Whole Planet Foundation 2013-2014 Student Outreach Toolkit
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How to Build a Team
Scope Out Your Campus
Like-Minded Groups
The easiest way to start your quest to build a team of totally awesome individuals on your campus with a common goal of making the world a better place is to see if someone has already beat you to the punch! Research groups on campus to see if someone else has already started a Whole Planet Foundation chapter. If one exists, join them! If one doesn’t exist, expand your search to like-minded groups. Try using some of the following common organizations and keywords:
Whole Planet Foundation 2013-2014 Student Outreach Toolkit
· Microcredit
· Microfinance
· Social change, impact, entrepreneurship, business, responsibility, enterprise
· Poverty alleviation
· UNICEF
· Oxfam
· Nourish International
· KIVA
· Net Impact
Whole Planet Foundation 2013-2014 Student Outreach Toolkit
Once you have a solid list of email aliases, start contacting the people in charge! Usually the organization’s President is a good place to start. Other people you might reach out to include the faculty advisor associated with the group, volunteer coordinators or education and awareness chairs. Feel free to reach out to other organizations (social, academic, Greek, cultural, etc.) to recruit members and get the word out as well.
You can ask to give a presentation during one of their group meetings, attend one of their events or partner with them for a future event. This will help to build a relationship with the like-minded organization which will help you to learn best practices and recruit members. It is not unusual for students to be involved in more than one campus organization, so another group’s member base is a great starting point to find people passionate about achieving a common goal.
Becoming Familiar with School Policy
Each campus is different, so do your homework on what the requirements are to be a registered student organization. Some require a certain number of members, a faculty advisor, a registration fee, extensive paperwork or your attendance at an orientation session. So learn about what your school requires and what the rules are before starting your own club or doing any promotion on campus!
Create an Organization
It’s Official, You’re Official!
Once you have familiarized yourself with the law of the land, it is time to officially register as a student organization! Often, official student organizations get cool perks like being able to reserve spaces on campus, utilize school bulletin boards and online calendars or even have a table at a school sponsored organization fair. Figure out the best way to promote your goals and mission and go for it!
Build your Core Team
If you haven’t already, now is the time to build your executive team. We recommend that you start small with 2-4 other student leaders. These should be people that are passionate about what you are trying to achieve on campus and also people that you can trust and work with. Start with your friends and people that you have met through other student organizations. People already involved with some of those like-minded organizations you researched earlier would be a great addition to your team.
Assign Roles
It is not necessary for you to assign roles and specific duties to your leadership team but it can be helpful! You can check out some examples of roles that you may want to incorporate in ‘Leadership 101’.
Recruit Other Student Champions
Once you’ve established your leadership team and possibly assigned roles and duties, it’s time to recruit more members! You can create a web flyer or print out versions to post around your campus. You can table on your campus to give people information about Whole Planet Foundation and have interested people sign up with their email address so you can contact them later with more details. Usually professors are okay with students making announcements before class starts. You can schedule a day and time for your first meeting and advertise around campus for people to attend! You can incentivize people to come with free food or with a cool event. An easy way is to speaker circuit like you did at the beginning but this time to promote your organization and when you meet. You can also join forces with one of those organizations you talked to before and see if you can have a table or pass out flyers at one of their events. And don’t forget to try and get your friends and classmates involved first!
Once you recruit a solid membership, it is up to you and your leadership team whether or not to charge your members dues. These dues would be used for any organization operation costs or go toward events and fundraising efforts.
Advertise
Create an eye-grabbing poster or flyer to post around campus. Check your school policies before doing this, but one idea is to chalk #WPF or #GPA with the website or Facebook URL around campus. This type of promotion usually intrigues people and drives traffic to your online presence. Create an awesome YouTube video or Vine with your leadership team and post it all over social media. There are lots of ways that you can advertise on and around campus so don’t be afraid to get creative!
Start Planning!
Now you’re ready for the next step, Event Planning!