*Note this information is generally AID specific but can be adjusted for any other student organization you wish to start.
The first step to creating a chapter on campus is building a team of supporters – your “Steering Committee” – or a small group of students on campus who want to be co-founders of the chapter. The goal of creating a Steering Committee is to get a small group of students involved in the chapter’s success early on, that way you have a team to go through the entire organizing process with. The Steering Committee can have anywhere from two to five students involved in it – the key is to have at least one partner to work with from the beginning. The Steering Committee model is ideal because it creates an informal team while allowing everyone to figure out how much time they have to be involved and what roles they want to take on. Eventually, it will be more efficient to elect formal leaders of the chapters.
There are four different places you can look for Steering Committee members:
- students on your campus from the national AIDemocracy listserv
- your friends
- students in relevant courses
- students in relevant student organization
You should work to bring in students from all of these different places because when you’re getting started the more outreach you do, the better. The best way to bring in students is to send them a formal invitation to join the Steering Committee. Once you have a few people who have replied with interest, the next step is setting up a Steering Committee meeting. Some helpful resources:
- an e-mail template you can use to invite students to join the Steering Committee.
- an e-mail template you can send to the students who join the Steering Committee to set up the initial Steering Committee meeting.
Example of what you can use to set up an AID chapter:
Template
Hello –
I am writing because I am planning to start an Americans for Informed Democracy (AIDemocracy) chapter here at INSERT UNIVERSITY and I was hoping that you might be interested in serving on our Steering Committee! Since you were on AIDemocracy’s listserv and from our campus, I figured you were familiar with AIDemocracy’s great work and might be interested in being involved in the new chapter!
I really think that AIDemocracy would add a lot to our campus! AIDemocracy chapters on other campuses have hosted videoconferences with peers in more than fifty different countries, mini-conferences with some really inspiring leaders and activists and film screenings with movie directors, and have spoken to US policymakers about ways to solve global problems! The organization has also been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and many other media. You can read more about AIDemocracy at www.aidemocracy.org.
At the moment, I’m just setting up the “Steering Committee” for AIDemocracy on campus. The goal of the Steering Committee is to create a small group of students who can work together to establish the chapter on campus and help plan the launch event. Early on, I think a Steering Committee model is ideal because it creates an informal team, as people figure out how much time they have to be involved and what roles they want to take on. Later on, I think it will be useful to elect formal leaders of the chapter.
If you’d like to be on the Steering Committee just e-mail me back to let me know! Once I find out who’s interested in being involved, I’ll send out another e-mail to connect everyone and propose an initial time for us to meet up and discuss what we want our chapter to look like!
I hope to have you on the Steering Committee!
INSERT YOUR NAME
INSERT CLASS YEAR, INSERT UNIVERSITY NAME
