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Source: 1975 Denver International Convention – 1975 Denver Int, Intergroup and Central Office with Beth K, Jim E, Bill C, Dorothy W, Joan S and Q and A.mp3 File: 1975-denver-international-convention-1975-denver-int-intergroup-and-central-office-with-beth-k-jim-e-bill-c-dorothy-w-joan-s-and-q-and-a.mp3 Duration: 00:57:19
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It's nice to be here with all of you. Shall we open with a moment of silence with our thoughts toward gratitude for the AA recoveries of the past 40 years? Shall we say the Serenity Prayer together? God grant me the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, Courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I'd like to read our Anonymity Tradition. Can you all hear me? No.
Now, that should be better. Just holler if you can't hear any one of us up here this morning because we have a wonderful panel and I don't want you to miss anything. There may be some here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films.
Thus, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or indeed any AA member be identified by full name in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. I'd like to welcome each one of you to our workshop this morning on central offices, and I hope that after we hear our panel speakers that you will all feel free to ask questions, and I know they will be glad to share their experience with you.
I'll get right along because we don't have that much time. I'd like to introduce our first speaker, Jim English, from the Chicago area, and he's going to tell us how their central office cooperates and handles public information in their area. Jim? Good morning. Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here this morning to give you a look at how our public information committee functions and carries out its primary purpose to make our presence known to the still-suffering alcoholic who is seeking help.
The service structure of Chicago Area Alcoholics Anonymous states as follows. There shall be three permanent standing committees of the Chicago Area Service Committee, one the finance committee, two the public information committee, and three the hospitals and institution committee. Each standing committee is directly responsible to the Chicago Area Service Committee, and the chairman of each committee or a designated representative shall report at each regular meeting of the Chicago Area Service Committee.
It is recommended that because of the purpose of these standing committees, each district service representative and A.A. members with considerable sobriety of A.A. activity and service, wherever possible, are chosen for these positions. The public information committee. The purpose of this committee is to carry the message to those people who want to hear, using all available media, consonant with available funds and manpower.
This committee serves as the central source of information which is made available to the public in the Chicago area regarding Alcoholics Anonymous. It further makes its presence known to the press, radio, and TV, ensuring that any further information they receive is correct and within the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. See, the membership of this committee is composed of one representative from each of the districts of the Chicago Area Alcoholics Anonymous who shall serve for a term of two years.
Special members may be appointed by the Chicago Area Service Committee. The public information committee meets every two months to discuss other avenues, methods, and approaches to find if we are missing our area in carrying the message of hope to the alcoholic who still suffers. Our minutes of the P.I. committee is forwarded to the General Service Office so that we may share our experiences and endeavors with them, and they in turn may share with other P.I. committees within our fellowship.
In the radio and TV, this seems to be a way to reach the largest number of people with the least expenditure of both money and manpower. It also seems to be a logical way to take advantage of public service time on radio and TV. Stations are required by the Federal Communications Commission to set aside a certain amount of time for the public service announcements, religious messages, and news broadcasts, and properly presented message from A.A. can qualify for this free time.
[00:05:00]
I know for a fact when we have had these things flashed on the screen that if you have a drinking problem, call Alcoholics Anonymous, and our number is flashed on the screen at that time, that we have five lines within our central office, and all five are lit up, and you never know a time of day that this will occur, so we know that we get a terrific response. On our last letter along to these stations, we received a response from 20 radio and TV stations, which we feel was quite impressive.
Also, our 40th anniversary, we sent a letter to the stations with background material. One TV station gave us its salute of the day and made up a beautiful slide for us to keep for future presentations. Also that day were three interview shows, and on one station, every hour on the hour, a congratulatory message of that station's congratulations on our 40th anniversary. All stations in our area do their own taping.
They do not use any of the spots sent them from New York or from our area. Everyone that we do has to be done within the station, and we send the people from the program over there. A number of TV and radio programs were covered anonymously by members of our public information committee and staff. Ten, 20, 30, and 60-second spots for TV were produced through AA members and made available to all the major stations to be used on public service time with no charge that tell the still-suffering alcoholic that we may be able to help him, and the telephone number of our central office is repeated several times in our area.
