So you wanna start a campus group....

Here's the 5 golden rules to starting a group and maintaining a group. The key is Recruitment PLUS Retention.

1. Always collect people's contact info at every single meeting, event, or coffee date. Phone numbers and email are as valuable as GOLD.
2. Recruit to events, not meetings. This is so hard for most campus groups. But try to hold a weekly or monthly event. Events are fun and build community. Not a boring meeting!
3. Always do turn out calls and reminder emails before meetings. People WILL forget to attend unless you remind 'em.
4. Always make sure that every new person leaves with a concrete and completable task (like creating a flyer). This creates investment for the person to return!
5. Always take individual members and each new member out to coffee/tea/beer and get to know them personally. Ask them mad questions about themselves AND LISTEN. This meeting is not about you, but about getting to know the new person: their hopes, dreams, background.

3 simple steps to getting people at your meeting:

• Put a table in a public place on campus and have lots of good looking literature about your campaign and issue focus to hand out. Collect contact info from interested folks. Invite them to an upcoming event.
• Hold a weekly/monthly event. Like a potluck, movie night, music show, revolutionary roller skating event. Advertise it on your campus with flyers and through tabling.
  At that event make sure there is a time when everyone writes down their contact info and everyone learns what your group is currently working on. Be sure to personally ask each individual person in the room to attend your upcoming meeting. The PERSONAL invitation makes a huge difference.
• Hold weekly meetings. Do turn out calls and reminder emails 3 & 2 days before. At the beginning of the meeting, have the entire group mention how they're feeling that day, and why they're interested to be there. Present items to the group to be either discussed or decided on. Make sure you have a good facilitator! Have the people present sign up for specific tasks that move your campaign forward. Have everyone present review what they signed up to do before they take off from the meeting.

This is where the RETENTION starts:

• Build Community through house meetings, potlucks
• Thank people publicly for their hard work
• Take individual people out to coffee
• Be gentle with other people, we will all make mistakes, as we are just learning how to organize!

Brainstorm of Publicity & Recruitment Events:

[always offer contact info for your group and meeting time, day, location in these items]

• create stickers for your group and stick 'em everywhere
• hold movie nights and publicize them. lefties love political movies
• food brings people
• have parties
• bring a famous speaker to campus and collect everyone's contact info
• make provocative signs and post them in a public place and invite people to debate you
• hold a music event
• sponsor a day of workshops on your campus
• hold a spoken word event
• sidewalk chalk the crap out of your campus with catchy slogans and ways to get involved
• call professors on your campus and ask them if you can use the first 5 min of their class to talk about your group and gather interested people's contact info.
• flyer your campus

(courtesy of Laura Close from starc)