Become a Delegate
When your group participates in COSA as a whole, you help the ISO understand and serve your group's needs. You share your experience, strength, and hope with other meetings. Your ability to apply the spiritual principles of the Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, and Twelve Concepts deepens. You connect to all of COSA at the heart!The Job Description
What does a Year-round Delegate do? The chosen delegate:
- Serves year round for a two-year term
- Represents their home group’s group conscience at the Biannual Delegate Meeting and throughout the year
- Acts as a conduit for information between the ISO and their home group
- Encourages written submissions to the COSA Literature Committee
- Informs their home group about financial and service needs at the International level
- Encourages all members to be generous with their time, talent, and treasure
- Participates on an ISO working committee
- Follows the COSA Delegate Checklist
The delegate your group chooses would ideally be the person your group thinks is best suited to represent them. We suggest that delegates be members who have attended at least six out of the group’s last ten meetings, are working the Steps with a sponsor or co-sponsor, and meet the basic requirements for all of their group’s other service positions.
Group Support for Delegates
Groups are strongly encouraged to raise money to send their delegate to the Annual Convention each year, and to elect an alternate delegate. The ISO of COSA Board encourages all COSA groups to observe our Seventh Tradition, “Every COSA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions,” when members are asked to be of service and they incur financial expense from their service. For example, when COSA groups decide to send a delegate to the Biannual Delegate Meeting, those delegates incur travel expenses to attend the meeting. If only those who can afford to pay their own way become delegates, we exclude the voices of COSAs who cannot afford to be there. Every COSA enjoys the same “Right of Participation” (Concept IV) and we believe financial means should neither stand in the way of that right nor entitle anyone to disproportionate rights in our fellowship. When we observe the Seventh Tradition in our meetings, we make it possible for anyone to be a part of our democratic process. We encourage COSAs to explore all available types of financial support (i.e., convention scholarships, Intergroup scholarships, regional fundraisers, delegate scholarships, etc.) but not accept more financial support than the total expenses incurred.