We had an hour program, and I understand it was shown here last night, Drink, Drink, Drunk, shown on Channel 11, the educational station in Chicago. They, in turn, offered us participation in an immediate half-hour follow-up program titled Drink, Drink, Drunk in Chicago and What Do I Do About It Now? The participants were Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon and Al-Ateen numbers, and representatives from the Chicago Alcoholic Treatment Center, Department of Mental Health, the Chicago Council on Alcoholism, and PAR, the post office program.
In our 13-minute segment, we had a man and a woman member, plus her husband, discuss a little about themselves and their continuing recovery. This was being shown, and our central office number was superimposed on the screen at the same time. We had a voluntary staff that night anticipating the many calls we were to receive. Twelve hundred calls were made to Channel 11 that evening. Out of that number, we received about 280 information calls that evening and the next day, and out of these, we had 60 12-step calls.
As you can see, this was a well-conceived and planned operation on everyone's part, and we were there due to our PI committee. Tradition 5 reminds us that we have but one primary purpose, to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. The vehicle by which that message is carried may be a wife, husband, a doctor, clergyman, policeman, social worker, or even a bartender. The public information provided the fuel that makes the vehicle run.
The public, for our purpose, is that vast area of people who will see the radio and TV announcements, the alcoholic who still suffers is part of this public that we must reach. The purpose of public information, as the name implies, is to inform. It presents the principles and practice, and most importantly, the availability of AA to the drinking alcoholic, his family and friends, and the helping professions.
As outlined in Tradition 11, it is a policy based on attraction rather than promotion. Attraction to the program of AA, not to personalities. In accordance with Tradition 11 and 12, anonymity is maintained in all activities, and principles are put before personalities. At the group level, this can be accomplished by a local committee or an individual who contacts doctors, police stations, hospitals, or other local agencies, or it may involve talking to non-AA groups.
However frequently, what starts out in the group as everyone's business, soon with changes in groups, becomes nobody's business. The public information kit contains the following quote, which covers this very well.
[00:10:03]
Groups have been known to take such a passive attitude toward their public information service that it is left to outside agencies to inform the community of the availability of AA. This can create the public impression that AA and the agency are affiliated. Such a misunderstanding often led to controversy. An active public information committee is therefore a safeguard. It enables a group to put into action the principles in the 12 traditions and to relate AA to the community in a traditional way.
And from the non-alcoholic's point of view, it gives assurance that there are responsible AAs with whom they can communicate. In a large metropolitan suburban area such as Chicago, a cooperative unified approach to the district to this is best. The PI committee represents this approach. It is made up of representatives from Chicago area alcoholics, 10 districts. The most immediate results can be achieved by the use of public service announcements.
They can stress that AA is a program of recovery where the alcoholic can achieve sobriety. Later on the program may encompass contact with industry, alcoholism agencies, and professionals in the field of alcoholism. Here we can discuss and cooperate and enhance their functions without affiliation. Another area of vital importance to the public information committee involves the correction of misinformation.
In most instances, this simply requires explaining something about AA. Individuals in AA are anonymous. However, the program is neither anonymous nor secret. Some suffering alcoholics are reluctant to come to AA largely because of misconceptions about AA. In all of the above PI activities, maintaining our amateur standing is important, leaving the dissemination of information on the illness of alcoholism to the experts in the field.
It has been variously estimated that there are 9 to 10 million alcoholics in the United States and approximately 800,000 members in our fellowship. Obviously the major portion of these alcoholics who are still part of the general public do not want help. However, it would be frightening to want help and not know it is available. That is our job, to see that the hand of AA is there, and for that we are responsible.
Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Now we're sorry to tell you that Walter, who was scheduled to be on our program, was not able to be here with us, but he sent along someone to fill in for him, and I know we're lucky to have Bill with us, so I'd like you to hear Bill Cochran from Delaware, who will tell us how his intergroup committee works. Thank you. Well, as Beth mentioned, my name's Bill Cochran, and I'm an alcoholic.
