What did Bill W. say about clubs and A.A.?

Bill's essay, "Clubs in A.A." (1947)

Clubs were popular, and so was the opposition. Bill opens by saying clubs had become part of A.A. life, and that a vote would bring a large "yes" (P-17, p. 17). He then names the danger on that side: some members acted as if a club were a sort of "Thirteenth Step" without which the other Steps wouldn't work, and they "are apt to depend upon clubs rather than upon the A.A. program" (P-17, "Clubs in A.A.", 1947, p. 17). A strong minority wanted no clubs at all, pointing to clubs that turned into hangouts, fights over money and authority, and bad publicity (P-17, p. 17).

His middle ground. "A.A.s who need and want clubs ought to have them" (P-17, "Clubs in A.A.", 1947, p. 18). The question was how to make them assets and keep their liabilities down (P-17, p. 18).

What New York learned the hard way. Bill tells the story of the first club, at West 24th Street, as an average example, not a model (P-17, p. 18). Meetings had outgrown homes, a restaurant lacked the home atmosphere, and the members took over a former artists' club (P-17, p. 18). Then came the growing pains: dictators, drunks disrupting meetings, rent trouble, and a corporation whose directors seemed to compete with the A.A. rotating committee (P-17, pp. 18–19). The lease-holding corporation was named "Alcoholics Anonymous of New York, Inc.," and Bill admits they had effectively incorporated the whole state (P-17, p. 19). When the suburban groups grew, Manhattan expected them to pay for the club and its secretary; they never did, and the club, the area's common needs and the A.A. work stayed knotted together for a long time (P-17, pp. 19–20).

The lesson. The tangle came apart when they saw that clubs "ought to be strictly the business of those individuals who specially want clubs, and who are willing to pay for them" (P-17, "Clubs in A.A.", 1947, p. 20). A club should be separately incorporated under another name; its directors should look after club business only; and an A.A. group should never get into running a business (P-17, p. 20). If the A.A. committee tries to boss the club, or the club tries to run the groups, there is trouble at once; the only cure found was "to separate the material from the spiritual" (P-17, "Clubs in A.A.", 1947, p. 20). A group meeting in a club pays rent or splits the collection (P-17, p. 20).

Who belongs, who pays. Bill says plainly they didn't yet know all the answers (P-17, p. 21). His suggestion: any A.A. member should be free to enjoy a club whether he contributes or not, and regular contributors should vote for the club's directors (P-17, p. 21). Large gifts to buy or build clubs lead to headaches, and public solicitation is "extremely dangerous" (P-17, "Clubs in A.A.", 1947, p. 21).

Where clubs end up. Outside small towns, A.A. outgrows any clubhouse, and the shared work of an area (hospital arrangements, a central office, local public relations) passes to a central or intergroup committee that every A.A. has an interest in, club member or not (P-17, pp. 21–22). The club is left outside, "where, in the opinion of many, it should be" (P-17, "Clubs in A.A.", 1947, p. 22).

The Long Form of Tradition Six (1946)

The Long Form puts the same experience into one paragraph. Any considerable property of real use to A.A. should be separately incorporated and managed, "thus dividing the material from the spiritual" (p. 564). An A.A. group shouldn't go into business. Secondary aids "such as clubs or hospitals" should be incorporated and set apart so that, if necessary, "they can be freely discarded by the groups" (p. 564). They shouldn't use the A.A. name, and they should be managed by those who pay for them. "For clubs, A.A. managers are usually preferred" (p. 564), while hospitals belong well outside A.A.

In "Money" (1946)

A year earlier Bill had already said club support should be an individual matter, not a group matter (P-17, p. 29). Groups in an area could fairly pay for a central-office secretary who serves them all, but it isn't a group or central-committee job to fund clubs, and "the majority ought not to try to coerce" the minority into paying for clubs they don't want (P-17, "Money", 1946, p. 29).

Later, for comparison (dated)

The 2018 pamphlet The A.A. Group (P-16) carries this forward: owning and managing real estate isn't a group function, so "technically, there is no such thing as an" A.A. club (P-16, 2018, p. 40). Clubs are run by members acting as private individuals through separate nonprofit corporations, and the General Service Office doesn't take contributions from clubs (P-16, pp. 40–41).

Read it yourself

• P-17, A.A. Tradition: How It Developed ("Clubs in A.A." pp. 17–22; "Money" pp. 27–35), free from A.A.: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/literature/assets/p-17_AATraditions.pdf
• Appendix I, the Long Form of the Traditions (pp. 561–566): https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_appendicei.pdf
• P-16, The A.A. Group: https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/literature/p-16_0723.pdf
• Related: Tradition Six: can an A.A. group partner with a treatment centre? · What does "no outside affiliation" mean in practice? · Tradition Seven: does A.A. take outside money?

Sources

Big Book page numbers are from the fourth edition (2001). P-17 page numbers are the pamphlet's printed numbers (© 2019), which match aa.org's free PDF.

Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book and P-16 are © A.A. World Services, Inc.; the P-17 articles are © AA Grapevine, Inc., reprinted by A.A. World Services.

These pages answer questions about A.A. from A.A.'s own published literature, read in full, with every quote checked word for word against the page it cites. Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. What we read, and when each source was written.