I have a bunch to share this month. A quick summary, we have our April Quarterly coming up in Vancouver, WA as I write this article. I attended PRAASA the first weekend in March up in Alaska and watched our amazing Delegate Courtney represent! I also spoke with some Past Delegates from other Areas, in particular, Ken M. from Area 06, who shed some light on the whole Contribution Challenge concept I wrote about last year in our August 2024 newsletter issue as your Treasurer. And last, it’s time to coordinate and schedule our Pre-Assemblies. More on this below.
April Quarterly
So here we go…as I write this article, we, the Area Committee are all gearing up for the April Quarterly. The agenda and weekend schedule are up. Friday night we will see a presentation from a subgroup of the Newsletter Ad Hoc Committee who focused on digital opportunities followed by roundtable speed dating where the DCMs can meet and here quick presentations by each Appointed Standing Committee Chair, there are 9. This is great practice for the presentations you can invite them to make at your district meetings. Saturday is jam packed with reports, 2026 Quarterly Bids, and a report from the Newsletter Ad Hoc Committee and discussion related to the direction you want to take on our newsletter. Our esteemed Alternate Delegate, Lupita, has been a tremendous support helping me get up to speed as your incoming chair and helping our Alternate Chair Lisa and I prepare for the Quarterlies. Lisa has caught fire and seems particularly well suited in her new position, even creating some new methods in organization of the quarterly host committee process for future Alternate. Hope to see you all there, whether in person or in the virtual squares.
PRAASA 2025 and Our Ninth Tradition
We caught great weather for our PRAASA weekend this year in Anchorage Alaska Area 02. It was sunny all weekend and a balmy 30 degrees during the day. I got to visit with area chairs from across the Pacific Region and visit with familiar faces from the past two PRAASAs. Like I stated above, Courtney brought it for Area 72 on both the Delegate’s Panel and the Ask it Basket. And I was privileged to share some quality time with our Past Regional Trustee and GSO General Manager, George D., now a young 98 years old. Our discussions tend to reside in the big picture of our fellowship across the U.S. and Canada and how it operates [or should operate] under our Ninth Tradition, that is, the least possible organization. During the months leading up to our annual General Service Conference, the Conference and the ongoings of our General Service Board tend to consume our focus, almost becoming bigger than they really are, at least in my mind. As if they are more important to our fellowship than our home groups. It’s easy for me to forget they reside at the very bottom of our service structure. And our service structure is simply there to support our home groups in carrying the message to the still suffering alcoholic. The groups themselves retain all the power as they should. They only delegate a limited amount of responsibility to our trusted servants. I think sometimes we get so caught up in the service structure we lose sight of the home group and the meeting. As servants, we are entrusted to fulfill those support services the home groups have decided are better served in a centralized capacity, such as a district committee made up of members of those collective of home groups. Same at the area and the general service board. A district can do some things in a centralized capacity more efficiently than say each of the 25 groups that make up that district committee. An Area can do certain things in a centralized capacity more efficiently than our 44 Districts could do individually, and likewise at our general service board at the national level for the groups that make up the U.S. and Canada. Other than that and anything more than that is and should be reserved by our groups who are the reason we have a society in the first place. Once I began to see this, the 12 Traditions and 12 Concepts came together for me and made sense. Our leaders at the Districts, Area and General Service Board are servants, we do not govern. [Long form of our Ninth Tradition, as also expressed in the short form of our Second Tradition] Thank you George D. for your constant reminder that we are not and ought not be organized any more than necessary….if that! He implored upon me, “therefore, as an area chair, your primary purpose should be to constantly ask: ‘what can Area do to help your Groups and to help your District help your Groups to carry the message?’ ” And so I ask you, what can I do for you?
Confusion around the Annual Contribution Challenge
As I came in to serve as your Area Treasurer, it wasn’t long before I was reintroduced to the Annual Contribution Challenge concept that used to circulate before the pandemic. Such as, why did it go away, what is it at now, why is it so confusing, and most importantly, what is all the fuss. I was first introduced to this challenge thing as a DCM pre-pandemic. It was a random number around $7.00 per member that Area had emailed out. I didn’t understand it and went about my business. Then as your Treasurer, two rotations latter, I was asked on more than one occasion what happened to the annual challenge. I asked around and got vague answers (or maybe I just didn’t understand the answer so I labeled it as vague). Than last summer at the Pacific Regional Forum, our Finance chair from the General Service Board did a picnic table presentation, a folksy way of saying “presentation” that the number was $6.43 per member. The calculation was a black box calculation taking what the General Service Board classified as Program Services of $9 million divided by our U.S. and Canada membership of approximately 1.4 million, as now distinguished from Support Services of $8.47 million, that were not included in the 2023 calculation. I learned this year at PRAASA, they used to take the combined total of Program Services and Support Services, or total Operating Expenses of $17.47 million for 2023 and divide that by the 1.4 million members. That equals $12.48 per member. I was told, and this is unconfirmed, that the GSB didn’t like that number so they changed the formula. That’s BS! I thought. I also understand now those “vague” answers around why we were moving away from a “per individual” number. One could argue it goes against the spirit of our Seventh Tradition, that is: “The A.A. groups themselves ought to be fully supported by the voluntary contribution of their own members.” [First sentence of the long form of our Seventh Tradition]. That is, members should voluntarily contribute to their home groups to ensure the home group is self-supporting, not contribute to the General Service Board on an individual basis. That way, the group is self-supporting and the group conscience can decide where to distribute the excess downline by group conscience. This puts the decision making in the group’s group conscience instead of the individual and insures the group’s financial health first instead of implying, as it currently does, that the individual members are responsible for the financial health of our General Service Board and affiliated A.A. World Services, Inc. and The Grapevine, Inc., whose operating expenses are consolidated into the $17.47 million previously stated. Under this approach, the proper Contribution Challenge should be to take the $17.47 million in total Operating Expenses divided by the approximate 120,000 active groups in the U.S. and Canada for a per group contribution challenge of $145.58 per group per year to cover our bundle of services in New York. This is separate from that group’s contributions to District, Intergroup, and Area. It seems high, but since when did honesty become a problem for recovering alcoholics?
And As Always
And last and as always, please feel free to reach out as I am available to any Intergroup, District or Home Group to share on service and/or personal recovery, to facilitate group or district inventories, or assist in group resolution or just answer random fellowship and/or service-related questions. Just email me as I am always happy to be of service.
Derek S.
Area Chair