This looks like one of these women lib businesses. She figured she'd get rid of Jim and I, and then the women would run this damn thing from now on out. I guess that's… She also mentioned that I'm a substitute speaker. I didn't know until I just came here this morning whether Walter could be here or not. He's… Everyone here seems to be real oriented, and I'm not an oriented type of a person. They all work in central offices, I believe, right?
And we don't have one. I don't have any statistics. I wouldn't understand them if I did have them. I don't believe in statistics, really. So from now on, I'm going to fly blind. We don't have a central office. A woman from Delaware has… By the way, a lot of people… Beth said I came from New Castle, Maryland, right? And a lot of people think Delaware's in Maryland. Well, Delaware is a state which is 30 miles wide and 100 miles long, and when the tide comes in, we lose one-third of the state.
So you see, we do different things in AA and geography and everything down that way. Our intergroup is only about seven or eight years old. We kind of branched… We came to the place where the original Wilmington group could no longer man all the things, all the jobs that had to be done in our institutions and our 12-step work. So we got together, and of course we know about intergroup. And, uh, well, of course we know about intergroup, but we decided we would do it our way, right?
[00:15:04]
So, uh, naturally when you're gonna do it your way, you don't bother with the traditions, right? And you don't fly on one wing, you don't have any wings at all, you just start out. So, this is what we did, and really I guess we're very lucky that we didn't have any more trouble than what we did. Uh, we have learned better, I might say. By doing this, we automatically, uh, split our, uh, groups into two or three different, uh, sections.
Those who wanted to do this, and those who didn't want to do this, and those who didn't want to do anything. And then, and then if you want to louse things up for free, tell them that it's gonna cost some money. Because when a drunk sobers up, he gets mean, I'll tell you, he gets, he gets, he really, he really gets, he really. I told Jim we had a New Year's party, get off the video, we had a New Year's party, buffet, 300 people, meeting, dance, pass the hatch, you know what we get, the big spender's New Year's Eve? 38 cents.
So that's the territory we work in. Thank God things have changed, we've, we've, uh, we've grown up, we've grown real rapidly because, uh, eventually we came back and we said, well, let's, let's do this, let's follow the directions, right, let's, let's go along with the winners. So about where we are, uh, today, um, we have, uh, I was amazed, Jim mentioned, uh, how many groups, 800? 800 groups, Lord, God.
We don't have that many people. In the whole damn state. We have, uh, we have about 35, 30 to 35 groups. We have some that drop out this month, and some will come in and, uh, then next month they drop out and some others come in, but basically we have a, a nice nucleus of about 25 groups. And I must say that, uh, uh, the reason that, uh, we haven't had, uh, greater cooperation is I think we haven't told them, uh, what this deal is all about.
Um, I, I was amazed, I was, well, I wasn't amazed either, but I talked to some people, uh, just here. And, uh, um, the majority of alcoholics don't really know what an intergroup function is. I think it's important for us to tell them what it is and also what it isn't. Um, our, of course, our primary purpose, as Jim mentioned, uh, is to carry the message to, to alcoholics. We do have an answering service, and the way we run this answering service, and this has evolved, too.
Uh, we have a, a, a paid answering service in which a, a, a person will call in, uh, the answering service will take the number, and, uh, uh, then we have a 12-step chairman, which is a volunteer job. And this is, this is bad medicine. This is bad medicine. Because drunks will say, yes, I'll do this, and they'll volunteer, right? And when you ask them what happened to a certain call, oh, well, uh, they forgot or they didn't pay a damn bit of attention to it.
Uh, where we stand today after making all these many mistakes that I hope you people don't, if I have a message, if I have a message at all this morning is, uh, go back to the traditions, go back to the guidelines, which a lot of people don't, don't realize these, these guidelines are published. Uh, and as George G. says in, in this latest box, there's no use in trying to invent the wheel again. The wheel's already been invented.
Uh, all the mistakes it's possible for drunks to make have been made. We made 98% of them in Delaware. I'm an, I'm an authority on what is a mistake and what isn't. I'm also an authority on how damn dumb you can be. Today, uh, it's simply this. Today we do have a, we don't have a central office. We do not have a central office. We don't have the money. Hopefully we will. We do have a paid service chairman.
