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Recruting a group of fellow students and/or staff is a really helpful way to start, build and sustain a community. It brings multiple ideas and talents to the table, it allows for work to be shared and can help to support the sustainability of the community you build. See below for experience and advice around building a commitee or organising group.
Components of building a Committee or Organising Group
Components of building a Committee or Organising Group
To help your community grow and thrive, getting a committee or organising group in place can be key. The below is a list of stages for this process, each of which has a section or sections below with more information and guidance.
Stages of building a committee or organising group
Stages of building a committee or organising group
The main stages of this are:
Finding a staff contact (if possible).
Finding students wanting to join your committee through running an interest events.
Setting up how you want to work and communicate as a group.
Setting up some resources for your committee e.g. email address, website, social media.
Starting to plan events and initiatives.
Finding a Staff Contact
Finding a Staff Contact
The first step you want to take is finding a staff member willing to help you, if you can!
Staff contacts can be incredibly valuable, as staff will often be able to access information that students can't normally access (for example, mailing lists and useful contacts). They also provide a sort of 'legitimacy' and can be very useful in proving you are an established university group when talking to the IT department when looking for an email address, or talking to lecturers about promoting your group to students. They will also be valuable as they will usually stay at the university longer than the students, so when it comes to handing over the committee, they can be a point of consistency and ensure your group stays sustainable.
Advice for looking for a staff contact
Advice for looking for a staff contact
Does your department have an existing EDI (Equality, Diversity & Inclusion) committee? If so, is this a project that they are willing to support?
Is one of your lecturers supportive and willing? Do you have a student services team that can help you?
Does your degree supervisor have any advice or recommendations?
Is there someone in the Student's Union who has a similar role to what you're doing who may be able to help?
Is there any room in the department budget to support your group? There isn't a guaranteee, but it is worth checking! This is best done when you have a staff contact, or if there is an EDI committee you can ask if there is a way to apply for money.
Finding students who want to join your committee: Interest Events
Finding students who want to join your committee: Interest Events
There may already be a group of you, or it's just you. Either way, it's always worth seeing if you can find more people to join and help. This is a step that's best done once you have a staff contact to help, but you can start without a staff contact. This process can also be done by a member of staff who would like to start/support a student group.
The Steps
The Steps
Advertise an interest event: Through email, social media, posters. Set a date, time, location with plenty of time to advertise to help potentially interested students hear about the event and have time to consider.
Provide a way to register interest for those that can't make the event: It's helpful to have a sign up form for the interest event, where people can indicate if their interested and would like to hear more but they can't make the interest event. It also helps to give you an idea of numbers ahead of the event. Google Forms are great for this.
Hold the event: How you run the event is up to you, but hear is a suggestion if it helps. Start with a get to know you activity to ease people in. Explain your aims and why you'd like to start the group, provide a chance for people to share their thoughts and ideas for the group and note these down.
Provide a way for people to sign up if they want to: At the end of event and through email afterwards - provide a way for people to let you know if their interest.
Hopefully by the end of this process you have the beginnings of a committee or organising group! Now you can get a date booked in for your first meeting.
Experience Advice: Starting a Committee from the Psychology Department
Experience Advice: Starting a Committee from the Psychology Department
This is experience from a staff member in the department who wanted to start a student disability committee. To help support students in my disability champion role, I wanted to be able to hear from students and amplify their voices. So I followed the steps laid out above to see if there were any students interested. We had 12 people turn up to the interest event which was great, from this we had about 8 who wanted to be involved and we went from there. Be aware that who eventually is on your committee or group will be lower than initial interest, as people try things out and may find it's not for them or they don't have the time. We eventually had 4/5 core committee members from the initial interest. This may seem small, but these 5 students managed to do amazing things and really helped to start build community in the Psychology department. You only need a small number of interested people to get going.
Experience Advice: Interest Events from the Education Department
Experience Advice: Interest Events from the Education Department
These are a useful first step, intended to help you gather members for your committee! It comes from the perspective of the DISCO Community Ambassador for the Education Department.
The first thing I would recommend is to dream big but expect little - gathering anyone at all counts as building a community. Events might not bring as many people as you would like, but the quality of the interactions with and experiences of those people is vital to them coming back, bringing friends, and your community being a helpful place.
Plan
Plan
Events can be online or in-person - I prefer in-person because you can offer a major draw: food. Any food you do offer must be suitable for a range of dietary requirements with allergens clearly labelled.First events will be about getting people together who might not know you or each other, so having a draw to tempt people can help overcome social anxiety.
Some activities can also help, but complicated games and schedules may prevent people from feeling comfortable to leave, and so create an uncomfortable environment.
For Education’s first event I prepared post-it notes and the following prompts:
‘What would you change about Education’s approach to Disabilities?’ - This worked well as people enjoyed coming together over a grumble, and empowered them to feel that they were being listened to and that change was possible
‘What are your favourite things about the Disability/Neurodivergent/Mental Health/Long-term Sick communities that you have found so far?’ - This worked well to bring a positive light to the conversation, and bring people together in shared understanding. It also encourages people to see those positive attributes in each other and form connections with new people.
‘What would you like out of a Disability Community?’ - This brought clear action points that I could build on, allowed me to soundboard ideas I was already thinking about, and empower people to grow their community on their terms. These can be seen in the image below.
Location
Location
Location can also be an issue - too private and people may not find the event, too public and people may not feel comfortable attending or being vulnerable. Finding a perfect spot between these is impossible so just trust your gut. However, making sure your venue is accessible (i.e. wheelchair accessible, quiet, with hearing-loop aids etc.) is uncompromisable.
