Club and Society Key Info
UCLU
CLUB AND SOCIETY KEY INFO
(Previously called the development pack)
Revised June 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BUREAUCRACY AND DEMOCRACY3
How does the Union work?3
How should you run your Club or Society?3
SUCCESS DURING LOOK, TRY, JOIN4
What is Look, Try, Join?4
Checklist for Success4
Planning your Taster Events5
Updating our Website5
Setting up your Mailing Lists5
Planning your Welcome Fair Stall and Publicity 6
The Welcome Fair 8 Try Fortnight 8
Joining Fortnight9
Important Dates and Deadlines9
RAISING, SPENDING AND MANAGING MONEY10
Managing Your Accounts10
Successful Budgeting11
Understanding Account Codes12
Managing Expenditure13
Raising Funds and Managing Income14
ROOM BOOKINGS, FACILITIES AND EQUIPMENT16
Resources for Presidents and Treasurers16
Useful Information16
Freedom of Speech on Campus17
Catering and alcohol at Events18
Access and Equality at our events19
Using External Venues and Facilities19
PROMOTING YOUR ACTIVITIES AND COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR MEMBERS20
Effective Communication20
Effective Marketing20
Publicity Checklist20
CONTACTING US AND GETTING HELP21
CSC Reception21
CSC Staff21
Sabbatical Officers21
Bureaucracy, Democracy and Diversity
How does the Union work?
UCLU is run democratically by students. The senior officers of the Union are the Sabbatical Officers, who are elected by the student body every year to take a year out of study to run the Union full-time. In addition to the SabbaticalOfficers there are also a variety of other elected student officers who have smaller remits – they are all part-time and current students.
The revised democratic structure of UCLU comprises various networks chaired and populated by students. The network that primarily affects you is the Activities NetworkYou should attend this to influence how UCLU runs and develops its student activity including clubs and societies. The Activities Network Executive continues to be the group that sets policy and reviews disciplinary issues and affiliation requests specific to clubs and societies. This board reports into the Activities Network and is made up of the elected Activities, Sports, Arts, Societies, RUMS, PGA, Volunteering and RAG Officers, chaired by the Activities Officer and supported by the Activities and Events Officer and Activities and Skills Manager.
In addition there will be various groups and meetings associated with specific activity areas e.g.sports, theatre users etc. These will continue to meet and you will be invited along once the meeting schedules are arranged.
How should you run your Club or Society?
Be Democratic and use your Committee
Clubs and Societies are, like the Union, democratic. You are elected via an Annual General Meeting by your members, and therefore your primary purpose is to run the Club or Society in a way which your members want you to. Presidents and Treasurers have a primary responsibility to provide activities and events for their members.
It’s a good idea to hold committee meetings at least once a month during the first and second term to discuss how your Club or Society is running and to organise upcoming events. Effective communication with your committee will ensure that your Club or Society and its events run smoothly. Always make sure that someone is responsible for taking minutes of your meetings to keep in your Club or Society file.
Be Original, Diversify and Engage with your Union
Obviously we want you to continue to run all the events which have been successful and popular in the past. However, we also want you to think outside the box and think of new events and try new things. Consider putting on events that will be open to students who aren’t ‘regulars’ (engaging with our Give It A Go scheme is a brilliant way to do this). Think about whether or not you cater for postgraduate and international students. Get excited about your Club or Society, and put flair and passion into the events and activities you run. Be friendly, open and honest – Clubs and Societies are supposed to provide for as many students as possible. As an added benefit, the more students you engage, the more cash you get through membership fees!
Success during Look, Try, Join:
What is Look, Try, Join?
Look, Try, Join (LTJ) is the Union’s initiative to engage students with Clubs and Societies. It is the most important part of the year for Clubs and Societies, and the more organised you are before the start of term, the more successful your year is likely to be. The LTJ scheme runs over the first 5 weeks of the Autumn Term as follows:
LOOK – this takes place in the first week of term, and is basically the Welcome Fair. The Fair is the most important event of the year for Clubs and Societies, as it gives new and returning students the chance to meet you and to find out about what you do. In other words it is a chance for students to ‘look’ at what Clubs and Societies the Union offers.
