Fund Drive 2025, A Necessary Endeavor

The March 2025 Pledge Drive has officially come to a close, and contributions are still coming in. We wish to thank you all for your generous contributions to help us carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

Together WE stay sober and help others to achieve sobriety.

The Seventh Tradition states that we are self-supporting through our own contributions, therefore your contributions come to us from either individual members of Alcoholics Anonymous, or A.A. Groups.

Thanks to each of you and your homegroups, this year saw an eight percent increase over March and April 2024.

As seen above, your generous contributions provide nearly sixty percent of CDO’s yearly income.

Literature Sales constitutes thirty-eight percent, essentially paying for itself; the expenses of which include cost of inventory, shipping from vendors, Literature Staff, shipping to customers and supplies. The remaining four percent comes from event tickets, meeting room income (rent paid to the office from other A.A. entities that use the office for their meetings), and contributions to the Pink Can fund which is held separately on the Committee’s behalf. All of the money collected in Pink Cans is spent directly on literature for incarcerated alcoholics in Northeast Ohio. Administrative costs of the Committee are subsidized by the CDO.

2024 saw a similar pattern to previous years. The above chart shows total income (all three categories) vs all expenses on a monthly basis in 2024. This is telling as we operated at a deficit for eight months of the year. March, April and May are months when March Fund Drive contributions come in, so we tend to operate in the black during those months. December is the end of the tax year, and many of our members take advantage of the tax deduction available to them when they contribute.

While contributions do come in throughout the year, for most of the year we are relying on funds that are contributed in those four months to carry the deficits. This chart also indicates just how important the March Fund Drive is to the District Office’s operations.

Thank you all for your generosity this year. With your contributions, we are able to maintain an ever-expanding and robust meeting schedule, improve the technology on which it’s delivered, keep the phone lines open to those seeking help, and increase outreach efforts throughout the area we serve.