So you made a club (or at least know how to make one) as well as all the general ways to make it successful. Now it’s time to have fun and and enjoy what you’ve made. This is the best part! You’ve met people with similar interests, gone through the paperwork, know how to attract like-minded people and now you even know how to host events! Just what you wanted, an organization that speaks to your interests, your passions, your academic pursuits, your identity, your goals for social change, or whatever you’re into. This is great! You now have all the tools to join the ranks of Western Washington University’s 200 student run organizations.

If you are willing and or so inclined to you can even join/help run or even found multiple clubs. While it can make life very busy and hectic it can be worth it. Personally I have been involved in many clubs and even though I don’t always jump into a leadership role being involved in these student run organizations does lead to lots of cool events you can go to. If you really want it you can very easily find something to do any and every day of the week without even creating it yourself.

As you already know personally, I think these clubs/organizations are great for finding niches you maybe don’t even know. In a personal example, when I first came to Western I did not see myself playing humans vs zombies, playing quidditch, dancing or even playing League of Legends; let alone running Western’s League club (I didn’t even like that game genre). Joining these clubs allowed me to meet people and create relationships I would never have made otherwise as well as discovered hobbies I have come to love that I did not even know existed before I looked at all the different clubs here at Western. Hopefully from this blog you take the opportunity to do the same.

I know I have reiterated this countless times over the course of this blog, but clubs and student run organizations are amazing opportunities I think everyone should at least look at. Even if you are thinking of just bring academic here at Western these organizations can be a real boon. There are clubs here for all kinds of majors.

A good example of this is the Psychology club, that happens to be run by a friend of mine. Its a relatively small club filled with Psychology majors and advised by professors from the Psychology majors. They do really cool, informative things like give presentations on various psychological phenomenons, play games for fun and  even do things like student/professor based recommendations on classes and how to navigate the psychology major. It is really quite something, I mean where else can you get something like this unless you have friends in the department or personally know some upper classmen. Additionally this is a real great way to network with people related to your major or things that you are interested in. These people have knowledge and experience that you just dont have and who are eager to share what they know with you in these clubs.

Bare in mind that this is for all majors. Western has clubs in tons of disciplines. Like for CS majors there are clubs dedicated to cs majors in general, application development, robotics, game development, etc. Lots of good stuff out there if you care to look or make it happen if you dont find what you are looking for. So I’ll just leave you with this, check out clubs; look at orgsync and maybe talk to students about what clubs they are in or have heard about. It’s a good time.

If you have any questions club related or otherwise post a comment and I’ll try my best to help you out.

Have fun with your organization!

So you have a club, you have members, you’ve raised money and now you are interested in hosting some events to show case your club and create content for interested people. So lets me give you some advice and help you get started.

Based on my experiences in event planning I highly recommend creating a mission statement and jotting down goals you want accomplished by hosting this event. Additionally you should write down the 5 W’s (Why, Who, When, Where, What/How) and use them as guidelines as you plan and carry out your event.

Why: What is the purpose? Is it going to be fun? Competitive? Informational? All of the above and more? What is the end goal?

Who: What does our audience want? Who is this event for? What are our audience’s goal? Is it different than our goal? How can we build an event that will be successful for our audience?

When: What part of the year will this be? What day/time? What else is going on during this time?

Where: What is the venue going to be? When thinking of this we need to consider the attendees, the availability of both the venue and our audience, any technological requirements (such as screens or bandwidth), concessions (food/drink), as well as transportation (how will people get to and from this event).

What/How: How will the event look like? This question is a bit interesting in that you will have to think of all the other questions here. You need to imagine the number of people that will be there, the kind of people that will be there, the amount of time and facilities you will be using, what you will be doing and how much everything will cost.

Lets jump into a case study now and see how this way of planning has worked out. In the case of my club, the ‘WWU League of Vikings’, a large event we regularly put on is a Viewing Party for the League of Legends World Championship Finals.

Starting with our mission statement: Our mission is to have fun with the game League of Legends. We believe passionately in having fun with all things League of Legends as a community. So we are hosting a Viewing Party that offers the opportunity for members in our community to come together and enjoy competitive League as a group.

