer that actually thanked the board of back then when i was on it because it was an out-of-control freight train that pension it was millions and millions underfunded um so yes so that's the answer today we are 403b we do have some employees who are in the old pension program um let's see how do i join the secret facebook group for this group that's fine i'm sending you my email in the chat just send me an email what determines whether or not a particular in a group that question was already asked we have a recovery group in quotes made up of aa and na members who recruit for their recovery program during some of their h and i commitments would tradition or eight or ten be considered well first of all there's no such thing as an h and I commitment from a combined AA, NA in either fellowship. And I have no problem telling you that when you go on an H&I commitment or a corrections commitment or a treatment commitment, you give up some of your individual liberty. If you want to be the biggest jerk in the world, you can go to any group you want, any meeting, because that's only your reputation. But if you are going into a facility representing alcoholics anonymous then you're supposed to represent alcoholics anonymous not any outside recovery organization just alcoholics anonymous i let me read this question before i decide if i'm going to read it okay i'm gonna read it can you share your opinion or thoughts on sponsees gifting sponsors with things specifically things like gift cards or high dollar gifts does this in any way constitute payment for 12-step work so it's a fine line um if you have a long-term sponsor sponsee relationship that has grown into a friendship and you buy them a gift for their birthday or holiday or whatever who am i to say that's wrong i don't think there's anything wrong with it if you have a sponsor or a sponsee that's celebrating an anniversary maybe and you get them like maybe some spiritual book or aa history book or maybe balloons and flowers or something like that again that sounds perfectly reasonable if on the other hand you're expected to get your sponsor a hundred dollar or fifty dollar gift card to applebee's or the olive garden or god knows where else that's not a we don't pay for sponsorship and any implication made to a newcomer or a sponsee that we do is not okay we recently had a situation where i go to meetings two years ago where somebody was hearing fifth steps and they would make the person it's a brilliant idea by the way we're not short on brilliant ideas as alcoholics by theway but this person would make the person buy a three-day weekend down in the keys at a luxury resort and listen to the fifth step down there yeah we don't do that that is just not what we do it's for fun and for free that's what alcoholics anonymous is for fun in for free. Was there money stolen from AA? That's a question. I don't know what the person means by AA, if they mean GSO, if They mean AA in general. So here's what I'll tell you based on my experience with alcoholics. There was probably money stolen at the first AA meeting. that's based on my experience with alcoholics alcoholics steal I'm not sure if you're aware of that um I'm Not saying it's good bad or indifferent but it happens um where this becomes a tricky situation is the warranty tells us not to be punitive but the big book tells us you might to go to jail to make amends for a crime you committed and i'm a person who believes the big book outweighs the service manual there's nothing in there in the big book that says except if you steal money from aa now i'm not saying the person should be punished or anything but the separate situation is for intergroups a world services a grapevine general service board even areas that incorporate and become non-profit corporations when you become a non-profit corporation in any of the 50 states the directors of that corporation have strict fiduciary responsibilities imposed by the attorney general's office like your job is to make sure that money is managed it doesn't matter if it's aa money your job is to make sure that that money is cared for safely um there is a class a in another country many years ago went to jail for stealing from their general service board in our country we have 50 states and a couple of territories canada has provinces but some states say it's a requirement that if an officer of a non-profit steals money you have to report it it's not up to you like if somebody steals money from your group down the street your group can decide whatever it wants to do it's nobody else's business but if you're in a state like colorado or new jersey or a couple of others those states say if you're a non-profit corporation registered to do business in this state and an officer steals money you have to report it to us you see people think that non-profit there's a trade-off you don't get to be a non-profit for free it comes with a lot of strings attached it comes with having minutes of your meetings it comes with having an annual meeting it comes with electing a treasurer and having real treasurers reports they expect non-profits to operate better than for-profit businesses and as a result of you making that spiritual promise to operate in an ethical way you don't have to pay taxes now the penalty for losing your non-profit status is swift and painful for sure in most places it means paying retroactive taxes for a couple of years in a lot of places it means you'll never get your non-profit status back again if you uh i just want to go to my file section a second in my phone because i do it on my ipad i could disconnect you but if i go to the website my aa and then aws and then new york state attorney general's office We have three New York corporations, General Service Board Inc., AWS Inc., and AA Grapevine Inc. These are publications from the New York Attorney General's office I'm going to read to you. The first one is called New York State Department of Law Charities Bureau. Responsibilities of Directors and Officers of Non-for-Profit Corporations. It's about 30 pages long. the second one financial controls and financial accountability for non-profit boards new york state office of the attorney general charities bureau like we don't just get to avoid responsibilities because we're aa if we become a non-profit we have agreed to do a lot let's see the 990 if you don't know what a 990 is every non-profit with I want to say revenues now over 5 000 a year has to file one um it says the 9 90 has questions relating to assets being misappropriated as well forget term that is used yeah you have to if it asks you have you had embezzlement or misappropriation the 990 is a form so that the government knows that you're doing the right thing because when we take money on with making a spiritual promise with the people who give money to aa that we're not only going to use it for an aa purpose but we're going to watch it and be careful and if we become a non-profit corporation it's more than a spiritual obligation it's a legal obligation that the directors of the board have so that's it next week we are on concept nine and tradition nine i thank everyone for being here and uh remember the week after that will be problems other than alcohol so i'll 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. Have a good night, everyone. Thank you.