Anyone start a club/group from scratch at college? What was the experience like?

I'm considering starting a new club at my school and was wondering what your guys' experiences were:

  • How long did it take you to get established and recognized as a functional group?
  • Is it taking a lot of time out from your schedule?
  • How do you manage to bring new 'content' to every meeting?
  • How did you recruit general members, and more importantly, board members?
  • Any 'political' issues, such as "But I think I deserve to be Co-President since I helped you so much," etc..?
  • Have you been able to recruit guest speakers, and if so, how?

These are the first things that come to mind, but I'm sure more questions might come up later on. I'm genuinely interested to hear what you guys have to say.

Thanks!

 
Best Response

It isn't easy and it isn't hard either. Each school is different, but you basically need to come up with a proposal and an action plan (like in business) in order for the school to fund you. Usually they give partial funding and once they see action you get more. If you are starting a chapter at your school you can get most of the steps and materials from the national chapter, but if you are starting something totally new I would reach out to people at other schools with similar themed groups and see how they organize things.

In the beginning you will have to drum up support. Use the usual channels (facebook, linkedin, other group info sessions, word of mouth, etc). It is going to take a couple semesters to get support going. There will always be political issues, but that is part of the process. Utilize your schools resources to the fullest extend to get it off the ground.

 

Thanks for the response.

But it's going to take a couple of semesters?! Damn. I'm a Junior right now and would really love to have this established before I start applying for FT positions next Fall semester..

But that's a good idea about contacting other school's about this. I'm actually surprised my school doesn't have a club for this already.

 

Well you have to look at it like this. It is going to take a little while to get the group approved and funded. If you don't want or need funding than you can probably expedite the process. If you know a lot of people and your group has a lot of demand then it could be done in a month or so, but usually it takes about by the second semester to get things going full speed.

What type of group are you trying to form ?

 

The only real reason why I'd see the group needing funding is for buying food and stuff for meetings and info sessions. Other than that, it probably won't be an 'expensive' group.

I'm trying to form a Consulting club at my school so we can have a forum of people where we exchange knowledge, job listings, etc, and possibly network.

I'm pretty sure there would be a couple kids who are interested (especially for board positions), but I'm really concerned about how I would recruit general members.

It's also going to be a bit tougher starting this in Spring semester since my school's club fair takes place early in the Fall.

 

Word of mouth and bulletin boards will probably be your main source. You really need about 10 students to get something going. I would just start talking to people now and once you get a decent amount signed up then approach the school.

 

I started a club and it took a whole year to just lay the ground work and jump through the hoops to get the funding. We got alot of funding from the school though. You need to get a professor who can help get you in front of the right administrators who can expidite things for you. Once you get in front of the right people you have to sell the value that your club adds to the school. If they see the value that your club adds, they will make it easy for you.

 

I started a new chapter of an established society with two other friends. It wasn't very difficult for us because there was some recognition of the society already and we had a great professor mentor. I think the #1 thing is get an active professor mentor. For my university, just to be approved required a professor to sponsor us (I assume most universities have a requirement like that). The group was similar to another society, so we just pulled people from there to come on board. Sometimes we would have events that double counted for both clubs.

At the welcome meeting at the beginning of the semester we would be cheerleaders for the society and get people to write down their names and student ID number, then we'd give the list to the department assistant and she would charge $10 to their student accounts. That, and the $300/semester funding was plenty for us.

Everyone joins clubs, but I think in college people should start a club or team or something. I think it sounds great on a resume when you are interviewing for that first job. With a couple friends and a professor it isn't hard to do too, and you can spin it to sound from good to GREAT. It's a relatively easy way to drum up some leadership experience, which everyone is looking for.

"You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right." -Warren Buffett
 

I was one of 3 founding members of a college of business organization trying to improve the CBA in various ways. We ended up with us 3, 8 officers heading action divisions, and 5-6 people working with each of them.

I resigned this semester because my level of caring is at an all time low and I'm confident I can end up wherever I want given my internships, GPA, and fucking amazing people skills.

At the start, it was a lot of circle jerking, talking out of our asses, and feeling cool for being given a conference room with glass walls and a wooden table and free Potbellys. At the time, I cared a lot and wanted to do lots of extracurriculars and cared about my school.

We ended up getting some shit done for the CBA. The assistant dean was on board and we met with different high-level administrators, so that was helpful. But it was just a drawn-out process with meetings that took 3 hours that could have taken 15 minutes and nobody knowing what the fuck they're really doing while trying to sound smart or whatever.

It's still on my resume, but nobody has asked about it once I got decent internship experience. People just look at the GPA and internships. So yeah, I quit and utilized the additional time to walk around campus drinking Yellow Tail out of one of those aluminum water bottles and hit on females

 

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