Why: To bring members of our community together to enjoy professional League. It is competitive and fun in nature with an end goal of creating a closer knit community.

Who: We aim to attract all sorts of people who are interested in League of Legends, from veteran players to people who have just heard of League of Legends and who would be interested in coming. The goal of our audience is to be entertained and to maybe get some League swag we handout at events like these. We will build our event for our audience by creating an environment conducive to discussion, viewing via projector and by having food/drink and swag to hand out.

When: We will hold this event twice, once when the finals occur to have a live broadcast (normally at an ungodly time) as well as another when more people can make it. We can’t do anything about what else is going on but we can offer what we can.

Where: On-campus. Easy to reach via walking, bus or driving. Rooms available that can hold 200 people and if needed we can open up more rooms via Western’s room reservation program EMT. These rooms we are looking at have the necessary requirements; outlets for computers, good enough bandwidth in the form of ATUS provided wifi, screens via projector and are available to us for free.

How will it look like? We will have between 100 and 200 people in attendance in total with both viewings. Their skill level will be all over the place with people coming who have and have not been covering the competition. The event will last about 5 hours with the pre, post and actual game play. Concessions and swag will be offered for free as well as trivia cards to win prizes and entertain people.

With all this in mind we put things together. We get the venue, obtain the swag, get the trivia cards, buy concessions, and advertise our event via social media, email and posters. Before the event we will test the technical equipment we plan to use and track people who plan to come to get an estimate of all the things we will need. After the event we will get feedback from our audience, review our successes through our mission statement/goals/5 W’s and then use that to identify areas we can improve in for future events.

So you’ve started your club and are getting members. You know what would really help? Money. With money you can create awesome events, host cool social gatherings, get necessary materials and supplies, create custom apparel, travel, hire a guest speaker, whatever you want.

Now how to pay for it all…. There are many ways to get money and to pay for your club’s needs. Some good ones are getting sponsors, fund raising through something like a bake sale, charging your members a fee, and loans and grants from the associated student body.

Getting sponsors is a good way to go. A good example of this involves my club, the League of Vikings. As a League of Legends club we have taken steps to get support from the League of Legends creator Riot Games. As a result of being associated with them they supply us with gaming gear, league of legends swag, tournament/event support, etc. If you can cultivate a relationship between your club and say a local business you might be able to get something good. Of course this isn’t really free. The best way to form a relationship like this is to be able to give something back in return for their support. You can offer advertising space, product placement, or something else that they value and makes it worth their while to help your organization out. If there are no obvious organizations/companies to ask then I might suggest cold calling/emailing some local businesses or something. For example, if I were to be hosting a large viewing party with at least a 100+ people I might be able to contact Intel or Razor for some gaming gear or Monster for some energy drinks in return for advertising at the event. You never know.

Bake sales are another decent way to go, though I wouldn’t expect too much out of this. Walking in campus you’ve probably seen some of these in progress. As an AS organization you can reserve tables in vendor’s row at no cost, or reserve a table in Red Square or the VU 6th floor lobby. Just be sure to have your treasurer request a “change fund” from the AS Finance Office. You will receive a cash box and start-up cash from the Finance Office. After your fundraiser, you will then return everything and then deposit money into your club account. This is a good and kind of fun way to earn some cash. Depending on what you do you can expect to raise anywhere from a few hundred dollars to something in the lower double digits.

Membership fees are reliable way to make money but I would recommend against that as fees like these serve to drive away prospective members. Additionally these fees are generally pretty small so the amount of money you generally collect isn’t a huge sum. Some clubs I know have been able to make a lot out of this and use this amount to host events they would charge admission to and enlarge their funds more.

Lastly there is the AS to consider. If you event benefits students and your can convince the AS council that it would be worth it to fund you it is possible to get funding anywhere from a few dollars to a few thousand. A little known fact about the AS fund is that annually every student pays ~$75 dollars in tuition that goes to the AS fund so there is quite an amount of money the council has to give out. Generally as long as there is value for students and you can demonstrate the need/service provided you can get the money from them. Be warned though, this method can take a few weeks between the paperwork your treasurer will be filling out and meetings you will be needing to attend.