Advertise
Advertise
Ensure to make posters, VLE and email announcements with your staff contacts help as early as possible, and to set up reminders for these. Eye-catching graphics help a lot, as do QR codes to gauge interest (although these are not representative of the people who will come).
I am not skilled in graphic design and made the first poster on paint - as long as you have images that explain the concept, readable text that explain the details of the event and a clear purpose of the event, you have made a good poster. A free Canva account is also an easy way to make fun posters for free. See the 'Promoting the Community' page for more guidance around posters.
If you are comfortable with speaking to coursemates, advertising your event in classes and seminars is also a great option for getting the word out - though it does take bravery.
Prepare
Prepare
Sourcing items such as food or other activity resources can be difficult through the department - your staff contact can help with this. Stationary and visual aids are easier to source, and can be incorporated into bonding activities. Again, your location can change the resources you can prepare.
Preparing yourself for speaking to new people can involve resting, preparing notes of possible things to say and creating contingency plans for when activities don’t go quite as you expect.
Other members of communities from across the DISCO project can help you by attending the event and/or helping you prepare.
Record
Record
Take as many notes as you can throughout the event to make sure that you remember what happened, and so that people feel their voices are heard - try not to bury your head in your keyboard though! I chose to jot down notes on post-it notes to try to make this collaborative.
Taking Action
Taking Action
There might be lots you or your community might want to change, but University and Departmental processes are slow - involve staff members as much as possible, be patient and keep each stage in writing (to keep yourself and others accountable). There are also other ways to respond to feedback, such as Module Feedback forms, where voices can be amplified through organised students without directly involving higher university powers.
Resilience
Resilience
For Education’s second event, I prepared colouring-in and getting-to-know-you prompts as well as cake - nobody came! Even though it was disheartening, it's important to remember that the project is bigger than any one event, and that factors beyond your control (like exam season) will influence attendance. Sometimes it just takes time for your group to become known and on people's radar, some events work better than others so they'll be a little trial and error.
In Psychology, we've tried hangout and chat events which were not well attended so we didn't repeat these. However, study group and film events have been really popular.
Find out more
Find out more
Check out the 'Running Interest Events' on the Events page for more guidance!
Setting up how you want to work and communicate as a group.
Setting up how you want to work and communicate as a group.
To help ensure you're all on the same page and can work easily together, in your first meeting discuss how you want to organise and communicate with one another.
How you do this is up to you and the group. However, using tools available at the University for this can be a good way to go as then you know everyone has access to these tools as well as support from the University on how to use them. The University of York uses Google Workspace so you could use for example:
A Google Drive that eveyone can access to share resources and planning notes.
Google Groups so it's quick and easy to email everyone.
Google Chat for quick and easy communication.
If you would prefer to use WhatsApp, Discord or another service, there is no problem with this - it's what works for you. Just make sure everyone can use and access the app/service you use and bare in mind that it may not be appropriate for your staff contact to join certain services (e.g. WhatsApp groups where a phone number needs to be shared).
Setting Expections
Setting Expections
We're all different and we may all have different expectations and preferences around communication and how work is delegated and managed. As such it's important to talk this through and agree expectations ahead of time, as this can help to prevent issues and misunderstandings. Once agreed, make sure these expectations are noted down, shared, easy to find and expect to revisit and update them regularly. Remember - you're all likely working in a volunteering capacity, so make sure this is considered.
It may also be worth agreeing on an emoji, word or other symbol that members can send quickly and easily if they are having:
a low capacity/energy day
dealing with some personal issues
need to focus on some Uni work
feeling overwhelmed at all
This agreed symbol, means the member doesn't need to explain anything and other members of your group are aware they need a little be of space. This can avoid people thinking someone is ignoring them, or members feeling like they are letting others down.
Experience Advice: Setting expectations and communication for a committe from the Education Department:
Experience Advice: Setting expectations and communication for a committe from the Education Department:
Once you have a group of people that have agreed to help, it's helpful to set up a space to communicate. In Education, we agreed Google Chat was easiest as everyone already opened their email for work anyway. I pinned messages at the top about what was expected of members - mostly feedback and soundboarding of ideas, with some poster making. I emphasised that their university work and personal life comes first and that they are volunteering their time, so any small amount of work is impactful and appreciated.
Setting Up Resources
Setting Up Resources
Getting a group email, social media and/or website set up will really help give you're group a presence as well as help you to advertise events and initiatives that you run. You don't have to have all of this sorted before you get started, but getting some or all of it set up at the start can help.
Email: Creating a google group, creates a custom email for the group. You set it up so anyone (non-members) can send emails to that address that all non-members will recieve. If you have a staff contact, another options is to set up a non-personal @york.ac.uk email address with a separate inbox and google space. This allows up to 6 people to have delegated access to the email, but can only be set up by a member of staff.
Social Media: See the 'Promoting the Community' page of our toolkit for more guidance around social media.
Website: See the 'Website' page of our toolkit for more guidance around creating a website.
Starting to Plan Events and Intiatives
Starting to Plan Events and Intiatives
Now you have a committee or organising group, you're ready to start building community through events ands initiatives!
You may start with lots of amazing ideas and you likely gathered lots of ideas at your interest event - but start slow. Pick one or two ideas to get started, as things take longer than you think it will to plan and set up. Once you have set up, tested and established one thing you can start to think about the next and build from there.
You're now ready to visit the 'Building a Community' section of our toolkit to find guidance and support around running events and growing your community.
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Toolkit Navigation
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