So you’ve decided to start a club! (Or are at least exploring the option.) Good choice!

Let’s get this process started!

To start off we’re gonna need some members, at least five including yourself. Four of these five to serve in an officer capacity and a fifth to enjoy what you’ve created as a non-officer founding member. In the case of my club, the WWU League of Vikings, my members found me, but finding people willing to start a club with you is generally pretty easy. My advice would be to think about the kind of people who would be interested in the kind of club you are trying to start and just start soliciting, if need be all you need are the names, contact info and the W# of five students and you can just ask fellow students you know if they would be ok with helping you at least start your club.

Now that you’ve gotten the necessary five students its BRAIN STORMING TIME! Time to get together with your founding members and hash out what you all want this club to be. Together you will get into the fun of choosing a name for your club, craft a mission statement, and dive into the nitty gritty that will be your club’s constitution (for which there is a handy dandy template if you so desire). Be warned this step can and should take a bit of time to complete. While you can just breeze through it I highly recommend taking a bit of time and doing a good job here. Your club name and mission statement are what is going to help draw people in after all and your constitution is going to play a very important role in how your club operates. While all these can be changed, the process to change them can be a bit tedious as Western’s Associated Student Body requires a small amount of paperwork and a democratic vote to make said changes.

Personally I think this step is a ton of fun. You get to be creative, flesh out the vision you have for your club on paper, and start the first steps of making your club’s existence a reality. When my members and I got to this step it took us an entire week. We flip flopped on what we thought the club name should be, we kept polishing and repolishing the mission statement and kept making amendments and stipulations to the constitution as we thought of edge cases such as if only one officer attends a meeting that was supposed to have voting in it, can he or she pass whatever they want? Here is your chance leave your mark at Western and to create the foundation for something that that will last for at least as long as you’re at Western.

With all the creativity and most of the paperwork done it is time to get recognized by the school. Western has a body known as the Associated Student Body which is in-charge of all student clubs and organizations. As a club to be, you will have to go through their club recognition procedure, the steps for which are really simple and easy to do. You will start off by meeting with the student activities advisor, located on the fifth floor of the Viking Union building. That meeting will be a short talk about starting the club and will be where you start your next steps by scheduling to attend a new club orientation session, as well as submitting an AS Club/Organization Recognition Request and Registration Form. In my experience the people are super friendly and eager to help you get your club approved.

AND NOW YOU’RE ALMOST THERE! With this all that stands in your way from creating a Western Washington University recognized club is to attend one of the Associated Student Body’s weekly meetings. You’ll get an email after your paperwork has been cleared that your club has been scheduled as a topic at one of the meetings. At least one of your members just has to show up and that meeting, give a small spiel about your club, and barring something that makes them reconsider your club, will make you official!
Congratulations! With this last step you are now a founding member of a WWU recognized club!

As a club recognized by Western, your club will now be put on the web for the world to see via Orgsync, Western Washington University’s club portal. A tool all clubs at Western use that I will be discussing next week!