Box 459 August/September 2006 Issue A.A. “has been called an upside-down organization because the groups are on top and the trustees on the bottom” of the service structure. Singly, each of the nearly 61,000 groups in the United States and Canada is autonomous. Yet paradoxically, when linked together all these groups “hold ultimate responsibility and…
Reprinted from Feb./Mar. 1990 issue of Box 4-5-9. The 85,000 groups comprising A.A. today [108,000 in 2011] hold what co-founder Bill W. called “the ultimate responsibility and final authority for our world services.” But where does this ever-lengthening chain of responsibility begin? Who has the authority to make it happen? The entire structure of…
A.A.’s Twelve Concepts for World Service Looking back from the vantage point of over 75 years, it can be difficult to imagine how uncertain A.A.’s existence was in its early days. Difficult problems related to money, property and prestige plagued the early members and the question of how this group of alcoholics could best get…