Annual Conference
The General Service Conference is the practical means by which the group conscience in Great Britain can express itself in matters that concern the Fellowship as a whole. AA members from across Great Britain gather at the annual conference, which takes place in York, usually in April, to determine a response on each concern raised by the Fellowship.
To understand how this works, it helps to know a little bit about the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Think of it like an upside-down pyramid.
Unlike most organisations, which are ruled from the top down, AA takes its lead from the Fellowship – the thousands of members who regularly attend AA groups across Great Britain and English-speaking meetings in Continental Europe.
Individuals or groups in the Fellowship of AA can raise questions they have for the conference about issues that affect the Fellowship as a whole or in relation to the goods and services that the General Service Board provides on behalf of the Fellowship. Members are kept informed of how and when to raise and submit questions, in advance of the conference, via the AA Service News.
Questions selected for consideration at Conference are published in the Winter edition of AA Service News each year. Once published for the Fellowship, questions can be discussed at Group meetings and the conscience of the Group agreed on any or all the published questions.
Each AA group can nominate someone to represent them at Intergroup level. These General Service Representatives (GSR’s) attend regular Intergroup meetings and connect their Group to the Service Structure. GSR’s take the Group Conscience for Conference questions to their Intergroup.
Regional Representatives (RR’s) are elected at Intergroup and connect the Intergroups to one of 16 regions in Great Britain and Continental Europe. The Intergroup conscience for Questions for Conference is sent to their Region and collated for discussion. Any points that require clarification at Region can be addressed by the RR’s.
Regions elect Conference Delegates whose role is to take the collective conscience of Alcoholics Anonymous from Region to the annual Conference.
Alcoholics Anonymous has a charitable body, known as the General Service Board, which oversees the maintenance, legal and financial work that supports and safeguards the AA Fellowship. Trustees are members of the Fellowship, nominated from the regional level, to sit on the Board and participate in the Conference process.
Members of the fellowship discuss Conference questions at the conference and act as the ‘active voice’ and ‘group conscience’ of the Fellowship, raising any concerns, questions, or operational matters that the Fellowship may have.
The responses to these questions are drafted and published via our newsletters and in the AA Service News. A Conference report is produced each year and copies are available to download from our online Document Library.
A simple majority vote by conference is a recommendation to the board and the fellowship to put a proposal into action, whilst a 2/3rds majority is a binding recommendation on the Board to carry out the conscience of conference, except when to do so would contravene the Board’s own legal and financial responsibilities.
In this way, Conference, though it does not govern, serves the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in Great Britain.
In order to safeguard the founding purpose and mission of AA, changes can’t be made to our core principles: The Twelve Steps or Twelve Traditions without three quarters of all groups worldwide agreeing to the proposed change.