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Organization - funds - membership

Empowering your students
Many advisors often mention they are strained from all the work involved in student organizations. The key to a student organization is empowering your student members to take control. It is the advisor's role to train and guide your students to help run the organization from fundraising to meeting schedules to ordering materials to bringing in speakers to recruiting members to creating a website. To many, this sounds like a daunting task that is impossible with teenage students, though if the passion is given to them, they will often step up to the plate and fullfill the goals set for them! Advisors can set up an officer team, committee's with chair people, crew cheifs, parent advisors to assist, alumni to give back. There are other organizations that offer great training for student officers such as the SkillsUSA MidAmerica conference in Nebraska every October.

fundraising
Awww, our favorite topic. Every team has different scenarios and we all wish we had $10,000.00 from our schools for the program:) Reality is each team generally raises their own funds through hard work and community relationships. There are soo many ways to raise funds for your team/organization, it is difficult to list them all here. Your best advise is to contact a few local teams in your area and ask what they are doing, get some sample documents and work as a team to raise the funds. Be sure you get full support from your members and parents, as well as making sure they understand the importance of raising the funds! Some examples;

• Membership Dues
• Lawn-mower Spring Tune-up ($250 - $1,000)
• B&I Sponsorships ($25 - $3,000)
• Candy Sales ($500 - $2,000)
• Food Booths ($150 - $1,000)
• Frozen Pizza Sales ($100 - $1,000)
• Candle Sales ($100 - $1,000)
• Make a Product ($100 - $2,000)

recruiting members
As any organization, members are needed to thrive and last. The first two years is generally the toughest as not only are students being recruited for something they have no knowledge or passion for, they begin working on something they have no clue about the end product... The key is to obtain an array of underclass and upperclass students. Having all seniors may create the perfect team for ONE year as they all graduate. Many times a team forgets that their seniors graduate and have no members the next year to take over. The best scenario is to include freshmen and sophomores in all facets of the year in a form of apprenticing them. For first year teams, talk to veteran teams and borrow a past vehicle for display in the school the first two weeks in the year. Have a meeting with interested students while the borrowed vehicle is still there and have the students measure/photo/document every aspect about that vehicle to get the team rolling... For veteran teams, remember to be always pulling in students from all areas; manufacturing, engineering, males/females, graphics, drafting, etc... Having a diverse team will make for a smoother year.