As always: take everything with a grain of salt! You & your group will be different in ways that we won’t be able to expect. Consider the below tips to be tools you can add to your toolbox, not practices you have to adopt.
Organize by projects, not tasks. Assign responsibility to one person to be the “owner” of each project, whether one-time or ongoing.
This has a few advantages:
Pick roles.
Getting general roles picked out in advance can be really helpful. Below are some example/templated organizer roles, but feel free to switch them around or make your own based on your club’s and your organizers’ individual needs.
Keep your committee structure flexible, especially in the beginning.
Your needs may change over time, as can the interests of incoming students and organizers. Tailor your roles to your priorities as a group, as well as the skills of your board members.
Consider electing two presidents, or a (main) president and an (advisor) president, to ensure group continuity.
You can have two co-presidents that take on their role for two years — one further on in their university career, and one earlier on. Each president gets elected with two years (or more) of university remaining, so that there’s always at least one co-president continuing in their role at the end of each academic year. You can also elect presidents in their second to last year of university, and then take the role of immediate past president in their final year to support the new president. Similar strategies can be used for other committee roles — repeat as necessary.
For larger groups, consider having multiple layers of management.
This can be helpful if you have a number of complex projects, each of which might require multiple organizers to accomplish.
For example, you might have an Outreach Chair, who’s in charge of all outreach for the club; the Outreach Chair might manage the Club Fair Coordinator, the Social Media Coordinator, and the Event Outreach Coordinator.
Good leadership is key.
We’ve collated some great resources on good leadership — take a read through these when you get the chance. (Thanks to Joseph Pendleton for a number of these!)
OPTIC does not necessarily endorse everything in the above links. Use your own judgement & do your own research.
Consider skimming these over for a few seconds now to see if you’ll find them helpful (in which case, feel free to read them in full).
Excerpt from REALLY DOING THINGS (~7 min)
Incredibly helpful guide on how to REALLY DO THINGS. Contains practical, helpful advice, as well as general mindsets/frameworks.
UT Dallas “Creating and Sustaining an Effective Organization” (~15 min)
SDSU “Student Organization Leadership Development Program,” a handbook which has guides on loads of things for student organizations:
OPTIC does not necessarily endorse everything in the above links. Use your own judgement & do your own research.