Welcome to GSO [Season 1, Episode 2]

- The views and opinions expressed during this podcast are those of our guests. No one person speaks for A.A. as a whole. - 475 Riverside Drive in New York City is where the General Service Office currently resides. We've been here since 1992. It's a beautiful location looking over the Hudson River. And if you, listener would like to come visit the office and see some of the many ways GSO supports A.A.'s primary purpose, you're more than welcome.

Tours are available every business day and we can't wait to see you. Just let us know ahead of time that you're coming so we can welcome you. Now, if you're not able to make the trip, that's no problem. We'll bring the office to you. You just take the 1 train up to 116th Street and stroll a few blocks to our building. Take the elevator up to the 11th floor past the wall covered in serenity prayers. - Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

- Translated into 26 languages plus braille and into the reception area where we'll start our tour. Welcome to GSO. - Hello, my name's Jake, I'm alcoholic. Hi, I am Mary and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, I am Jeanie and I'm an alcoholic. - Hi, I am Fred and I'm an - Alcoholic. - Hello, - I'm Richard Alcoholic. My name's Christopher I'm a recovered alcoholic. I'm Nathan, I'm an alcoholic. - And I am Marissa and I'm not an alcoholic, but I am gonna be your tour guide today.

- Marissa Sblendorio is a staff associate here at GSO. A.A. membership is not a requirement for all positions here at GSO, but there are some that do require membership. We'll learn more about those later. Leading these tours is one of the staff associates many assignments - Starting in 1938 the General Service Office grew up around Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, the General Service Office and the Grapevine offices occupy the entire 11th floor.

- In total, between these two service offices, there are approximately 100 employees working here at GSO. We begin our tour and our first stop is to view a sepia toned wall-mounted replica of a US map used by GSO headquarters from 1940 to 1945, covered in about 500 push pins. The GSO Archives department found a letter written by a staff member in 1940 explaining the use of the different colored pins.

- It reads, At our office, we have a large map worked out with a system of pins, white pins to indicate localities where weekly meetings are held. Red pins to indicate places where there are few men and women working towards weekly meetings and green pins to indicate individuals working alone. - The pins cover about 10% of the map. - If the map were updated today, every inch of it would be covered in pins. It's amazing how much the fellowship has grown since the 1930s.

- Heading down the hallway, we meet Sharon Vasquez, the Mets Manager, METS. METS stands for - Meeting Events and Travel Services department. Overall, we see all GSO driven events when it comes to conference, regional forums or any one of virtual events as well. - Then we see Beverly Jones-King. - This is Beverly. She is our, I'm gonna give you the correct title, our Executive and Legal Administrator. Beverly, would you mind just describing what you do here at AAWS?

Very briefly. Everything - legal is what they say. - Thank you, Beverly. And before we know it, we are in the office of the - General Manager. Bob W. - Please come in. It's amazing. Some 30 years ago I was on a bus on Riverside Drive down here when I was like, you know, whatever, sober a few months sober and, and, and I, I came on a tour of this office and I just pinch myself that I work here now. You know, it's just, it's such a privilege really.

It really is. I, I can't even believe I get paid to do this. I'm glad I get paid because it's a hard job, but it's, it's a blessing. It's an absolute blessing. Okay, - We'll be sitting down with Bob for a proper conversation later this season. So let's move on.

Down the hall from Bob's office to staff Services, everyone who works at GSO is an employee, but the 12 GSO staff members are all AA members and hold rotating positions of different regional correspondents and service assignments, like - Public information. This looks like a very busy office. Yes, - This has an - Office has a lot going - On, - A lot of papers on the table. A lot you, - They're all busy offices.

There's a lot of work to do and unfortunately we're not always available to meet all our visitors and this tour is no exception, but we do get to sit down and chat with Patrick on the Public Information desk in our next episode. So until then, let's move on down to Treatment and Accessibility - Here. Welcome everyone to the General Service Office. My name is Misha and I am an alcoholic.