TRY – ‘Try Fortnight’ takes place in the second and third weeks of term. During the fortnight, Clubs and Societies should organise a wide variety of taster events for potential new members to attend. Effectively, it is your chance to really sell your Club or Society to students. During this period, new students may not officially join Clubs and Societies, only ‘try’ them out before they buy, returning students can join whenever they like.
JOIN – ‘Joining Fortnight’ takes place in the fourth and fifth weeks of term. The start of the fortnight is the first time in the year when all students can purchase Club and Society memberships to become official members for the year. Students can actually join all year round, but by the end of Join Fortnight, Clubs and Societies are required to have at least 30 members to avoid being considered for disaffiliation.
The more organised you are before the start of term, the more successful your year is likely to be. With just a small amount of preparation for the first three weeks of term you can really reap the rewards when it comes to Joining Fortnight.
Checklist for Success
To help you out, here is a checklist of the most important things you should do before term starts if you really want to benefit from LTJ. Details of how to do all of these things can be found in the “How to” guides:
May/June:
Attend the Union training sessions
Complete your Annual Registration Forms and Officer Contracts
July-August (preferably before A-level results are released in mid-August):
Plan your Term 1 Events (what, when, where)
Create or Update your website/Facebook with information about your Club or Society (e.g. list of Term 1 Events, contact details for prospective students etc).
Enter your event details onto the UCLU online calendar to gain some extra free publicity ( Enter your event details to the online calendar for Welcome Fortnight & October by 15July2015to have them printed in the What’s On? guides that are posted to new and returning students in the mailings.
Set up a mailing list using GroupSpaces/Facebook/Mailchimp/Other method and put the link or the sign-up on your website so that prospective students can sign up before the Welcome Fair.
August-September:
Finalise your event plans and submit the appropriate paperwork well in advance (event budgets, room bookings (CSC), coach/instructor packs, ticket requests etc.)
Plan your Welcome Fair Stall and your Fair Publicity.
Attend welcome back briefings in September to receive your Welcome Fair access passes and the location of your Fair stall
Planning your Taster Events
You should start to plan what you would like to do in the first term of next year as soon as possible. Make sure that you have at least one event, taster or trial organised well in advance so that you can advertise it at the Fair.
You can book most UCLU CSC facilities, including meeting rooms, venues and rehearsal space well in advance of the start of term. The president will be emailed your Term 1 UCLU room allocations over the holidays (if you requested anything) and you should already know what Sports Hall and Theatre space you have booked for next year. So you have plenty of time to ensure you are ready to go at the start of term. UCL rooms will not open for bookings until 6 October 2015.
The week before term starts is critical. You will need to put any finishing touches to your publicity and finalise your events. Remember, you must submit any event budgets well in advance of your events depending on how much you want to spend before your events.
Updating our Website
Make sure your page and events on our website are up to date (see uclu.org/clubs), and any other web pages you have (e.g. Groupspaces, Facebook, etc.). Include information on your trials and taster events as well as your regular meetings and training slots. Most new students will start to look at the Union website once their place has been confirmed in mid – late August so it’s a good idea to make sure everything is current.
We set up your UCL Club/Society email account so that you can access it over the holidays and reply to interested people early.
Setting up your Mailing Lists
Mailing lists are an excellent marketing tool when they are used effectively, and can be set up as part of your Groupspaces or with Mailchimp for example. The better you manage your mailing list, the more you will get out of it. It’s a free and a direct link to your members and people interested in your club or society. It’s worth delegating the task of updating the mailing list to a committee member if you want to use email marketing effectively.
We strongly advise that you set up an electronically managed mailing list. This is a must for Clubs and Societies.
You need to get information out to your potential members as soon after Welcome Fair as you can. Plan for this and make sure you have a team ready to get things going as soon as you can. Plan well in advance how you are going to use your mailing list and what you want to achieve. Do you want to send different information out to first years than to existing members? Do you want different information to be sent to beginners than to more experienced people? If you do, you need to think about what information you will need to collect at the Fair to enable you to do this – again, use of a mailing list makes this exceedingly simple.
You should also consider the following points:
Separate your mailing lists; have one for potential members and one for those that have actually joined.
Use the mailing list as an incentive to join your club/society - offer exclusive information to those that are members.
