Committee Guidelines

Literature Committee Principles

Process for Creating & Approving New UA Literature by the WSC-Approved Literature Committee

Creating New UA Literature: Style Guide

Glossary of 12 Step and UA Terms for the Purpose of Translation

Procedure for Translation

Diagram of Path to Conference Approval

The Upside-Down Triangle 

The “upside-down triangle” is the shorthand the fellowship uses to describe its governance model. In a conventional organizational chart, authority flows from a small group at the top — a board, a CEO, an executive team — downward to the many. In UA’s (as in any 12 step fellowship's) model, the triangle is inverted: the fellowship is at the top, broad and authoritative; the board is at the narrow tip at the bottom, the most constrained and the most accountable. 

The image is not decorative. It encodes a genuine governance theory: that service structures exist to carry the group conscience, not to exercise power over those who elected them. A trustee at the tip of the inverted triangle is not a leader in the conventional sense. They are a point of delivery — the narrowest expression of an authority that originates far above them. 

The upside-down triangle is referred to throughout UA’s board meeting transcripts as a touchstone — sometimes as an aspiration, sometimes as a rebuke. The new board chair who took office in late 2024 described herself at her first public meeting as “the lowest person, the tip of the inverted triangle.” That framing was explicit and deliberate. 

There is a complication in the record that Part Two must note honestly: the service structure document from which the upside-down triangle derives was drafted in 2016 and cited at every World Service Conference since. But as a board member stated on the record in October 2022, “there is not an upside down triangle that was approved by the fellowship.” The bylaws themselves were adopted by the board in 2016, not voted on at a Conference. Outgoing GSB Chair acknowledged the same gap at the 2020 World Service Conference, noting that the bylaws should have been brought to the fellowship for ratification and expressing uncertainty about why they were not. 

This does not mean the structure is illegitimate. It means the structure was always intended to be ratified and never fully was during the period this chapter describes. That unfinished business is part of the context in which the events of Part Nine unfolded. 

This Explanation is taken as an excerpt from "A Record of Service and Strife-A History of UA's Service Structure", compiled by a former GSB Member during the time of their service on the Board) Sources: October 18, 2022 GSB private meeting transcript (primary source); WSC 2020 approved minutes (Outgoing GSB Chair, acknowledgment).