So the Treatment and Accessibility desk is responsible not only for working with the trusted servants who work on Treatment and Accessibility, we also do Remote Communities, Bridging the Gap. We have trusted servants who work on H and I, - Which stands for Hospitals - And Institutions. We also have trusted servants who do cooperation with the elder community, and we work on LIM, which is the Loaners and Internationalist Meeting, which is an amazing thing to get to be a part of.

I cover correspondence for the East Central Region, and so I get to have emails with members who sometimes they email us with a question about something that's happening in their group or maybe there's a conflict over traditions and, but sometimes they, they don't know how to reach A.A. or they haven't figured out if they have a problem. Maybe in the middle of the night they just send an email like randomly to A.A. and they say, there was one I'm actually just answering right now.

And the person said, I'm really angry all the time and I can't stop drinking. So I get to answer that and I get to try and help them figure out where a meeting is near them, how to find a, a person that they can talk to that hopefully can help them connect with a message that we have here. - Does is A.A. in a business of recommending treatment centers? - No, that's a great question.

A.A. doesn't have any opinion on, on, on treatment centers on, we actually don't have any opinion on whether or not people should go to treatment. That is entirely a, a personal decision, a healthcare decision, one that people make with their families, with their physician. What A.A. does do, however, is recognize that many of the people who do go to treatment may self-identify as alcoholics and may make that decision that they need help and that Alcoholics Anonymous may have an answer for them.

- Can you maybe explain Remote Communities? Is - That is another fabulous question. Thank you so much. So Remote Communities are, are communities that we think of as having a, a challenges with finding, reaching, accessing the message of Alcoholics Anonymous because of barriers presented by culture, language or geography. So if you think about it, there are some communities that live in really geographically remote places that are far away from the closest A.A. meeting.

Maybe they're not even accessible by road. There are places that people have to fly into or take a boat or a sea plane or, and so in some of those places, getting access to the message is really challenging. We also know about geographically remote places is that many of them don't have great internet.

There are also probably right next door, if you live in a big urban area or even a small urban area, even a small town, there are probably people near you who speak languages other than the locally spoken majority language and who might need to hear our message of hope and recovery. So you could be walking down the street right here on this very block, and there might be somebody who speaks Farsi or Urdu or, or Bengali, who doesn't know that we exist.

And so we might think of them as as being in some ways a remote community. And then there are also people that find themselves unable or find it difficult to access the message because of cultural barriers. It might be that in their community there are additional barriers of stigma that prevent them from, from being able to reach out to us. And so I think there's, there's a challenge that we have to figure out how do we reach out to them?

- Moving on down the hall right next door to Misha. So - This is the Corrections assignment, - Eileen. I'm Eileen, I work on the Corrections desk. It's amazing. I always say this desk has spiritually rearranged me. - Later this season we're gonna talk corrections with Eileen in depth, but just to give you a bit of an idea of what the Corrections desk does.

- So the few services that we provide through the office are the Corrections, Correspondence Service, the Pre-release Contact Information, as well as we respond to over 80 to a hundred letters a week where we provide, we provide services to the person in custody, we respond to the letters and from the letters we create a newsletter called Sharing From Behind the Walls, which we produce every three months - Throughout the office.

Are photographs showing GSO and A.A. history. Outside the next office is A GSO favorite: a six foot tall, black and white picture from the 1968 International Congress of A.A. A man with a crew cut and skinny tie talks to a woman in a white shift, dress in matching cardigan and a bouffant hairdo in front of a sparkling tinsel decorated CPC display. CPC stands for - Cooperation with the Professional Community. - Welcome. Hi everyone, my name is Michael. I am the CPC Coordinator here at the GSO.

- We're gonna get more time with Michael in a later episode, but for now here is in essence what Cooperation with the Professional Community is. It's - Informing professionals and it can be any professional. We think of, of course, doctors, you know, nurses, mental health professionals.

But I've received inquiries from athletic coaches of a high school sports team, social workers, community centers, churches, nursing homes, HR departments, an owner of a small business, any professional we define as someone whose work might put them in touch with somebody who needs help. - Before we left Michael's office, a guest noticed a note stuck to Michael's computer monitor that read - Turn around.

