Group Inventory Night
A group inventory is not a report card. It is a chance for the group to look honestly at how it is carrying its message, living its Traditions, and serving its members and the alcoholic who still suffers.
For whoever facilitates
- Do not score the group or total answers.
- Keep notes about group practices, not attacks on individual personalities.
- If a genuine safety concern surfaces, separate it from ordinary inventory discussion and address it directly.
- Consider limiting the number of questions used in one night rather than rushing through every category.
- Invite minority viewpoints before closing a topic.
Primary purpose
- What is the basic purpose of our group?
- How well are we reaching the alcoholic who still suffers?
- What happens when a newcomer walks in?
- Does our meeting content stay connected to alcoholism and recovery in AA?
- Are there people our current practices unintentionally make it hard to welcome?
Meetings and participation
- Are meetings starting and ending reasonably on time?
- Do members have real opportunities to participate?
- Are a few people doing nearly everything?
- Do newer members know how to get involved in service?
- Are our formats still serving the group, or are we keeping customs nobody remembers choosing?
Traditions
- Which Traditions seem to come naturally to us?
- Which Traditions repeatedly become difficult in practice?
- Are money, outside affiliations, publicity, or personalities pulling us away from primary purpose?
- Do we understand the difference between group autonomy and actions that affect other groups or AA as a whole?
- Are we using 'the Traditions' as questions for conscience, or as weapons against one another?
Service and rotation
- Do trusted servants know what the group asked them to do?
- Is rotation happening often enough to let new people learn?
- Are outgoing servants handing off useful information instead of making the next person reinvent the job?
- Does the group support its GSR and other trusted servants with attention as well as election?
- Are service positions treated as authority, burden, status, or useful work?
Finances
- Are financial reports simple enough that ordinary members can understand them?
- Does the group know what its prudent reserve is for and why it chose that amount?
- Are funds being used for AA purposes determined by the group conscience?
- Are contributions to local and general AA services discussed openly rather than handled by habit?
- Are financial safeguards adequate without making service unnecessarily complicated?
Safety and accessibility
- Do members know what to do if someone behaves in a threatening, harassing, or seriously disruptive way?
- Can members with common mobility, hearing, vision, language, childcare, transportation, or technology barriers participate as fully as practical?
- Does the physical or online meeting environment protect privacy reasonably?
- Are newcomers ever pressured, cornered, or made to feel they must tolerate conduct that compromises safety?
- Do we know where to find current AA safety guidance when we need it?
Wider AA
- Does the group hear regularly from its GSR?
- Do members know what district, Area, and intergroup/central office are for where those services exist?
- Does the group participate in service beyond its own room in a way consistent with its resources?
- Are meeting information and trusted-servant contacts kept current with the appropriate AA entities?
- Do we bring wider AA information back to the group in a form members can actually understand?
Unity and communication
- Can disagreement happen here without people being shamed or pushed out?
- Do business meetings make room for minority opinion?
- Are decisions recorded well enough that the next business meeting knows what was decided?
- When conflict arises, do we separate personalities from the actual service question?
- Are there old unresolved decisions or resentments quietly running the group?
Spiritual life
- Do we behave as though trusted servants serve rather than govern?
- Does the group leave room for members with different understandings of a Higher Power?
- Are principles before personalities visible in how we conduct business as well as in what we say?
- Are we becoming more useful to alcoholics, or mainly more comfortable with ourselves?
Where we go from here
Where AA talks about this
- What does "informed group conscience" in A.A. mean? (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.)
- The Twelve Traditions (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.)
- A.A. Guidelines on Safety and A.A. Groups (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.)
- The A.A. Service Manual combined with Twelve Concepts for World Service, 2024-2026 (Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.)
Nothing you type or choose here is saved or sent. It stays on this screen and disappears when you close or refresh the page.