The Name on the Drive

The A.A. name gets lent to outside causes even when no group votes to lend it, and Bill W. recorded how. In 1955 he wrote about a member who ran an alcohol-education project and raised money for it in public drives, while telling everyone she was in A.A. The result (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 54): "many contributors were confused. They thought A.A. was in the educational field or else they thought A.A. itself was raising money when indeed it was not and didn't want to." Then the cost (p. 55): "So A.A.'s name was used to solicit funds at the very moment we were trying to tell people that A.A. wanted no outside money." To solicit funds is to ask for money. One drive became a pattern, he wrote: "public solicitations by A.A.s for money — money for drying-out farms, Twelfth Step enterprises, A.A. boardinghouses, clubs, and the like". Each is a place the Long Form keeps outside A.A., raised for in A.A.'s name. Today the drive is a crowdfunding page for a sober house, with A.A. in its story and a member's face on it. The cause may be good. The name was never theirs to spend. Test it tonight: look up the fundraisers in your town that mention A.A., and notice how many are spending a name no A.A. group can lend.