So I don't like notes, I don't like stickies, but I have this one because sometimes, as you can see, I'm staring at computer screens. I need to remind myself, turn around, appreciate where I am, take a view out over the river. There's often a tugboat sitting out over there, moving some freight around.

I get to see across the river to New Jersey and I get to kind of just pause and breathe and then I can refocus and turn back around and I'll have a little bit more clarity and a little more serenity hopefully to bring that into my work. - For more information about A.A., please visit our website at aa.org. - And this way guys. We're gonna have... -So we continue around to some other staff and meet the staff associates, and then we stop at another department essential to the function of GSO.

- We're actually gonna go into the mail room right now. How are you? This is Aubrey. He's great. - Aubrey Pereira has worked here for more than 40 years and has seen GSO grow in two different locations. - We take care of all the incoming mail, which is about 40,000 pieces annually that we we do here and distribute 'em on the staff and, and all the different departments. And so we, whatever request we get that you guys send in to staff and they, they can send it outta here.

They respond to your emails and letters, it'll be done here. As far as product goes, we don't do any shipping outta here anymore. So it's, it goes outta Kansas City if it's within the United States, if it's going overseas, it'll go outta Canada. A little bit of economics, you know, it's cheaper to send it from Canada than it is to ship it from New York and it's a lot less hassle. So we look for every opportunity to make sure you get your stuff on time

and save some money at the same time. In case a fellow suffering alcoholic needs it, we have it. - Moving on. - Hi Member Services. - Member Services, handles matters of records, orders and contributions. If you contact GSO, there's a good chance that this department will be the one that helps you. Member Services is a part of - The Operations department. My name is Malini Singh and I'm the Director of Operations.

We manage over 1000 pieces of unique inventory, warehousing and shipping, the front desk and Member Services. - There are signs throughout the Member Services department that say, - Well, Member Services is not just a department, it's an attitude. - Margaret Matos, Member Services Manager, - If you would like to place an order, you can contact us. If you would like to make a contributions with your credit card, you can contact us. List a group, become a GSR, you can contact us.

We are seven busy bees here working to help the fellowship. - Member Services. How can I help you - You can place a book order with us so when you order in bulk, you - Get sure to do Contribution - Absolutely is as an individual contribution to your group. - Just last year we responded to over 27,000 emails. We processed 31,000 literature orders and we spoke to over 14,000 individuals over the phone helping them with all their needs.

Thank you for calling GSO, have a great day - To find a meeting near you or a meeting online ownload the Meeting Guide app on your mobile device. - Just around the corner from Member Services is Grapevine. Here's Chris, Grapevine Publisher. - So the Grapevine is a monthly magazine of A.A. sharing. It's a, it's a great way for members to share with one another in a, in a sort of mass media way. We're also involved in a podcast of our own. We've had a great response to that.

People can follow us on Instagram, apps for both Grapevine and La Viña Magazines. La Viña is our Spanish language magazine. - The development of The Grapevine. How did that come about? - Well, there was, there was a group, a group of people in New York who started a newsletter and they came to Bill W. in the New York office and, and pitched the idea of making a national newsletter. Marty M. was one of the original editors.

She was a good friend of Bill's and they pitched the idea and Bill loved it and they started the grapevine back, I think in 1944. Folks that are here will be able to see that. The first copy of The Grapevine, it's in our display case over there. - Grapevine, Editor in Chief, John W. showed us the display case, including that first copy of Grapevine. - Yeah, oh yeah. We also have the very first Grapevine. It looks like a newspaper. It was put out in 1944.

And we have that right here on in the frame. So the slogans you find on a meeting walls, they, they were all originally done by the Grapevine and that like that first things first and easy does it and one day at a time and think, think, think those all came from the Grapevine. I didn't know that until I worked here. Over 30 something books. We have a whole book full of military experiences in A.A. We have an atheist agnostic book, we have a woman's book, a book for young and sober members.

We have lots of books and many of them are in Spanish and French. And you know, the Spanish members love, love the books just like they love La Viña, which is the Spanish language magazine that we produce. - Oh, we gotta swing by La Viña. - Hey everybody, I am Paola. I am La Viña editor. La Viña is the international magazine of Alcoholics Anonymous, is the Spanish magazine that we have for the Hispanic members that write their recovery stories for our magazine.