And we had to come up with this name because we came up with 300 other names that nobody liked. So we ended up calling her the service chairman, service chair, service groups, service center secretary.
[00:20:04]
That seemed, that was important enough for her to take. And it wasn't too important for us, you know, to allow her to be called. That was funny. A lot of people, a lot of you people don't have central offices like these lucky folks, right? How many people do not have a central office where they're, oh God. Well, there's hope, right? Just don't give up, don't quit. We do have this gal who works for us.
I asked him what he was paid, I won't tell you. Our girl has charge of our answering service for five days a week. And that's around the clock, 24 hours a day. We don't give them any time off. And we're very generous. We pay her $50 a week. So you pay her $50 a week, 24 hours a day, five days. She certainly don't have any complaints as far as money is concerned, right? Now the other, the alternative to this is we can't afford to pay any more, so if she don't accept this, we don't have anybody.
Now, we ran into trouble on the weekends. And this might be helpful to you, some of you folks. We gave the weekends out as an assignment. When we come to intergroup for our institutional assignments or whatnot, the answering service went out as an assignment for the weekend. And group so-and-so says we will take it for a month on the weekends. Don't you believe it? Nobody knows what calls came in, nobody knows what happened to any of them, and nobody really cares.
We had a guy that had it for a particular weekend, and he had to go away, so he went to a club that we happen to have that's in our town, and he put a sign on the bowling board. I'm going away if the call intergroup, if there's any calls, take care of it, right? Well, that's not a very good way to handle a poor old drunk that wants help right now, right? So we found out another way of doing the same thing, and this will be valuable to you if you have this type of an operation.
We do not let that grow out as an assignment to a group. We knew of 13 people that by past history we knew could be dependent upon, and we broke it down into four quarters, and we have a list made of these 13 people who take it for one night, or one weekend in the 13-week period. They check in with the answering service on Friday at 5 o'clock, and they call the answering service every two hours. Rather than have the answering service call the individual, which you may be in the backyard, you know we have backyards back home, and you may be in the backyard.
So our system, and it has been working, and it's been working real well, is the party that has the weekend, they call in every two hours. Now we have a light system up here, right? That's the yellow light, and then the red one, and I've had more tickets run through red lights. So I told Beth I don't pay much attention to red lights, but I will. So this is how we handle our 12-step call. Now we are in the midst of this financial problem, which I mentioned.
We just sent out a letter, I'm sure it went out this last Wednesday, in which we just told the group simply this, that last year with the money that you gave us, this is what we did with it. Now it's not a very big, long letter, and it's down into plain old English that we house spreaders can understand. This is what we did. Now if you would like to give us another $50 a month on the pledge system on a budget deal, this is what we would like to do with it.
If you feel that you would like your central folks to do something else, you give us more money. If you give us another extra $50, this is what we would like to do with it. But this is your operation. It don't belong to us. Outside of the secretary, no one gets paid. I hope and pray that our biggest input as far as money is concerned is from an area that out in our neck of the woods nobody seems to realize is available, and it's in these guidelines.
Methods by which you can contribute money. Groups can pledge money.
[00:25:00]
And this is what we need. We need pledge money. We just don't need it. Our groups give us money when they don't have anything else to do with it. Now you can't do things this way, they tell me at home. So some groups, our guidelines suggest that you have a basket maybe at a meeting. This basket is for intergroup. The one that we hope to have the biggest input from as far as money is concerned is the individual contributions.
So many people don't realize that you can send a dollar bill a month to intergroup or $5 a month. Now my wife Helen is an alcoholic and with me today. We don't belong to any clubs. So we take a $5 bill each month and we pledge it to intergroup. And we hope that this is where most of our financial help will come from in the future. But if I do have a message, it might be this. Will you please, if you are having trouble, if you are just getting started, if you're having growing pains or if you're having pains that you get after you've already grown up, go back to the experts, right?
