Group Outreach

What is group outreach?

The Group Outreach Committee coordinates an effort to visit all groups that are listed in the directory, but don't support Intergroup financially or with a representative, or both; to see if they would like to participate in the group conscience.

Purpose

The purpose of the outreach committee is to close the loop on the quality of meeting entries in our directory.

All meetings are added to our directory at the request of groups and individuals, with very little background investigation.  This means that some meetings might not have all the information that could be included (might be missing the format, or a service, like handicapped accessible); or, if no one reports a problem, or a change to the meeting, then a meeting in our directory could have moved, or been completely defunct for some time.  We sometimes need to add clarifying information to meetings about the best way to get into the building, or specific driving instructions if the meeting location is hard to find.

Because of these potential discrepancies in a meeting's listing, the way we resolve them is to have someone on the outreach committee travel to the meeting, tell them about intergroup, invite them to participate by sending a representative to the monthly Intergroup Council Meeting, to support intergroup financially, and confirm that everything in our meeting listing is accurate.  Review the outreach script.

Occasionally we get reports of a meeting that appears to no longer exist.  We mark those meetings as missing-in-action (MIA) in the directory.  Putting a meeting on the MIA list alerts the committee that the group has a meeting that really needs prompt attention with a visit.

We ask the committee to work the group outreach list to assure that we reach all the meetings at least once before we go back around to any particular meeting, and to let the web servant know when they have visited a particular group so that that group can be sent to the bottom of the outreach list.

Does your group participate?

"Half measures availed us nothing.  We stood at the turning point.  We asked His protection and care with complete abandon."

Reprinted with permission from the book Alcoholics Anonymous © Copyright 1939, 1955, 1976, 2001 AA World Services, Inc.

Questions?

If you have additional questions, you can direct them to Outreach Committee Chair.