Sustaining a Community

Create a document that contains the log in information and running information for your social media accounts, so that the next committee can continue your work. 

Ensure that the document is stored securely, but that multiple people at any given time have access to it. If any of the accounts required two-factor authentication, and it has to go to a phone number, see if it's possible to set this up through a staff member, for easy continuity between cohorts.  Or make sure this is handed over as part of a handover process.  

If you run any events or any projects, it is a good idea to link attendees to a form, which allows them to give feedback. If you collate feedback from multiple events, you can use that to plan for the next year, before your committee changes. 

In the Psychology Disability Committee, we have a 'Pulse Survey' that asks students at the start of the year what they'd want from a disability community in the department, and what type of events they've enjoyed in the past. Hopefully this will inform our events, and we may even see our own events being appreciated in years to come. 

Keeping track of feedback can help new members see where updates have come from and help them to guide the work they do.  

It's very likely that you have a staff contact, if you're part of a department-level disability committee. A dedicated staff contact can be incredibly useful for sustaining your committee, as they will likely be around longer than any individual student. 

However, obligations change; if you have a staff contact and are thinking about the long-term sustainability of your committee, it might be a good idea to go looking for other staff members, who might be willing to get involved as well! Use momentum whilst you have it.

See the 'Finding a Staff Contact' section of the 'Building a Committee' page for more guidance.  

If you've had a committee for a while, you may be working on long-term projects (projects that you expect to last multiple years). One important consideration for these projects, in terms of sustainability, is to ensure that you have written out all of your ideas, what you've done previously towards your projects, and any specific plans you do have for the next year. 

When handing over your committee, it might be the case that the new committee are no longer interested in pursuing a project you've been working on; that's okay - it's good for work to be a product of passion, when running groups voluntarily. Keep notes, keep a public list of projects, even if they've been paused, and ensure that any projects are in a position that they could be paused and picked up in later years, before you hand the committee over. 

See the 'Committee Handover' for more guidance around handovers and the 'Projects' page for general project guidance.  

The longer you sustain your committee, the more likely it is that your projects will become more broadly advocacy based - When you're starting out, you may want to fix small practical problems within your department (e.g. inconsistent captioning, inaccessible VLE formatting, inaccessible bathrooms, etc.), but, as you work through those projects, you're more likely to be spreading awareness, and doing specific advocacy tasks based on the needs of disabled students within your department. 

It's important to keep a record of the projects and work that you do, so this advocacy work can continue as well a grow.  

You will likely make lots of resources in your work.  For example, posters, logos, illustrations, websites, plans, drafts, forms etc.  Creating one shared space to save all of these resources is ideal in helping to ensure everyone can access them if they need and when handing over to new members.  This can help ensure sustainability.  Google drive allows you to create shared drives which multiple people can access and edit.  

You may also build up a store of physical resources, depending on the activities you run.  Taking time to find a place to store these in a place any committee member can access will also help.  A staff contact can help with this, or you can speak with your department to see if there is a small area of storage space you can use.  

See the 'Setting up how you want to work and communicate as a group' section of the 'Building a Committee' page for more information around Google Drive and other sharing and communication tools.