Your emails should be clear, concise and informative and you should always offer recipients the option of unsubscribing from your mailing list in any correspondence you send.
The rules about Data Protection are outlined in the Club and Society Regulations. However it is important to remember this point in particular:
Always copy all the email addresses into the Bcc: field, never use the To: or Cc: fields. If you use GroupSpaces this is automatically taken care of.
Planning your Welcome Fair Stall and Publicity
The Welcome Fair is the most important event in the Club and Society calendar. If your Club or Society is going to get 30 members by the end of Joining Fortnight, then it is imperative that you have a well-planned and well executed Fair.
The stall itself consists of a poster board, an exam table and a chair. Every stall has a single power point for laptops if you want to do mailing list sign-ups electronically.
You should thing about the following things before the Fair:
-What should be on your stall display?
So long as all your publicity conforms with the regulations on the Publicity Statement you signed in May/June, you can put anything up on your stall display. Photos, posters, signs are all acceptable, and we encourage you to think creatively and try and make your stall as eye-catching as possible.
-Who should sit at your stall?
Make up a rota for the Fair with a maximum of two people per time slot. As there is very limited space at the Fairs, any unattended stalls will be removed and you will miss out on member sign ups.
You will receive two access passes to have permission to stand at your stall. No more than two people should be at a stall at one time. Additional personnel will be told to leave the Fair.
We suggest that you choose people who have a good knowledge about your Club or Society so that they can answer questions without problems. Committee members are generally best at this, although you can use old members as well if they want to help.
-How should you do your mailing list sign-ups?
We strongly suggest that you do your sign-ups using a laptop – doing it with pen and paper means that somebody has to type all the information up, and it also risks bad handwriting and misspelt names and email addresses! If you have GroupSpaces(for example) account, you can connect to UCL’s wireless network and do sign-ups automatically online – this makes things a lot easier and saves you a lot of work.
-What publicity should you give out?
If you have a number of events coming up in the first few weeks of term, think about advertising them all on one flyer along with information about your regular training and meeting times. It will reduce your costs and allows potential members to see that your Club or Society has a lot going on and is worth joining. Remember as well that you can send out a welcome email once you have created your mailing lists, and this will allow you to give out more detailed information.
The following is a checklist of things you should make sure that your Fair publicity includes:
Make sure that ALL of your publicity sticks to the regulations explained on the Publicity Statement you signed in the June training (it will be confiscated if it doesn’t!).
General Information about your Club or Society
A list of try fortnight / other Term 1 events, including dates, times, venues and costs.
Your Club or Society email address
Your Club or Society website
Details of how and when people can join including the online shop website (
-What format should my publicity be in?
There are numerous options for this, ranging from business cards to photocopied flyers to professionally printed brochures. As with all publicity, make absolutely sure that it conforms to the publicity statement or it could be confiscated and disposed of.
-Where should I get my publicity printed or photocopied?
If you want to use external professional printers, then that is fine provided that you abide by the appropriate procedures as outlined in the ‘How To’ guides. Bear in mind the costs, as it can be more expensive, so think carefully about how much money you are prepared to spend on your publicity and get quotes.
You can get flyers photocopied by the Union as well – the procedure for doing this is also explained in the ‘How To’ Guides, but remember a few of these points if you decide to use the Union’s Reprographics:
The Union’s Reprographics Shop can produce for you A4 or A3 Posters and/or A5 or A6 Flyers. These can be printed in black & white or colour.
Please note that due to very high demand in printing for the Fair, there are limits to the volume and type of printing. Check the website for details.
Submit files for printing online via
The deadline for printing for items to be ready for the Fair is Monday, 28 September 2015 5pm.
If you have your publicity ready before the deadline, please hand it in earlier. In the days preceding Welcome Fair the Reprographics has to deal with very large volumes of photocopying in a relatively short space of time, so it is really helpful to have your publicity in as early as possible.
The Welcome Fair
UCLU Welcome Fair is a huge event. Over 12,000 students attend the Fair over both days so it is extremely busy. Consequently there is a rigorous set of procedures that you need to follow (most of which are Health and Safety related).
As one of over 250 stalls we need you to help us by managing your own area effectively. Please ensure that all your stall holders are aware of the following before the Fair: