OIAA Chair Report

— 1 September, 2026 —

Announcements

OIAA2026 Registration is Open!

OIAA2026 – Registration Is Open: Registration is now open for the OIAA Online International Convention, Friday, November 20 through Sunday, November 22, 2026. I have already registered!!

TechSteppers Coffee Talk

Weekly open discussion of tech and safety in AA. Zoom Meeting ID: 831 1330 3832; Passcode: web. English, with no live interpretation; automated interpretation may be used.

OIAA Service Opportunities

OIAA committees continue seeking trusted servants willing to participate in service.

Technology Chair:

One Officer of the Board position, Technology Chair, is up for election at the December Assembly. Please review the qualifications and submit your resume by November 1 to secretary@aa-intergroup.org. Prospective candidates are encouraged to meet with the current Technology Chair to discuss qualifications and time commitment. The Technology Committee meets the first and third Monday at 8:00 p.m. ET. Contact tech.chair@aa-intergroup.org.

• Technology Chairperson Duties & Qualifications
• Resume Presentation Page

Upcoming

September Quarterly Assembly: The Assembly page is posted. The agenda includes Officer Reports, Secretary’s Minutes, Treasurer’s Report, and the Internal Financial Review.

• IGR Forum – Fourth Saturday in October: Planning is underway. Please send topics of interest to the Vice Chair at vice.chair@aa-intergroup.org. Contact information will be provided with the Forum announcement.
• CPC Workshop: Planning continues for an upcoming CPC workshop, tentatively scheduled for January.
• December Assembly – December 21, 2:00 p.m. ET: The December Assembly will include elections and approval of the 2027 budget.

---

Chair’s Message to the Membership:
From Where I Serve…
September 2026

We did not arrive at this late summer without some bumps in the road.

The first months of this year required some course corrections. The Unity Convention OIAA2026 budget line item had to be reworked. Convention planning time was shortened, and our excess-funds disbursement was delayed.

But we caught up.

And from where I serve, what matters to me isn’t that we caught up.

It is how.

People stepped into need.

Some of our service happens quietly. An email is answered. A new group finds its way into our directory. A request for help reaches a 12 Stepper. A financial decision of the Assembly becomes literature carrying the message somewhere in the world. The technology works so reliably that most of us never have to think about the people keeping it running.

Other service reaches outward. People visit groups. New IGRs are welcomed and mentored. Workshops are created. Our international members bring perspectives we might otherwise miss. Committees reach across committee lines and discover that something works better when we do it together.

And people are passing service on.

Someone with experience helps the person who will serve next. Someone builds a team instead of becoming indispensable. Someone sees a gap and steps into it. Someone asks, “How can I help?”

That may be what I mean when I say that this late summer has brought a kind of quietude to OIAA.

It isn’t quiet. Good heavens, no.

It is people doing the work without needing to make noise about who gets the credit.

Cooperation. Communication. Collaboration.

You can see it in OIAA2026. After losing precious planning time early in the year, Unity kept going. We now have a three-day international convention ahead of us. Host registrations were completed in early summer, and individual registration is now open.

But Unity has also spent this panel finding new ways to carry OIAA service to our groups: a Liaison Team that visits groups, monthly workshops introducing IGRs to our services and responsibilities, and work with our Registrar and PAC’s new IGR Steppers one-on-one mentoring service.

And for the first time, our committee chairs have been invited into two program slots at OIAA2026.

That particularly delights me.

In June, our chairs reported directly to you. In July, they opened their doors at our Service Expo. In November, they will have another opportunity to tell the Fellowship what they do and how they serve.

Not because committees are the important thing.

Because service is.

Somewhere in all of this, relationships are being built too. We call one another. We run an idea past someone we trust. We laugh. We disagree. We figure things out. And sometimes the person who began as a fellow trusted servant becomes a friend.

That may be the part of service we don’t put on an organizational chart.

PIC, PAC, Communications, Finance, Technology and 12 Steppers work quietly, answering the calls for help that come to OIAA every day. Unity, CPC and Conventions reach outward, creating ways to connect, learn and carry the message. And some service looks years ahead: our Conventions team is already planning St. Louis 2030.

From where I serve, I get to see it.

At the lowest point of the A.A. triangle, I see people looking toward the Fellowship we are here to serve—and looking around at one another for the next place we are needed.

Stepping into need.

Again and again.

Not perfectly.Together

---

I Have Been Thinking about the Tradition Nine…

“A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.”

This monthI have been thinking about the words service boards and committees.

Our Traditions are suggestions, not rules. They guide us rather than govern us.

OIAA, however, is also a 501(c)(3) organization incorporated in the State of New Jersey. We have bylaws because, as a nonprofit corporation, we are required to have them. We are a service board, not an AA group. And in order to serve our groups effectively, we have to create some guardrails for ourselves.

That is where our Guidelines come in.

They are not rules for Alcoholics Anonymous.

They are the best practices we have created for ourselves—through our own group conscience—to help us conduct OIAA’s business while reflecting, as faithfully as we can, the spiritual essence of Alcoholics Anonymous and our 36 Principles.

Our bylaws provide the framework we are required to have. Our Guidelines expand upon that framework with best practices hammered out on the anvils of experience—the accumulated experience of trusted servants learning what helps us work together and serve our groups effectively.

Our Guidelines were approved by the Board and Assembly in March 2024. They are now being reviewed carefully by our Ad Hoc Guidelines Committee. Completed sections are reviewed by the Board, shared with members for review and discussion, and ultimately will return to an Assembly for group conscience.

Both our bylaws and our Guidelines establish rules for how OIAA conducts its business. But neither should become a weapon we use against one another.

They should not be pulled out to prove that one person is right and another is wrong. They preserve our shared experience, help us find our way through disagreement, and keep us responsible to those we serve.

Nor do we use them to judge how others follow the Traditions within their autonomous groups, or how another AA service board conducts its affairs.

We have no opinion on that. We can only share what our experience has shown us.

Different service entities can look at the same question and reach different group consciences. One may decide not to accept a particular kind of contribution; another may decide that it can. OIAA is responsible for OIAA’s group conscience. We do not need to decide that one is right and the other wrong.

When a group asks to join OIAA, our Policy and Admissions Committee uses AA literature, including The A.A. Group (P-16), as guidance for what constitutes an AA group. We also ask each group for a Traditions Statement:

“We are a Group of Alcoholics Anonymous and we adhere to the Traditions to the best of our ability, particularly that of primary purpose (#5) and no outside affiliation (#6).”

Once a group is listed in our directory, however, we do not govern how that autonomous group conducts its meetings. When a complaint about a listed group comes to us, we investigate it, provide a fair review, and respond. And, as our Terms of Use make clear, listing in the OIAA directory does not constitute endorsement.

Those are our guardrails.

But they are guardrails for us—not rules for everyone else.

Tradition Nine gives us room to create the service structure we need while reminding us why that structure exists: to be directly responsible to those we serve.

That is the 36 Principles in action.

That is how we serve without governing.

We serve by example to help you carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

And there is a place for you in that service.

Join us in service.

It is a mouse click away.

Gratefully submitted,
Susan R
OIAA Chair
Questions or Comments: chair@aa-intergroup.org