Illustration · An imagined meeting-room table after an AA meeting in 1955, the night’s collection counted out beside the group’s account book: stacks of coins, two dollar bills, an envelope for the office in New York, the Big Book, and an empty whiskey bottle made into a bank, as that year’s Conference suggested. Not drawn from a photograph.

Book money

AA turned down outside money, but about half its groups sent New York nothing, and for years the Big Book paid the office’s bills.

“That Headquarters reserve of ‘book money’ has had to foot the ten deficits.”

Bill W., on fifteen years of the office’s books · AA Grapevine, June 1955

Who pays

In 1945 AA’s trustees wrote to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the guests of his 1940 dinner that AA no longer needed their money. (The basket, in Keep Coming Back, tells of the dinner, and of the dollar a year the office first asked of the groups in 1941.) The book’s royalties would look after Dr. Bob and Bill W., the groups would pay for the office, and, Bill wrote, “if these were insufficient, the reserve accumulated out of literature sales could meet the deficit.”

They often were. Many groups, Bill wrote, “failed to help us at all. Less than half of them contributed anything.” In the late 1940s the groups’ gifts fell short of the office’s bills by $2,000 a month, and the Grapevine was losing nearly half as much again. Even so, the trustees turned down $10,000 left to AA in a will. The difference came out of the Big Book. The book, Bill wrote, had become “the financial cornerstone of the Headquarters and the guarantor of our solvency.”

It paid its authors, too. The Foundation, which by then owned the book, gave Dr. Bob and Bill a royalty of 10 percent each. It was, the Foundation told the groups in 1950, “for many years their only income from A.A. sources.” After Dr. Bob’s death that November, the first General Service Conference approved raising Bill’s to 15 percent. (About fifty homes, in Number One Man, tells how the royalties were settled.)

When the delegates to that first Conference looked over the books in April 1951, the office had lost $12,853 the year before. Its budget for 1951 was $107,000, and the Conference asked the groups for $2 a member. That year the groups gave about $21,000 more than the year before, and the office came within $17.83 of breaking even.

It didn’t last. In 1955 Bill wrote that a dollar a member had once been enough to run the office, “But at that time, a dollar was a dollar. Today, a dollar is only fifty cents.” Only about half the groups gave anything, he said, and in fifteen years the groups had paid the office’s bills in full in only five; “book money” had covered the deficits in the other ten. The delegates went home with ideas: a gift from each member on an AA birthday, four cents a week, even an empty whiskey bottle made into a bank and marked “Pour it in, Don’t pour it out.”

The Conference set a ceiling, too. From 1957 no member was to give more than $100 a year, and in 1967 the limit went up to $200. That October Bill wrote that AA wanted no charity and paid for its own services. “We understand—but we sometimes forget.”

Listen Book money About 1 minute

The office’s books

Ten deficits in fifteen years

What the office in New York asked of AA’s members, and how its books came out, in the figures AA’s own reports give. Losses are in red and in brackets, as a bookkeeper writes them.

Only the years a source gives a figure for are listed. The squares for 1955 show Bill’s count, not which years were which; he said only that in the first two, before the groups were asked, book money paid everything.

1941
Asked of each group, for each member, each year. Bill W., 1947
$1
1945
Gifts from outside AA, from now on. AA Comes of Age
none
1947
The reserve, built out of book income: more than a full year of the office’s expenses. Bill W., 1947
a year+
1950
The reserve, from book income, kept against “a severe depression or inflation”: about a year of the office’s expenses. The Alcoholic Foundation, 1950
a year
1950
The office’s loss for the year. AA Grapevine, June 1952
($12,853.00)
1951
Asked for each member: $2, on a budget of $107,000. The groups gave about $21,000 more than in 1950. The office’s loss for the year: The Conference of 1951; AA Grapevine, June 1952
($17.83)
1952
What the groups’ fund owed the Foundation. The Conference of 1952
($24,000)
1955
Bill’s count of the last fifteen years: the groups’ gifts paid the office’s bills in full in five, and book money covered the deficits in the other ten. Bill W., 1955
5 of 15
- Paid in full by the groups
- Deficit covered by book money
1955
Suggested to every member: “4 cents a week is more than $2 per year.” The Conference of 1955
4¢ a week
1957
The most one member may give in a year. The Conference of 1957
$100
1959
Asked for each member, each year. The Conference of 1959
$3
1964
The reserve at the end of the year, built partly from discounts on books the groups gave up. The Conference of 1965
$307,775.26
1967
The most one member may give in a year. The Conference of 1967
$200

Paid by the book

In ten of the office’s first fifteen years, by Bill’s count, the groups’ gifts didn’t cover the bills, and the Big Book made up the difference. AA’s office says the same today.

