After seeing Robert's tweet I just posted the following as a comment on the Athiest Bus Campaign blog. Please leave your own comment if you agree. I hope it's not too late.
As a fellow humanist, I'm a fan of your campaign and have been excited to see the amount of money raised. Well done!
But I wanted to write to ask you to PLEASE not spend ALL of this money on advertising. Spending a few thousand pounds on an advertising campaign is one thing, but you have now raised so much money that you could invest in something with real longevity rather than ads that will eventually disappear. It would be a powerful statement to show that The Atheist Bus Campaign is more than just an 'up yours' to organised religion.
How about asking your donors for ideas about how some or ideally most of it could be put to good use to demonstrate humanist ideals and do some good in the world, and not just 'shout' a message? You could invite nominations for charities that embody humanist ideals (probably most of them!) and then the supporters of this campaign could vote for which one gets a chunk of the money. Or take a look at some of the fantastic ideas that were developed at Social Innovation Camp. You could potentially fund one of these projects to a point where it becomes self-sustaining. You could even keep the public transport theme and fund the AccessCity project.
What a wonderful legacy this could be for the donors who have made your campaign such a roaring success.
Will you at least have a think about this and discuss it amongst yourselves and with the esteemed Mr Dawkins?
If you do something like this, there's a tenner coming from me. Until then, I don't think you really need my money.
Thanks again for bringing humanism onto the agenda, and good luck.
Tom
Unfortunately it would be unethical not to spend it all on the advertising campaign because that is what the money was raised for and that is why thousands of people donated.
Posted by: Maria | 23 December 2008 at 12:50 AM
Hi Maria, thanks for commenting. Do you think it would still be unethical if the donors were consulted first? It wouldn't be too difficult to survey them. Those who wanted their money to go towards a more long-term investment could vote for that, and the rest of the money would go towards the ad campaign.
Posted by: tomnixon | 23 December 2008 at 08:47 AM
Well, I guess if some of the money went towards long term marketing of an atheist message that would work, especially if they set up something online like a social marketing resource. However, I just don't think 'there PROBABLY isn't a god' is an atheist message - it's an agnostic message. It's like Labour promoting a Liberal policy ...
Posted by: Ivan | 09 January 2009 at 09:33 AM
Great idea Tom. As religious groups are now responding to the Atheist campaign ads with their own ads, the whole think could descend into an (expensive) juvenile and pointless competition carried out on the sides of buses.
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