Six Hundred and Forty Dollars

The group has money — not much, eleven hundred dollars past the prudent reserve, gathered over four years of good Thursdays. Somebody points out, correctly, that there are people in this town who do not know A.A. exists. So they take a month on the bus shelter outside the hospital: the group's name, the meeting time, the address, one plain line about drinking. It costs six hundred and forty dollars. Two people come because of it and one of them stays, and that is not nothing — that is a life, and everyone involved was right about the need. Here is the difficulty, and it is not that advertising is wicked. The long form (Big Book, p. 565) says A.A. "ought to avoid sensational advertising," and a bus shelter is not sensational. But a group has just spent members' contributions to promote itself, publicly, under the A.A. name — a decision with no obvious stopping point that nobody in that room was authorised to take. Next year it will be two shelters. Because it worked.