We used to just translate Grapevine, you know, the stories from the gGrapevine into Spanish. But now because the community, the Hispanic community has grown so much, we receive so many stories in Spanish and we are able to only publish Spanish stories from our Hispanic members. Thanks everybody. Have a great time. Wonderful. - For more information on Grapevine and La Viña, including the magazine's podcast, Instagram and apps, please visit aagrapevine.org and aa aalavina.org.

- Switching gears next to Grapevine and La Viña is our Finance department. Let's meet our chief financial officer, Paul Konigstein. - Hey guys, come on in. This is Paul. So you tell us about finance, Paul. - So finance's primary function is to make a record of all the activities of the organization. So record of all the contributions received of all the literature sold and of all the expenditures made to help carry the message.

So we have a team of eight people who make sure that that information is recorded timely and accurately and they categorize it to different accounts so that we can understand where the money is coming from and how it's being used.

And my responsibility is to take that information and then turn it into something that's understandable to non-financial people so that I create reports for the trustees and for the fellowship that show whether as Kevin, the general service board treasurer likes to say, AAWS and Grapevine are on a sustainable path. - How do you go about like validating that the money's coming from an A.A. member? In some of those, it seems like a very difficult mission to figure that out.

- On the contribution envelope, there's a box to check if they're a member and if the box is not checked, then someone on the contributions team attempts to contact them to confirm whether they're a member. And if we can't confirm that they're a member, then we return the contribution. If someone is contributing online, the online form has a box to check that says, I'm a member and you can't go any further unless you check that box.

- Come this way guys. We're gonna have - Our next stop was the Communication Services Department where we ask the Director what responsibilities the department handles, - What does that entail? That entails, as you may know, a variety of responsibilities including our website, aa.org, the Meeting Guide app, our social media platforms, LinkedIn and YouTube, Google ads, analytics for our platforms, newsletters including Box 459 and About A.A., mass communications to the fellowship.

For example, messages from the General mManager news about publishing. And Sam, am I forgetting anything that - The - Podcast, the podcast is a joint project with PI that we're very excited about. - So talk about the podcast. On the podcast. - Exactly. And our final stop is gonna be with publishing with David. Hey. Hi David, how are you? - Well, this is where it's all happens.

Yeah, the publishing department, we implement all of the advisory actions that affect book, booklets, pamphlets, guidelines, everything that's the written word and the other forms of communications. We work very closely with the communications department. We're very happy to share our space so we can collaborate and share resources to fulfill our responsibilities.

You know, carrying the message to the sick and suffering Alcoholic is our mission and we like to think that we do that and we extend the hand of A.A. And in that hand perhaps is an item of literature, maybe a Big Book, maybe a link to the website, maybe an audio book. We're seeing a huge uptick in interest and in consumption of our audio book material.

Also projects like how can we print more effectively our, our big focus for us with our print production and distribution, the new jacketless hardcovers are a godsend, it's very popular format in trade publishing. Now for the first time we have the big book and the 12 and 12 in this gorgeous, gorgeous show them what they won. A jacketless hardcover that cuts down on the delivery time, saves in the expense category. We're always looking on how to contain costs for the fellowship.

This is dollars in the basket and we can do that with new formats and we're working on some others. So stay tuned. - Stay tuned indeed, because besides hearing more from David later in the season, we are just cracking the surface of all we have to share with you, including rarely before heard recordings from the GSO Archives. There is far too much to share from Archives to include in this episode, which is why we will be dedicating an entire episode to it later in the season.

If you are interested in visiting GSO in person, you can schedule a tour by emailing gsotours@aa.org or calling 212-870-3430. For current and all past issues of Sharing from Behind the Walls, please visit the Newsletter section of the Resources tab on aa.org. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe so you can keep coming back. - In this podcast we respect the anonymity of AA members. Last names are shared only For those who are not in A.A.

Thank you for listening to our Primary Purpose, a podcast produced by the General Service Office on behalf of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in the US and Canada.