Go back to our traditions and to our guidelines. And somewhere along the line, I was mentioning this to the best, somewhere along the line either we as individuals or we as groups or we as intergroups or somewhere along the line we just aren't getting the message back to the people. And I would like to close with the same thing that Jim did. This is my responsibility. And if it starts any place, it has to start with me.
And after I've seen all that Jim had prepared here and talked to our other friends, Lord God, we've just scratched the surface. So if you do have trouble, will you please ask those who have done a better job than your group is doing? This is what we eventually had to come to here from, many heartaches and many troubles. And if you do go back to the experts, I know what's going to happen. You're going to have good central offices.
And God bless you. Thank you, Bill. Now we're going on to the ladies. Our first one will be Dorothy Will who is going to tell us about the services provided by her office, about their volunteer and paid staff and things of that kind. Dorothy? Good morning, everyone. My name is Dorothy Will and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Dorothy. And I'm not known to be an overly emotional person, but this morning my cousin came out of me with all his facts and figures.
But I've gained some tremendous information here this morning. But I'm here to talk about our intergroup office in Vancouver, B.C. Our intergroup office was first formed as a central office back in the early 1940s. And our first secretary was Everett Grace who has now passed on. And we've had a few secretaries since. When I took over just a year ago, our current delegate, Abe, came up to me in Victoria when I was at a rally and said to me, Dorothy, I see you haven't put in your application for central office secretary.
And I said, you must be out of your tree, Abe. I don't want to get mixed up down there. Thank you very much. Because my first indoctrination into service in AA was back in, when I first came to Canada in 1966, was as recording secretary at intergroup committee meetings. And I do take shorthand. And I used to take the minutes down verbatim. And I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, there used to be about four full scab sheets long.
And we never got anywhere. But fortunately, in the past, particularly in the past two years, we're finally getting ourselves organized. Now this doesn't say very much for Vancouver, B.C. since we've been going since 1940. And we're now in 1975. But we are getting there. And I see one of our past delegates back there, so I better watch what I'm saying. We now have an intergroup committee which is made up of representation from the various groups in the area.
[00:30:04]
Now we have 155 groups in the greater Vancouver area, of which 30% support the office. And of that, about 28% turn up to the meetings. The intergroup committee meets the second Tuesday of every month. But prior to that, we have an operating committee which is members in good standing selected. And we have a chairman and two vice-chairmen, the rest of the operating committee, which then control the finances and the various committees belonging to intergroup.
We have a public information committee and we also now have an active hospital committee. As I say, this is just getting underway because now we have someone who is responsible. And responsibility means so much because as has just been mentioned, we have so many AA members who are so willing to volunteer in the heat of the moment and then when the crunch comes and they have to give up their Sunday afternoons or their Saturday nights, they always find something else to do.
We have a regular answering service. Our office is open from 9.30 to 5.30 daily. And at 5.30, the groups, each group has a day in the month. And they come along and they answer the phones until 10.30 each evening. And we have the groups answering phones on holidays and on weekends. Here again, now that the summer is coming along, we find that a lot of the, particularly the weekends and holidays, we're turned on to the answering service quite often.
But we do have some responsible groups. As far as our financial position is concerned, last year, oh, I'd like to tell you that I earn $800 a month. That is my salary. I have had a part-time worker in with me as far as she comes in from 1 o'clock to 5 daily. And we're in the midst of advertising for an AA member to come and work full-time. And the salary offered to that person is $600 per month. I might add, where we are going to get the money from, I'm not too sure, because our average group contributions are $1,200 a month.
So if we have $800 for me and $600 for the person that's going to help me, we haven't even paid the phone bill yet. But our mainstay in keeping our finances going is our literature sales. And talking to Beth just before the meeting, this is the mainstay for GSO2. And it is very sad. I had a member of my own group say to me, Dorothy, I put a dollar in the basket every week. And I said, well, good for you, that's $52 a year.
And my sobriety means a lot more to me than $52 a year. And this, I feel, in a lot of cases, is a result of very poor sponsorship. Because we have members come to AA, and their seats are out of their pants, and their heels are down, and they're in a bad way, and the basket goes round. And somebody says to them, don't worry, you don't have to put anything in right now. But nobody gets around to telling them that this fellowship does not run on fresh air.
