How to Plan an AA Event

While AA meetings are a mainstay of continuous sobriety, many AAs also benefit from other events such as speaker dinners. workshops, picnics, dances and conventions. These events are usually sponsored by an AA group, club or district. They require careful planning and good leadership to be successful.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Announce your intention to hold an event during the proper time at an AA meeting, usually about six months in advance. Set a time and place for an AA event planning committee to meet and work out the details.

2. At your first meeting, decide on a format for your AA event. Work out a date and time, and prepare your list of venues. Come up with possible speakers. Delegate responsibilities. Have one person contact places to find out availability. Another should get in contact with potential speakers and workshop leaders.

3. Once details are ironed out, come up with a financial plan. Decide how much to charge attendees, if any, and how many people you will need to attend to break even. Decide what you will do with extra money collected.

4. Name your event, and spread the word. Take flyers to your local intergroup office to send to other groups and publish in their newsletter. Announce the AA event at every meeting you go to and how to get tickets. Bring flyers to local meetings also.

5. On event day, get to your location early to set up. Someone should call speakers and workshop leaders the night before and the day of the event to remind them. Have backups in place in case of emergencies. If the event is large, make sure you have an adequate amount of people to help prepare and cleanup afterwards.

Tips & Warnings

• Workshops are best in smaller, more private settings. Fourth Step workshops are extremely popular, but can require a lot of space for people to have privacy.
• Raffles and door prizes are big draws to every AA event.
• Have a theme for your event and make sure your speakers are leaders have prepared their material around that theme.
• People often confuse club fundraisers with AA events. There may be AA speakers at these events, but the club and AA itself are separate entities. These are very common, as most clubs are in financial trouble most of the time. Many of these are dances.

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