Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility

Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility (Responsibility.org^[1]), formerly known as the Century Council, is an American not-for-profit organization founded in 1991 and funded by a group of distillers that aims to fight to eliminate drunk driving and underage drinking and promotes responsible decision-making regarding alcohol use by adults who choose to drink.

Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility

Nickname	Responsibility.org
Founded	1991
Type	Non-profit
Focus	Eliminating drunk driving and underage drinking
Headquarters	Washington, DC
Location	101 Constitution Avenue, NW Suite 375 East Washington, DC 20001
Area served	United States
Key people	Chris Swonger, President and CEO Leslie Kimball, Executive Director
Website	www.responsibility.org

The Washington, D.C. based organization is an independent national advisory board with members in the realm of education, medicine, government, business, and other relevant disciplines who assist in the development of programs, initiatives, and policies.^[2][3] The organization is also supported by educational and judicial advisory boards whose members contribute their professional expertise to help shape programming that aligns with their respective fields.^[4]

Funding companies include Bacardi, Brown-Forman, Campari Group, Constellation Brands, DIAGEO, Edrington, Hotaling & Co, Mast-Jägermeister US,^[5] Moët Hennessy USA, Ole Smoky, LLC, Pernod Ricard, Suntory Global Spirits, and William Grant & Sons.^{[6][7][8][9][10][3]}

Responsibility.org’s website includes a map that offers up-to-date state statistics and laws on the topics of underage drinking and drunk and impaired driving in the United States.^[11][12] The website also includes tips for drinking and hosting responsibly, conversation starters for parents^[13] and resources for policymakers that include policy recommendations, and different checklists, including a DUID checklist and another with practical suggestions on how to implement responsible alcohol laws that fit a community.^{[12][14][15][16]}

Programs and campaigns

The Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility (Responsibility.org) works with law enforcement, public officials, educators, parents and students to create programs aimed at reducing the incidents of drunk driving and underage drinking:

• Alcohol 101+. is an interactive online program which aims to help students make safe and responsible decisions about alcohol on college campuses.^[17][18][19] The program aims to equip students with knowledge and understanding about the impacts of alcohol, to mitigate risks, and embrace healthy decision making.^[19]
• Ask, Listen, Learn: Kids and Alcohol Don't Mix. A free program targeted at kids ages 9-13 and their parents and educators, to give kids the skills and information needed to say “NO” to underage drinking and underage cannabis use.^[20] The program provides free materials and resources, including lesson plans, that encourage parents and teachers to engage in ongoing dialogue about the dangers of underage drinking with kids using science-based research about how the developing brain works.^[21]
• B4UDrink Educator aims to educate adults about the influence of alcohol on an individual's blood alcohol content (BAC) level.
• Cops in Shops is an alcohol law enforcement program in which undercover police officers work with participating alcoholic beverage retailers with the aim to deter youth under 21 from attempting to purchase alcohol or adults that purchase alcohol for minors.^[22][23][24]
• Computerized Assessment and Referral System (CARS). CARS was created by Responsibility.org and Harvard University’s Cambridge Health Alliance Division on Addiction.^[25][26] CARS is designed to be used to screen and assess  impaired drivers for substance abuse and mental health disorders. The goal is to help inform judges of an offender's treatment needs and hopefully reduce recidivism.^[27] The system is made available for use by judicial systems.^[27]
• Girl Talk: Choices and Consequences of Underage Drinking attempts to encourage mothers and daughters to communicate about the dangers of underage drinking and the specific risks facing teenage girls.^[28][29]
• National Alliance to Stop Impaired Driving (NASID). Responsibility.org established and leads the NASID coalition.^[30] It is dedicated to eliminating all impaired driving, including multiple substance impaired driving.^[30]
• National Hardcore Drunk Driving Project provides a comprehensive resource for state legislators, local policy makers, highway safety officials, law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors, community advocates, and treatment professionals to effectively deal with hardcore drunk drivers.
• We Don't Serve Teens (developed with The Federal Trade Commission) is a public awareness campaign designed to prevent underage drinking by informing adults that providing underage drinkers with alcohol is unsafe, illegal and irresponsible.^[31]

In 2008–2009, FAAR sponsored the National Student Advertising Competition held by the American Advertising Federation. Over 140 college teams from across the country competed to create a campaign aimed at reducing binge drinking among college students. The winning campaign was from Syracuse University.^[32]

Responsibility.org launched Think Responsibly, a campaign directed to millennial adults of legal purchase age who choose to drink, in partnership with Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) and the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) at the wholesalers' 76th annual convention in Orlando in 2019.^[33][34]

As part of the campaign, Think Responsibly ads asked visitors to take a quiz on responsible drinking. The quiz and online messages were measured by a Facebook Brand Lift Survey to determine how well the campaign increases a millennial's intention to drink responsibly.^[33][34]

Visuals with strong "calls to action" reached 4.8 million urban millennials on Facebook and Instagram. The brand lift study revealed the ads raised interest in and consideration of Think Responsibly, garnering a 1.3 point lift in ad recall of Responsibility.org among those who saw to the campaign.

Speakers

Every year the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility sponsors TED Talks at high schools and at universities to warn people how dangerous drunk driving is. Most of these speakers have been featured on Rescue 911 and a clip of their episode is presented before each speaker takes the stage. Speakers include:

• Brandon Silveria and his father Tony from DUI Teen Driver
• Jody Woods from Sobering Save
• Paul Prater and Patricia Johnson from Repentant Drunk Driver
• and Trent Winston and his mother Donna from Ex-RN Son Save

Name change

On April 2, 2014, The Century Council changed its name to the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility, or Responsibility.org.^[35]

See also

• Alcohol-related traffic crashes in the United States
• Drunk driving in the United States