And when we start getting a little bit in our pockets, let's support AA. AA first. It's a selfish program, so let's help keep it going. Money, it seems to be a dirty word in this program, it really does. And we have groups, quite large groups, who send in a small amount of money every month, who pay for large amounts of food out of the basket, and pay for janitors out of the basket. And this is AA's money, that money that goes in that basket is in trust for AA.
And I hope I'm right there, but I believe that 60% of group funding should be for your intergroup or your central office, 30% for GSO, and 10% for your area assembly.
[00:35:02]
And if the groups wish to put on lavish meals or hire a janitor, have a separate fund. Don't take it out of the basket. Well, we average 200 calls a month via our telephones. We have a channel 10 in Vancouver which does a lot of taping, the PI work, and they've been very helpful to us. The media or the newspapers are not overly interested. I received from General Service the news release regarding this international conference, and I rang the province newspaper and the Sun newspaper and a few other newspapers, and they said, well, if there's going to be as many people there as you say, there'll be something coming over the wires and we might make use of it.
So we're really not very interesting to the media in Vancouver. I guess if we all got drunk, maybe they'd give us a few headlines. Well, I wish this light would go on because I'm nearly running out of things to say. I am very grateful to be able to share in some way in Vancouver. I first came to AA in Australia, and when I first came to this continent, I really wasn't very happy, and I was volunteered into service work, and it's been absolutely tremendous to be able to share and to be able to do something and you feel that you're repaying AA in some small way.
If I stood up here all day, which I'm not going to, I couldn't express my feelings. I'm forever critical, I guess, and maybe you think I sound very critical, but AA is my life to me and I want everybody to realize just how much we owe to this program. I just wish I could get it over much better than I do, and I really wish that Beth had asked somebody who possibly was a better speaker than I because I'm going to leave a bit of time now, Beth, because I'm so close to tears.
I think I'd better sit down, and I thank you all very much. Thank you, Dorothy, and we wouldn't have it any other way, would we? No. Now we're going to hear from Joan Sullivan, who is going to tell us, she's from Massachusetts, Boston, and she's going to tell us how her office cooperates with rehabs and other agencies in the field of alcoholism, sponsorship, and just whatever she wants to talk about.
I'll give you Joan. Thank you, Beth. I'm an alcoholic, and I happen to be a member of the Cituate Center Group in Cituate, and if I don't say that, I'll get killed. And my name is Joan, and I bring greetings from the Boston Central Service Office to all of you here today. Hi. That always scares me, too, because we don't do that in Boston. It's certainly a joy and a pleasure to be here this morning, and a very great privilege for me.
The day that I got the letter from Beth was kind of a down day for me. I guess things weren't going my way. That's usually when I have a down day. And I was just delighted. It brought up my day, and I wrote a letter right away and said, You've made my day, Beth. But then after I got thinking about it, just being asked was enough for me. When I had to come through with the obligation to come up here, then it got a little tricky.
I'm like Dorothy, and I don't have that great a message, but I'm talking this morning about my second love, the Intergroup Office, the Boston Central Service Office, my first love being AA and my sobriety, believe me. Jim told a great deal about what goes on in our Central Service Office also. I feel very grateful this morning that I came into a central office that was already running very smoothly.
After I heard Bill, all the stories that Bill told, I've heard from the old-timers in the Boston area, all the fights and the arguments that went on. Our office started in 1945, and we had our 30th anniversary along with the 40th anniversary
[00:40:01]
of AA this past June. We were very fortunate to have the governor issue a proclamation for us and to wish us very good luck in the future. I came into service like Dorothy did. There were three rotten words that I hated to hear later on, may I suggest. And then later on, as I got a little bit more sober, it was, you better do it or you might get drunk. So I just followed along willy-nilly. I started out with service in the group level, and then I went to the local committee levels.
