Making a Personal Connection with Members

One of the best ways to retain memembership is to have a close personal connection with your members. This Hot Topic is a list of some ideas I have that might help you make that connection. Feel free to share any others that work for your section, as well!

• Remember names! It’s surprising how something so little can mean and do so much.
• Make sure your officers talk to all the members, not just to each other, or the ones they know well.
• Have smaller activities and meetings, in addition to general body meetings, so members can get to know each other on a more personal setting.
• Consider establishing a big-little program that keeps the freshman engaged by giving them an upperclassmen mentor in SWE.
• Have socials devoted to bonding, which have less business and professional stuff, just to have fun with each other.
• Smile and say hi to your fellow SWE members, even if you’re just passing them in the halls.
• Get SWE merchandise, such as tshirts, hoodies, or sweatpants, and have everyone wear them on the same day.

The overall idea: make sure you focus on the personal needs of your members, in addition to the professional ones!

C2C Membership Option

We wanted to let you guys know that there’s a new option for National SWE Membership. It’s called C2C (College to Career) and basically means you pay $50 for membership in SWE for the rest of your college years, plus one year after that! It’s a great way to save money and show your commitment to SWE. For more information on this great option, click here.

Attracting & Retaining Membership [HT]

September is a month inherently linked with the start of school. And as students flood back onto campus, we ponder how to attract them to SWE, and how to keep them around after that. Here’s a few tips and ideas I’ve found works well.

Attracting Membership

• Free food! Nothing attracts people to an event quite like free food. In addition to giving them a free meal, this also makes it time efficient because people can listen to you and eat at the same time.
• Have current exec and other members present at the meeting to talk to potential new members. This makes people feel like your chapter is active and welcoming, which it is!
• Publicity! This seems obvious, but I wanted to emphasize that people cannot come to events that they don’t know about. Email, posters, word of mouth. Make sure that the campus knows when your SWE events are.

Retaining

• Offer a way for freshman to get involved. Many collegiate club leadership positions run from spring to the next spring (such as Jan to Jan), instead of fall to spring. This makes it difficult for the new freshman to get involved right off the bat, when they are usually the most excited about clubs and opportunities. Consider establishing a “Freshman Representative” type position to get new, eager freshman involved at the exec level right off the bat.
• Establish a big-little program that links the freshmen to SWE upperclassmen. This upperclassmen can encourage the freshman to come to events, and show her around and introduce her to new people at the events.
• Be consistent in your meeting days and times. That way, SWE will naturally establish itself as a part of people’s weekly schedules, instead of a random aberration that throws that week off.

Any other ideas or tips that worked well for your chapter? Let us know in the comments!

Getting People Out When It’s Cold Out [HT]

It’s February: the semester is in full swing; there’s snow everywhere. How do you encourage SWE members to come to events?
The first, and most important thing, is understanding why your members joined SWE. What are their favorite types of events: outreach, networking, social? Now is the time to roll out one of their favorite events. Don’t know what your section members are interested in? Send out a short survey asking what their favorite events have been in the past and what they’d like to see the section doing. I recommend Google Docs for easy, free surveys with unlimited participants. Then, think about how to make the events as easy as possible for your section members to attend. Also, never underestimate the power a personal invitation can have! Mention to a SWE member you know from classes that she should really come to Event X, and chances are much higher that she’ll attend than if she just received a mass e-mail and saw flyers.

What’s worked for you?
Discuss!
-Katie
(rcne-f@swe.org)

Attracting and Retaining Membership [HT]

One of the biggest problems collegiate sections face is attracting and retaining membership. My section (Olin College) has always found that the best way to attract students is at the beginning of the year. We table at the annual Club Fair, which helps us convince first-year students to join our mailing list. Then, we host a “Study Break” (these are common at my school; they are basically excuses to take a break from studying and have fun) where we buy food and tell everyone about what our section does. Then, we have mini breakout sessions where people can learn more about specific ways they can get involved. We’ve found that this is a great way to let people know about what we do and how they can get involved. Our section has always struggled with maintaining membership, but recently we started making committees and encouraging first-years to be involved. This has helped them feel more valuable and encouraged them to pursue further leadership roles. We’ve also had success working with other professional societies and campus organizations. If you have any other suggestions of things that work in your section, please post them! We’d love to hear from you.

-Katie Miller

RCNE Region F