For a closer look

Go deeper

When New York first asked the groups for money; how the Conference tried to get them to give; and the reserve the book built.

The first appeal

When did New York first ask AA’s members for money? In the order the accounts were set down:

1947. With the Saturday Evening Post article of 1941 on its way, “We realized we must, for the first time, ask the AA groups for assistance.” Two trustees, Horace C. and Bert T., went out to the groups. Every group would get the same service from the office, whether it gave or not. Bill W., in the Grapevine.
1957. The same year and the same request, “for the first time we asked the A.A. groups to help,” but made after the article: “Following the Post piece,” the trustees, here “Howard and Bert,” went on the road, one to Philadelphia and Washington, the other to Akron and Cleveland. Bill W., in AA Comes of Age.
1985. At the first Conference, in 1951, with the book’s income too small to keep the office going, “the first appeal to A.A. members for support was written.” Bob P., in his unpublished history.

Bob P. doesn’t say how the appeal of 1951 differed from the request of 1941.

Pour it in

Year after year the Conference asked the groups to give more, and more of them to give. Its ideas, in its own reports:

1955. The Birthday Plan, “which has been successful in Oklahoma,” on top of the groups’ gifts; meetings set aside for Headquarters; a share of every collection; and banks “possibly in the form of empty whiskey bottles.”
1956. Ten cents a week for six months, to catch up; and Thanksgiving Week as “A.A. Gratitude Week,” with an appeal each year.
1957. Twenty cents a month from each member, sent in every month “rather than twice a year.”
1964. A Monthly Sharing Plan, tried in six areas: contributions up 60 percent, and 33 percent more groups giving.

The reserve

From 1941 the book’s net income went into the Foundation, and “whenever the groups failed to meet office expenses this reserve fund could plug the deficit, as it frequently did for many years,” Bill wrote. By 1947 it held more than a year of the office’s expenses.

In 1950 the Alcoholic Foundation set out the arrangement for the groups in a pamphlet, with a chart. The groups’ money kept the General Service Office; the book’s money, through the Foundation’s Works Publishing, went to the reserve.

How the Alcoholic Foundation Serves A.A.

The groupsSend money to keep the office, and entrust their traditions to the Foundation.

The Alcoholic FoundationCustodian, adviser and agent, by the groups’ consent.

The bookOwned and published through Works Publishing, Inc. “Revenue to general reserve.”
The General Service OfficeA staff of eighteen, “Maintained by Group contributions.”
The GrapevineThe monthly magazine, its finances “guaranteed by the Foundation.”

Redrawn from the chart in The Alcoholic Foundation, a pamphlet of 1950.

1952–1953. The groups’ fund owed the Foundation $24,000, then $20,000. If the reserve ever needed building up, the Conference said, the groups might be asked to pay full price for their books.
1954–1964. In 1954 the Conference voted, sixty-eight to seven, to end the groups’ discount on the Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve; from 1955 the groups gave up part of it instead. The money went into the reserve, which reached $307,775.26 by the end of 1964.
1965–1967. The discounts went instead to pensions for the staff of the office and the Grapevine, and the board was free to use the reserve’s interest.

In September 2024 the reserve held about $11.8 million, a little over six months of the office’s operating expenses, against a target of nine to twelve.

Sources

Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Service: The Third Legacy” (the request of 1941; the letter of 1945; less than half the groups; the deficits of the late 1940s; the cornerstone).
The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “Last Seven Years Have Made AA Self-Supporting” (August 1947), “A Letter to the Groups” (July 1954), “How AA’s World Services Grew, Part II” (June 1955), “Respecting Money” (November 1957) and “AA’s Tradition of Self-Support” (October 1967), first printed in the AA Grapevine.
“AA General Service Conference: Progress, Humility, Unity, Mark Sessions of Delegates,” AA Grapevine, June 1952 (the office’s years 1950 and 1951), scan at silkworth.net.
AA World Services, Advisory Actions of the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1951–2022 (M-39), finance actions of 1951–1967.
Arthur S., A Narrative Timeline of AA History, 2009 (Bill’s royalty raised in 1951).
Bob P., “The General Service Conferences,” chapter 11 of his manuscript history of AA, 1985, unpublished, at silkworth.net (the first appeal; the limit of 1967).
AA World Services, “Contributions and Self-Support” (the limits today), Self-Support (F-42, 2025) and the Quarterly Report, Fourth Quarter 2024 (the reserve).
The Alcoholic Foundation (pamphlet). The Alcoholic Foundation, New York, 1950. “Income from the Book” (the reserve; the royalty) and the chart “How the Alcoholic Foundation Serves A.A.,” from photographs of a copy by Recovery Collectibles.