Page 2 - The Twelve Concepts for World Service

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Concept I

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

lcoholics Anonymous has been called an upside-down organization because the
A “ultimate responsibility and final authority for . . . world services” resides with the
groups — rather than with the trustees of the General Service Board or the General
Service Office in New York.
In Concept I, Bill traces how this came to be. The first step in 1938 was “the creation
of a trusteeship,” first called the Alcoholic Foundation, renamed in 1954 the General
Service Board. Why? To perform the services the groups could not do for themselves:
e.g., uniform literature, uniform public information about A.A., helping new groups get
started, sharing with them the experience of established groups, handling pleas for help,
publishing a national magazine, and carrying the message in other languages and in
other countries. A service office was formed to carry on these functions under the
board’s direction. Both the board and the office looked to the co-founders, Bill and
Dr. Bob, for policy leadership.
In the midst of the “exuberant success” of early A.A., Dr. Bob became fatally ill and
Bill asked, “When Dr. Bob and I are gone, who would then advise the trustees and the
office?” The answer, Bill felt, was to be found in the collective conscience of the A.A.
groups. But how could the autonomous, widely scattered groups exercise such
a responsibility?

Over great resistance by trustees and members
devoted to the status quo, Bill managed to “sell” the
idea of calling an A.A. General Service Conference
(see Concept II), and eleven years later Bill was able to
declare, “The results of the Conference have exceeded
our highest expectations.” This Concept is rooted in
Tradition Two, which states:
“For our group purpose there is but one ultimate
authority — a loving God as He may express Himself
in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted
servants; they do not govern.”
The principles of Tradition Two are crystal-clear,
Bill asserts: “The A.A. groups are to be the final
authority; their leaders are to be entrusted with
delegated responsibilities only.” The outside world
cannot imagine an organization run this way, but Bill
calls it “a spiritualized society characterized by enough
enlightenment, enough responsibility, and enough
love of man and of God to insure that our democracy
of world service will work . . . .”