We also had a 12-step house in our area, and I served on the committee there, and this I love very much. And I was asked to be a volunteer at central service, very young in my sobriety. And I was very withdrawn and no confidence at all. And I think I sat at that desk once a week for three months, and I wouldn't answer the phone. Well, when you've got a telephone volunteer, they won't answer the phone.
But they were very patient with me, and when they got a woman on the phone, they'd answer it, and then they'd turn it over to me, and I could just about handle it. But I gained my confidence out of working for central service. After I was there as a volunteer for about two and a half years, one of the girls was going to marry one of my sponsors that worked in the office. So I was shattered because she was going to marry him because I knew he'd never be good for me after that.
I'm a firm believer today, girls and girls for girls and boys for boys, but this is what happened to me. And Elva, who had been running the office for many years at that time, invited me in to work with her as her assistant, and I'll be forever grateful that she was there because she put me in right, and she was very good to me. About two and a half, two years ago now, Elva had been working there for 15 years.
Talk about getting emotional, Dorothy. And she asked me if I'd like to take over the administration work, and we said we'd see what the delegates thought, and it all went over. So Elva is still with us as our bookkeeper, and we couldn't run the office without her. We have a staff of two full-time, and we have three part-time workers. We have two girls and a nice young fellow that's coming along great.
It's nice when they come into AA and they're young and they want to get into service work like this because you can really break them in good. They haven't got preconceived ideas. I like to say that we work within the office through the 12 steps of AA. We work with our outside agencies through our 12 traditions, and every time that phone rings, believe me, we read the preamble because there are so many varied and complicated calls that do come in to a central office.
We have 4,000 incoming calls a month. We have close to 700 meetings that we service in our area. There are a little over 600 groups, but there are about 700 meetings. Each one of these calls come in, we try to treat it as an individual call. The calls break down mostly into outside agency calls, which would be hospital calls or court calls, probation calls, and we deal as best we can with them. Public information calls, I think Jim covered that exactly the way we handle them in Boston.
We have a very active public information committee. We also send all our records to New York monthly, and so they are informed of what we're trying to do in our area. We have a very strong volunteer telephone answering service, which we are all grateful for today. We have a chairman of this service who happens to be with us here today. We have 180 individual member volunteers on a rotating basis each month, and this has worked out very successful for us.
They're on duty in threes, and the reason for this, we found out, is that two can stay with the telephones, and the third party can help. Party can help. We have a lot of sick and suffering that just hit the office right off the street, and they can take care of this area for us. In the Boston area, especially in the last year or two, we've had a lot of visitors from out of state and around the world, and we like to have an extra volunteer there just to handle the visitors to AA, because we're important too, even when we get into a strange city, and, you know, we're looking
[00:45:22]
Okay. We're going to be writing a profile of a typical AA meeting for a PI. Right. And I'm one of the participant judges in a Chicago area court, and how it was received with the other groups. I mean, it will, of course, be completely anonymous, and we'll be screening out people, but as it is, you went into trouble with groups. Yes, we did. It was brought up at our Chicago area service committee that the public information committee at that time was thinking of taping a group, and it was voted down that they could not see us taping a meeting.
So it's going to be just four people on top of that? Well, that's different, but a group meeting per se, no. Okay. Yeah, we've had that where they're shaded or they're back, or a panel is different, but taping a group meeting, no, we didn't get into that. But it worked out good. It worked out good. Thank you, Jim. Are there any other questions? Yes, sir. Can we have it quiet in here, please, so that we can hear the questions?
Yes. How do you simulate interest in an intergroup committee before getting into the central office activity? Anyone want to take that, Jim? Well, I think that basically everything starts in group. Group is the most important part of AA. Everything happens at the group level, and once we inform the groups through 12-step work, which is our primary purpose is to carry the message to the still-suffering alcoholic that the breakdown in communications and phone calls when it isn't answering service hands, when we have duplication of work, when we explain all the things that if we weren't there to take this call and relay it to the right person and get it in the right hands to make the contact.
If we can impress this upon the groups, the importance of a central office for information within the area, for the literature, I think in our area it's the focal point. It's visual evidence that Alcoholics Anonymous is in this area and that we're available, because it runs into so many things with the business and industry, through the alcoholism agencies. People are constantly asking for our help along these lines, and I think if there was no central office, we'd get a lot of phone calls where people will say, I called AA.
