I’ve been doing a lot of research and thinking about Dry July lately. I contacted the organisation with my thoughts about the opportunity for a bigger education piece around drinking and sobriety, as I know from personal experience that it’s so easy to come out of a dry month and “make up for lost time”. White knuckle it through a month off the sauce, realise sleep is amazing, then immediately forget all that as soon as the opportunity (and wine) arises.
Their response: “Whilst giving up alcohol in July is thing we ask people to do, raising money for people affected by cancer is really what Dry July Foundation (the registered charity behind Dry July) is all about. We’ve been working hard over the last few years to lift the profile of the Foundation and highlight the impact of the funding to people affected by cancer. We know that many people still confuse ‘Dry July’ with an organisation that tackles alcohol abuse or mental health issues. There are a number of great organisations out there that already do that and from our point of view are the experts in this area.”
They have a good point. This then got me thinking… how many people doing a Dry July or Febfast (or Movember for that matter) ACTUALLY sign up and raise funds for said charity? I had a sneaking suspicion it was not many, and a recent IG stories poll I ran confirmed this. A phenomenal 79% of respondents had done Dry July without actually signing up to raise much needed funds for projects and programs that improve the comfort and wellbeing of people affected by cancer.
Now to me that’s not good enough.
Who has the power to change this? WE DO. This is a call to action for every coach, influencer, blogger, podcaster, retailer and most importantly producer to encourage your audience to commit; to sign up and raise much needed funds for Dry July. This is the best $ month for N/A producers and many have already started promoting their products to a captive audience.
To all of you: Please add on that CTA asking to people to sign up, or create a fundraising team that people can join. Encourage Dry July participants to look a little further and get support from programs such as The Alcohol Experiment whilst having a month off the grog.
If we all in the alcohol free community do our bit we can create some lasting change, both for the cancer funds and for people looking at their drinking habits. Personally I will be donating via the Brunswick Aces website… I don’t think anyone I know is going to sponsor me to not drink right now!
Lets do this!