Hopefully you now have some idea as to how to get some money for your club. Fundraising is a fun and popular activity for many clubs, so get out there, have fun and raise some money.

So you started a club! It is now time to populate it! How should you go about doing this you may ask? The Associated Student Body (AS) can help! Several times a year the AS hosts events that clubs can participate in by hosting a booth on campus that attract passing students and allow them to learn about the hosted booths. In my experience these events are the best way to spread knowledge about your club to students on campus so I would suggest focusing a decent amount of energy into making this work for your club. Be warned though, these events can take lots of time, man-power and at least a small amount of material. It’s totally worth it though if you can manage it.

So how should you go about doing this? To start off at least the answer is OrgSync. After deciding to have your club participate in this there is always a form to fill out to sign up for these events on OrgSync. Like all OrgSync forms these can be found on the AS group page on OrgSync. You will be taken to very straight forward form that asks you what club you are signing up for, if you need electricity for your stand, if you are bringing food and if you can staff your booth for the duration of the event. Going through this form it is a good idea to keep in mind how you envision putting your booth together and whether you have the resources to pull this off.

Now that you have signed up for a booth it is now time to prepare. In order to be considered ready for these events you will need something to attract/inform passerbyers about your club, and flyers or a sign-up sheet with contact information with which to remind your new members about your club and it’s events. To do this I highly recommend using your creativity and technology to aid you here. On the creative aspect of this a large and colorful display can catch a prospective member’s eye and interest them in your club. Commonly this happens in the form of banners, posters and other kinds of artistic displays. Technology-wise in the past people have used TVs and computer displays to showcase their club as well as take in contact information. In the case of taking in contact information I highly recommend a technology solution. Personally I think this is the best way to do this. The prospective member can make sure their information is correct, it is easy to read and use and is more easily kept than say using a pen and paper.

All this being said, use your officers and members! This is something you should be passionate about and is a good time to showcase this passion. Show people why you care and why they should care as well. Clubs are fun and members are good. Share your passion and get more people involved, that’s why you made a club after all right?

So now you’ve started a club! Or are at least kind of interested in clubs…

Either way you should probably know about OrgSync, Western Washington University’s seemingly little known club portal.

So what is OrgSync anyways?

OrgSync is a “Campus Engagement Network that connects”  students to “organizations, programs, and departments on campus in a private online community”. In reality it is a site containing links Facebook groups run by Western’s Clubs. Either way it can be very useful.

To the average student OrgSync is a cool site they stumble on when looking for a club to join. On this site are over 200 campus organizations with everything from A’capella to Humans vs Zombies. From there they can join as many club organizations as they desire as well as get any information they need about said organizations. From OrgSync they can get the contact information of the club officers, the club email, the club’s hopefully active Facebook group and the organization’s meeting schedule and sometimes events. From there they should hopefully be able to find something interesting they can get into.

For club organizers like me OrgSync is essential. It is here that we store all our necessary documents and find most of the forms we need. Every year we have to at least go into OrgSync and update/renew our club constitutions and then sign up for a spot in the Red Square Info Fair in the Fall to alert new students to our presence on campus. While all the other features of OrgSync are optional there are a lot of useful features. For example, OrgSync’s calendar is now tied to the school’s event calendar and events/meetings you post on there will show up when other students look at them and with a little poking around you can find some really interesting things. You can use polls to try guage opinions, create to-do lists for your officers, manage your club’s treasury and even host a custom made website via OrgSync for your club. All of this is covered in a yearly club meeting at least one officer per club is made to attend, but if you ever want to try use a feature on the site I highly recommend poking around. The site is very intuitive.

So check it out! At least look around once. OrgSync is a really cool site that could have a lot going for it if people just used it. At the very least it is pretty cool to just look around and see what clubs there are and what they are about.

Join me next time as I talk about recruitment events at Western Washington University. Like OrgSync these events are a great opportunity to see what’s happening on Campus. For students they are fantastic way to learn about organizations on campus and for clubs they are a really good way to recruit new members and advertise events.