Last Updated on 26 November 2023
The Twelve Concepts for World Service of SLAA
- Ultimate responsibility and authority for SLAA world services always reside in the collective conscience of our whole Fellowship.
- The Annual Business Conference, by delegation, is the voice and conscience for our world services and of SLAA as a whole.
- To insure effective leadership, each element of SLAA – the Conference, the Board of Trustees, staff, and committees – all possess the “Right of Decision.”
- The “Right of Participation” is maintained by allowing members the opportunity to cast one vote up to the level at which they are trusted servants.
- The “Right of Appeal” prevails so that minority opinion is heard and personal grievances receive careful consideration.
- The Conference recognizes that the chief initiative and active responsibility in most world service matters should be exercised by the trustee members of the Conference acting as the Board of Trustees.
- The Articles of Incorporation and the By-Laws of the Fellowship are legal instruments, empowering the trustees to manage and conduct world service affairs. Although the Conference Charter is a legal document; it also relies on tradition and the power of the SLAA purse for final effectiveness.
- 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, including their ability to hire staff.
- Good service leaders, together with sound and appropriate methods of choosing them, are at all levels indispensable for our future functioning and safety. The primary world service leadership must be assumed by the Board of Trustees.
- Every service responsibility is matched by equal service authority – the scope of this authority is always well defined whether by tradition, by resolution, by specific job description or by appropriate charters and by-laws.
- The trustees need the best possible committees, staff, and consultants. Composition, qualifications, induction procedures, systems of rotation, and rights and duties are always matters of serious concern.
- The Conference observes the spirit of SLAA Tradition:
a) taking care that it never becomes the seat of perilous wealth or power;
b) that sufficient operating funds and reserve be its prudent financial principle;
c) that it place none of its members in a position of unqualified authority over others;
d) that it reach all important decisions by discussion, vote, and, whenever possible, by substantial unanimity;
e) that its actions never be personally punitive nor an incitement to public controversy;
f) that it never perform acts of government, and that, like the Fellowship it serves, it will always remain democratic in thought and action.
©2012 The Augustine Fellowship, SLAA, Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Twelve Concepts of Alcoholics Anonymous are adapted with the permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (“AAWS”). Permission to adapt the Twelve Concepts does not mean that Alcoholics Anonymous is affiliated with this program. AA is a program of recovery from alcoholism only – use of AA’s Concepts or an adapted version in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after AA, but which address other problems, or use in any other non-AA context, does not imply otherwise.
