From the discussion on the Concepts Checklist;

Concept VIII: The trustees are the principal planners and administrators of overall policy and finance. They have custodial oversight of the separately incorporated and constantly active services, exercising this through their ability to elect all the directors of these entities.

• Do we understand the relationship between the two corporate service entities (A.A. World Services, Inc., the A.A. Grapevine) and the General Service Board?
• How can the business term “custodial oversight” apply to the trustees’ relationship to the two corporate service entities?
• Does my home group subscribe to G.S.O.’s bimonthly newsletter Box 4-5-9? The A.A.Grapevine? Do I?

From the pamphlet “The Twelve Concepts Illustrated”

Long experience has proven that the board “must devote itself almost exclusively to the larger questions of policy, finance, group relations and leadership . . . . In these matters, it must act with great care and skill to plan, manage and execute.”

The board, therefore, must not be distracted or burdened with the details or the endless questions which arise daily in the routine operation of the General Service Office or the publishing operations, including the Grapevine. “It must delegate its executive function” to its subsidiary, operating boards.

Post from: Blisstree

Concept VIII

From the discussion on the Concepts Checklist;

Concept Vll: The Charter and Bylaws of the General Service Board are legal instruments, empowering the trustees to manage and conduct world service affairs. The Conference Charter is not a legal document; it relies upon tradition and the A.A. purse for final effectiveness.

• Do we act responsibly regarding the “power of the purse?”
• Do we realize that the practical and spiritual power of the Conference will nearly always be superior to the legal power of the G.S.B.?

From the pamphlet “The Twelve Concepts Illustrated”

“If . . . the Conference will always bear in mind actual rights, duties, responsibilities and legal status of the General Service Board, and if the trustees . . . will constantly realize that the Conference is the real seat of ultimate service authority . . . neither will be seriously tempted to make a ‘rubber stamp’ out of the other . . . In this way, grave issues will always be resolved and harmonious cooperation will be the general rule.”

Post from: Blisstree

Concept VII

From the Service Material at the Alcoholics Anonymous web site.

Concepts Checklist – III, IV and V

Concept III: To insure effective leadership, we should endow each element of A.A. —the Conference, the General Service Board and its service corporations, staffs, committees, and executives—with a traditional “Right of Decision.”

• Do we understand what is meant by the “Right of Decision”? Do we grant it at all levels of service or do we “instruct”?
• Do we trust our trusted servants — G.S.R., D.C.M., area delegate, the Conference itself?

Concept IV: At all responsible levels, we ought to maintain a traditional “Right of Participation,” allowing a voting representation in reasonable proportion to the responsibility that each must discharge.

• Do we understand the spiritual principles underlying the “Right of Participation”?
• What does “in reasonable proportion” mean? Do we understand when it is appropriate for A.A. paid staff to have a vote at the General Service Conference or in our local service structure?
• Do we expect that, because we are A.A. members, we should be allowed to vote at any group, even if we are not active members of that group?

Concept V: Throughout our structure, a traditional “Right of Appeal” ought to prevail, so that minority opinion will be heard and personal grievances receive careful consideration.

• Do we encourage the minority opinion, the “Right of Appeal”, to be heard at our home group, district committee meetings, area assemblies and the Conference?
• What does our group accept as “substantial unanimity”?
• Has our group experienced the “tyranny of the majority” or the “tyranny of the minority”?
• Does our group understand the importance of all points of view being heard before a vote is taken?

Post from: Blisstree

Concepts Checklist – III, IV and V

Concepts Checklist – Service Material From GSO

Most worthy of being passed along;

Concept I: Final responsibility and ultimate authority for A.A. world services should always reside in the collective conscience of our whole Fellowship.

• Does our group have a general service representative (G.S.R.)? Do we feel that our home group is part of A.A. as a whole and do our group’s decisions and actions reflect that?
• Do we hold regular group conscience meetings encouraging everyone to participate? Do we pass that conscience on to the district, area, or the local intergroup meetings?
• Is the “collective conscience” of Alcoholics Anonymous at work in my home group? In my area?
• Where do we fit in the upside-down triangle of A.A.?
• Are we willing to do what it takes to insure that our democracy of world service will work under all conditions?
  

Concept II: The General Service Conference of A.A. has become, for nearly every practical purpose, the active voice and the effective conscience of our whole Society in its world affairs.

• Do we have an understanding of the history of the General Service Conference (the “Conference”)?
• What is a Conference Advisory Action? Does our home group’s G.S.R., D.C.M., area delegate report back to the group on the highlights of the Conference and Conference Advisory Actions?
• Is our group meeting its wider Seventh Tradition responsibilities?
  

Concept III: To insure effective leadership, we should endow each element of A.A. —the Conference, the General Service Board and its service corporations, staffs, committees, and executives—with a traditional “Right of Decision.”

• Do we understand what is meant by the “Right of Decision”? Do we grant it at all levels of service or do we “instruct”?
• Do we trust our trusted servants — G.S.R., D.C.M., area delegate, the Conference itself?

Good stuff

Post from: Blisstree

Concepts Checklist – Service Material From GSO

I finally found a copy of “The Twelve Concepts for World Service” illustrated pamphlet. The pamphlet is meant to be an introduction to the Twelve Concepts.

I’ll try to relate the reason The Concepts were drawn up from the pamphlet.

“As A.A. grew up, it began with the groups – first only a few, then hundreds and then thousands. Very early an Alcoholic Foundation, later renamed The General Service Board, was formed to be responsible for our affairs. And with Dr. Bob’s death and Bill’s facing up to his own mortality. a General Service Conference assumed the leadership which had fallen to the co-founders. Meanwhile, a tiny publishing operation and service office had grown in size and importance to the Fellowship, and a monthly journal, the A.A. Grapevine, was being published.

Which of these entities was supposed to do what? Little wonder there was confusion! What was their relationship? Who was in charge? What were their responsibilities – and what were their rights? Bill W. himself sometimes took part in the pulling and hauling that took place, and so he saw the need to ‘reduce to writing’ his concepts of the ‘why’ of the whole structure, the lessons to be drawn from experience, the relationships and, above all, the spiritual principles.”

The basics of the First Concept are that the General Service Board was designed to do what the groups could not do, which was to have uniform literature, uniform public information about A.A. groups getting started, share the experience of established groups, handle pleas for help, publish a national magazine, and carry the message in other languages and in other countries. These would all require policy leadership that Dr. Bob questioned once he discovered he had become fatally ill.

Bill felt the answer to where the policy leadership would come was from the groups themselves, from a collective conscience. That offered another question – how could the autonomous, widely scattered groups, exercise such a responsibility? This effectively laid the groundwork for the Concepts.

Post from: Blisstree

Concept I