They didn't call AA. They got into another agency and there was a hassle and there was a problem, and if we weren't there to straighten it out and correct the situation, AA's name in that area would be dead. So there is a need for a central office, and if we can stress the importance to the people, that they can recognize that this is a vital and needed service within their area, because the groups and the individuals are the ones that benefit from central office work.
Stress to them the importance of communication to all groups, to all people who are looking for help. To me, this is the sum and substance of central office work, information, communication, and help. Put it in their hands, because it is their central office, and I think that this was stressed today. It's your central office. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Any other panelists want to share? I guess not.
Ruth? Hi, Ruth. Yeah, come up here, dear. I need a whistle.
[00:50:05]
Yes, I would like to share with you two methods of answering service, answering phones in our area that have evolved over the past few years. We have now, of course, the first big intergroup is New York intergroup, but there is another intergroup at the end of Long Island which has 96 groups, 85 of them contributing to their intergroup, and they do supply full intergroup service. However, they have a complicated method which is complicated to the phone system.
Every day, one person in their area stays home for 24 hours. There is someone in that house for 24 hours. The phones are so they have one central service number, but there is some kind of phone mechanism which can be had which switches the call from that number directly into the person's home, beginning at like, say, 6 a.m., it goes into that house. All phone calls from that area go into that house for the day, and so that is covered.
And they have stressed to people that if they give up one day a year, they can cover the phones. And in another area, they have two master books, and the master books have the names from all groups, and one group takes it for a week, and they have this all signed up, and they have the two books so that they can take the books from one group to the next group so that no one will ever be without the book, and that is how they operate.
But as you all know, New York intergroup serves the largest population in New York, and they have a central office which is very good. Okay. I guess you had your hand up. Yes, I'm Clara. I'm from the Inland Empire Central Office in Fogel, California. Hi. And I would like to ask you if you think that it is wise to incorporate a person's nonprofit state. How many central offices here are incorporated and find it better to do business?
How about asking how many are not? How many are not incorporated? I guess most of them are incorporated and find it. What are the advantages? Does someone want to get up and tell about the advantages? Doris? In New York, you could tell if you incorporate a nonprofit, but then you have the tax advantages. They're not telling you to tax sales tax or federal tax. And also, when you sign the lease, the temporary offices of your committee or your corporation sign it, and no person is responsible for signing the lease, so you have to question health and insurance.
But it is wise legally as well as the responsibility of the lawyers. Yes. Doris? Why don't you come up? There's something I just meant to mention earlier. We have a lot of trouble with the customs, of course, bringing literature from the U.S. into Canada. From time to time, I think we get a new customs agent who decides that he's going to charge us duty. And just for a little levity, this is all I bring this forward for.
I was down at the customs two weeks ago regarding some of our literature coming in from GSO, and I found a very suspicious customs agent who I said, well, we bring our literature in under educational literature. And he said, no, madam, you don't bring it in under educational literature. You bring it in under religious promotion. So I thought you might like to know. Yes, sir. Yes, anybody else? Must be.
Yes, sir. I'm Charlie. My turn. My turn. How do we get invited to the groups?
[00:55:00]
Yes, sir. Thank you. This is an old friend from Philadelphia. He's not a friend, but we invited, before Marvin was in, right? The white-haired guy? No, the other guy before him. Jack. He was invited down, and he got up and started to tell us about intergroup, and the reaction to it on our people, well, what the hell is he doing down here telling us how to run our intergroup, right? So you do run into problems.
We thought this was a good idea, and it was a good idea, but I mean this is some of the reaction that we had, and we're only 30 miles from a gentleman, right? So, but it is a good idea. It's a good idea. Yes, sir. Hi. Hi. Right. Okay. Okay, who wants to start on that? How do you raise funds for your intergroup? Want to try? Yeah, the guidelines. Yeah, the guidelines cover how to get support for an office, but Dorothy said not to try it.
She must have her reasons.