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Concept VI: what do the trustees of the General Service Board do?

In short:

  • Concept VI says the General Service Conference has the principal responsibility for A.A.'s world services and the final decision on large matters of policy and finance, but "the chief initiative and active responsibility in most world service matters should be exercised by the trustee members of the Conference acting as the General Service Board" (p. 574).
  • In Bill W.'s 1962 list, the trustees are responsible for A.A. World Services (with its publishing) and the Grapevine (Concept VIII explains that they oversee these rather than manage them day to day), lead on public relations and policy, act as "the active guardians of our Twelve Traditions," and are "A.A.’s bankers," responsible for the reserve fund.
  • Bill's picture is a business corporation: the groups as stockholders, the delegates as their proxies at an annual meeting, the trustees as directors of a holding company.
  • The earlier text (1946) already called the trustees A.A.'s General Service Committee, custodians of the Tradition and receivers of contributions.

The earlier text first: Long Form Nine (1946)

"The trustees of the General Service Board are, in effect, our A.A. General Service Committee" (p. 565). The same paragraph says they are "the custodians of our A.A. Tradition and the receivers of voluntary A.A. contributions by which we maintain our A.A. General Service Office at New York" (p. 565), that the groups authorize them to handle public relations, and that they guarantee the integrity of the Grapevine. And of all such servants: "they do not govern" (p. 565). (In 1946 the board was the Alcoholic Foundation; it was renamed the General Service Board in 1954, and the Big Book prints the new name.)

Long Form Six (1946) states the principle the Concepts later apply to the service corporations: any considerable property of genuine use to A.A. "should be separately incorporated and managed, thus dividing the material from the spiritual" (p. 564).

What Bill's Concept VI essay says (1962)

Delegation again. Just as the groups can't act on world services without delegating to the Conference, the Conference must delegate "a liberal administrative authority" to the trustees so they can act when the Conference isn't sitting, which is most of the year.

Next to the Conference, the most influential servants. Bill says the trustees' authority, choosing and skills all need careful thought, and that the Charter can be amended if the arrangements prove flawed. But he wants the experience behind them written down so they aren't changed hastily: "These articles can then be relied upon as a point of safe return" (Twelve Concepts for World Service, Concept VI).

What they're responsible for (as of 1960). The two service corporations, then with combined receipts approaching half a million dollars a year; A.A.'s worldwide public relations; leading on policy and seeing it carried out. "They are the active guardians of our Twelve Traditions" (Twelve Concepts for World Service, Concept VI). "The Trustees are A.A.’s bankers" (Twelve Concepts for World Service, Concept VI), responsible for investing and using the reserve fund.

Business, for a spiritual end. "Of course our objective is always a spiritual one" (Twelve Concepts for World Service, Concept VI), Bill writes, but the service aim can be reached only through an effective business operation, so the trustees must work almost exactly like the directors of a large corporation.

The corporate model, on purpose. "We have deliberately chosen the corporate form rather than the institutional or governmental model" (Twelve Concepts for World Service, Concept VI). "The A.A. groups are the stockholders" (Twelve Concepts for World Service, Concept VI); the delegates are their proxies; the trustees are the directors of a holding company that owns the corporations doing the active work.

Later changes (footnotes in the 2024–2026 Service Manual)

  • The 2024 operating revenue of the General Service Board, A.A. World Services and the Grapevine was $22,015,258 (Concept VI, footnote 1), against Bill's half million in 1960.
  • There are now eleven standing committees, not five (footnote 2).
  • A.A. World Services and the Grapevine are described as "affiliates and not ‘subsidiaries’" (Twelve Concepts for World Service, Concept VI, footnote 3) of the General Service Board: separate not-for-profit corporations whose own boards run their routine affairs, though the trustees, as the corporations' members, elect their directors. Bill's 1962 word was subsidiaries.

P-8 (© 2017) adds that the trustees are responsible for carrying the message to other countries; that isn't in Bill's list in this essay.

Read it yourself

Sources

Source Where Written / first published
Alcoholics Anonymous, Appendix I, Long Form Six and Nine pp. 563–565 1946
Alcoholics Anonymous, Appendix VII, Concept VI (short form) p. 574 Concepts 1962; short form 1971
Twelve Concepts for World Service (Bill W.), Concept VI, with later footnotes in The A.A. Service Manual, 2024–2026 edition 1962; footnotes to 2024
P-8, The Twelve Concepts for World Service Illustrated — first printed 1986; © 2017

Recovery Starts is independent and not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Quotations are brief and cited; the Big Book, the Service Manual and Twelve Concepts for World Service, and P-8 are © A.A. World Services, Inc.

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.