Tradition Seven
"Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside
contributions."
SELF-SUPPORTING alcoholics? Who ever heard of such a thing? Yet we find
that's what we have to be. This principle is telling evidence of the
profound change that A.A. has wrought in all of us. Everybody knows
that active alcoholics scream that they have no troubles money can't
cure. Always, we've had our hands out. Time out of mind we've been
dependent upon somebody, usually money-wise. When a society composed
entirely of alcoholics says it's going to pay its bills, that's really
news.
Probably no A.A. Tradition had the labor pains this one did. In early
times, we were all broke. When you add to this the habitual supposition
that people ought to give money to alcoholics trying to stay sober, it
can be understood why we thought we deserved a pile of folding money.
What great things A.A. would be able to do with it! But oddly enough,
people who had money thought otherwise. They figured that it was high
time we now--sober--paid our own way. So our Fellowship stayed poor
because it had to.
There was another reason for our collective poverty. It was soon
apparent that while alcoholics would spend lavishly on Twelfth Step
cases, they had a terrific aversion to dropping money into a
meeting-place hat for group purposes. We were astounded to find that we
were as tight as the bark on a tree. So A.A., the movement, started and
stayed broke, while its individual members waxed prosperous.
Alcoholics are certainly all-or-nothing people. Our reactions to money
prove this. As A.A. emerged from its infancy into adolescence, we swung
from the idea that we needed vast sums of money to the notion that A.A.
shouldn't have any. On every lip were the words "You can't mix A.A. and
money. We shall have to separate the spiritual from the material." We
took this violent new tack because here and there members had tied to
make money out of their A.A. connections, and we feared we'd be
exploited. Now and then, grateful benefactors had endowed clubhouses,
and as a result there was sometimes outside interference in our
affairs. We had been presented with a hospital, and almost immediately
the donor's son became its principal patient and would-be manager. One
A.A. group was given five thousand dollars to do with what it would.
The hassle over that chunk of money played havoc for years. Frightened
by these complications, some groups refused to have a cent in their
treasuries.
Despite these misgivings, we had to recognize the fact that A.A. had to
function. Meeting places cost something. To save whole areas from
turmoil, small offices had to be set up, telephones installed, and a
few full-time secretaries hired. Over many protests, these things were
accomplished. We saw that if they weren't, the man coming in the door
couldn't get a break. These simple services would require small sums of
money which we could and would pay ourselves. At last the pendulum
stopped swinging and pointed straight at Tradition Seven as it reads
today.
In this connection, Bill likes to tell the following pointed story. He
explains that when Jack Alexander's Saturday Evening Post piece broke
in 1941, thousands of frantic letters from distraught alcoholics and
their families hit the Foundation* letterbox in New York. "Our office
staff," Bill says, "consisted of two people: one devoted secretary and
myself. How could this landslide of appeals be met? We'd have to have
some more full-time help, that was sure. So we asked the A.A. groups
for voluntary contributions. Would they send us a dollar a member a
year? Otherwise this heartbreaking mail would have to go unanswered.
"To my surprise, the response of the groups was slow. I got mighty sore
about it. Looking at this avalanche of mail one morning at the office,
I paced up and down ranting how irresponsible and tightwad my fellow
members were. Just then an old acquaintance stuck a tousled and aching
head in the door. He was our prize slippee. I could see he had an awful
hangover. Remembering some of my own, my heart filled with pit. I
motioned him to my inside cubicle and produced a five-dollar bill. As
my total income was thirty dollars a week at the time, this was a
fairly large donation. Lois really needed the money for groceries, but
that didn't stop me. The intense relief on my friend's face warmed my
heart. I felt especially virtuous as I thought of all the ex-drunks who
wouldn't even send the Foundation a dollar apiece, and here I was
gladly making a five-dollar investment to fix a hangover.
"The meeting that night was at New York's old 24th Street Clubhouse.
During the intermission, the treasurer gave a timid talk on how broke
the club was. (That was in the period when you couldn't mix money and
A.A.) But finally he said it--the landlord would put us out if we
didn't pay up. He concluded his remarks by saying, "Now boys, please go
heavier on the hat tonight, will you?"
"I heard all this quite plainly, as I was piously trying to convert a
newcomer who sat next to me. The hat came in my direction, and I
reached into my pocket. Still working on my prospect, I fumbled and
came up with a fifty-cent piece. Somehow it looked like a very big
coin. Hastily, I dropped it back and fished out a dime, which clinked
thinly as I dropped it in the hat. Hats never got folding money in
those days.
"Then I woke up. I who had boasted my generosity that morning was
treating my own club worse than the distant alcoholics who had
forgotten to send the Foundation their dollars. I realized that my
five-dollar gift to the slippee was an ego-feeding proposition, bad for
him and bad for me. There was a place in A.A. where spirituality and
money would mix, and that was in the hat!"
There is another story about money. One night in 1948, the trustees of
the Foundation were having their quarterly meeting. The agenda
discussion included a very important question. A certain lady had died.
When her will was read, it was discovered she had left Alcoholics
Anonymous in trust with the Alcoholic Foundation a sum of ten thousand
dollars. The question was: Should A.A. take the gift?
What a debate we had on that one! The Foundation was really hard up
just then; the groups weren't sending in enough for the support of the
office; we had been tossing in all the book income and even that hadn't
been enough. The reserve was melting like snow in springtime. We needed
that ten thousand dollars. "Maybe," some said, "the groups will never
fully support the office. We can't let it shut down; it's far too
vital. Yes, let's take the money. Let's take all such donations in the
future. We're going to need them."
Then came the opposition. They pointed out that the Foundation board
already knew of a total of half a million dollars set aside for A.A. in
the wills of people still alive. Heaven only knew how much there was we
hadn't heard about. If outside donations weren't declined, absolutely
cut off, then the Foundation would one day become rich. Moreover, at
the slightest intimation to the general public from our trustees that
we needed money, we could become immensely rich. Compared to this
prospect, the ten thousand dollars under consideration wasn't much, but
like the alcoholic's first drink it would, if taken, inevitably set up
a disastrous chain reaction. Where would that land us? Whoever pays the
piper is apt to call the tune, and if the A.A. Foundation obtained
money from outside sources, its trustees might be tempted to run things
without reference to the wishes of A.A. as a while. Relieved of
responsibility, every alcoholic would shrug and say, "Oh, the
Foundation is wealthy--why should I bother?" The pressure of that fat
treasury would surely tempt the board to invent all kinds of schemes to
do good with such funds, and so divert A.A. from its primary purpose.
The moment that happened, our Fellowship's confidence would be shaken.
The board would be isolated, and would fall under heavy attack of
criticism from both A.A. and the public. These were the possibilities,
pro and con.
Then our trustees wrote a bright page of A.A. history. They declared
for the principle that A.A. must always stay poor. Bare running
expenses plus a prudent reserve would henceforth be the Foundation's
financial policy. Difficult as it was, they officially declined that
ten thousand dollars, and adopted a formal, airtight resolution that
all such future gifts would be similarly declined. At that moment, we
believe, the principle of corporate poverty was firmly and finally
embedded in A.A. tradition.
When these facts were printed, there was a profound reaction. To people
familiar with endless drives for charitable funds, A.A. presented a
strange and refreshing spectacle. Approving editorials here and abroad
generated a wave of confidence in the integrity of Alcoholics
Anonymous. They pointed out that the irresponsible had become
responsible, and that by making financial independence part of its
tradition, Alcoholics Anonymous had revived an ideal that its era had
almost forgotten. * In 1954, the name of the Alcoholic Foundation,
Inc., was changed to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous,
Inc., and the Foundation office is now the General Service Office.
Back To Traditions