Day: July 23, 2017

Congratulations on successfully creating and planning a school club. Now you must do the next step which is to make sure that you can keep the gears of this machine running. The same thing that keeps this machine running is the same thing that keeps the world moving around. There are plenty of ways that you can earn money, but they are so numerous that we are going to categorize into three groups. The most important thing about all three is that you make sure that the personality of yourself, as the leader, and the club shine through. While we encourage you to do anything to earn money, useless it is illegal or degrading to your organization name, it is all a waste of time if your actions promote that of another club. Unfortunately, this makes things difficult, but you would not have gotten your position if you were uncreative.

Through The School

This is the one that most clubs are going to do because it is the easiest. Now if your club is famous then it should be easy to make your members pay a monthly fee. This should take into consideration the numbers of members that you have. The best way that we can suggest that you gauge this is that you don’t have a fee if you have less than twenty members. For fifty members, we suspect that having a five-dollar fee is normal. Anything that is more than ninety then you can only ask for ten dollars and above. Now you will need to have a purpose for this money because it is not like everyone just has these funds to give so such rewards as trips or even some member shirts.

Another thing that you can do is sell your goods to not only spread the buzz about your club but even get some easy money on the side. If you want to push the envelope for money that you can get is to make it a competition. It must be something worthwhile that will most likely have to get order months in advance. Anything that can get the faces of your members out there in the school will only lead to more talk and exposure, so it is a win-win for everyone that is involved.

Through Your Service

Now while we said that you should try to incorporate your club through everything that you do, there are services that only you can offer. Let us say that you are part of the archery club. You might think that there is nothing that your club can provide anyone but how about archery lessons? Sure, there are very few people who would want this, but those who do will provide you with a steady stream of money for a few months. Using this example, this is not something that you should just offer out of the blue. Think about what you can teach someone with each lesson and make it as organized as possible. You want there to be a beginning and a definite end. It might help if you can come up with some ranking system such as a feathered cap, that runs through the school apparently so that students can feel some pride once they finish up your lessons.

The debate club is another famous club that is hard to gain some money for. It is not like everyone is jumping to learn how to discuss better, but this might surprise you. One way to advertise this service is to say that you can teach someone how to win at any argument through the teaching of fallacies and deconstructing arguments. The same things that were mention above can easily be applied here, but you might want to lower the price for this one by several degrees. Everyone wants to learn how to argue better, but not everyone has the money to pay for this. In exchange for this low fee, you will be able to reach a wider range of students. Once you get to the point where you have too many for the members of your club to handle then drastically increase the price to turn people away.

Through Other Means

Finally, you can put your own money into the club treasury which should happen from time to time. If your club is not too pressed for money, then donations is another traditional route that you can go. The last-ditch effort is a favorite school club is to ask the school itself for a bit of money, but you better be prepared to explain yourself. It is not like the school just has buckets of money to give to a club that does not necessarily need it to run. If you want to push the limits of, however, you are going to need money to do just that.

 

If there is one thing that every boss knows then, that their job is not easy. You are going to face difficulties left and right even outside of the school. Three of these problems are dealing with public relations and are the press, speeches, and community. A club that wants to last past the years of their first leader has to deal with these three in some way or another. We will not only just talk about these issues but the ways that you can properly deal with them along with a few extra touches to make your show excel. As John T. Chirban Ph.D., Th.D. said, “How you act today will have a huge impact on who your child becomes as an adult. A confident stance, conscious of the example you are setting, is the best approach for guiding your children toward healthy adulthood.”

You VS The Press

Now the press can be one of two things, the school or papers. If your school has a paper, then you are bound to run into this as a problem, but the moment that you get into the papers then this is one of the extremes. One way or another you did something that got you a lot of attention in your town, but first, let us discuss the school paper. Clubs and the school news should always be hand in hand because outside of fliers this is going to be the only way that you can relay information to the public. This can either be for ads or announcements. The exposure, in general, is good but what if you get some bad exposure than just weather the storm. This is a different issue when the papers give you some bad exposure.

Sadly there is little that you can do if you manage to get yourself some bad exposure in the news. One of the first things that you should do is talk to the principal of the school to try your best to explain what happened. Most likely as a leader, you will keep your nose clean but when you get some good exposure in the news then revel in it. Frame it somewhere in the club and make sure that you get this juicy tidbit to the school paper for a little more good exposure.

You VS Speeches

This is a rare opportunity, but at some point,  the school might ask you to speak publically about your club. This should take priority number one because if you nail this, then you will see a lot of people that are interested in your organization. The last thing that you want to do is get known as the boring or lame club because you did not prepare for this. The following tips can easily be applied to other types of speeches as well:

*Practice your speech in the mirror and try to learn your speech cover to cover.

*Take your time to know your audience so if it is front of teachers then try to be as informative as possible.

*Let your personality and club shine through it because that will attract a broader audience.

*Use your hands and voice effectively, and try to delete all nervous ticks. (such as ‘Uhm,’ ‘like,’ etc.)

*You can never get a speech perfect so try to make all your mistakes light-hearted and get some humor out of it.

You VS The Community

Out of all the things, this is one that matters the most because if your community supports you, then you will never fall. This is by no means easy as this means doing a lot of things for free. “Effective leadership usually results from convincing members to sacrifice their own benefit for the greater good,” says Chengwei Liu Ph.D. Most likely just you and a few dedicated members are going to do this task unless your club is specifically about helping the community. If it is not some general things that you can do is cleaning up or doing yardwork. Anything that your community needs to be done then free work will be appreciated. It is not like the tasks that will be doing will leave you thankless as this should get you some good exposure from both the press and speeches. One of the worst things that can happen is that you can hurt the community because just as much as they will lift you, they will use that same amount of effort to tear you down. The only thing that you can do is profusely apologize and try to fix any of the misdeeds that you did.

If you can master juggling between these three spheres of influence, then you will be able to wrestle public relations in any way that you want. As stated by psychologist Brett Laursen, Ph.D., “The first thing I think that parents can do is that they can help children recognize that attempts to influence them are everywhere.” A good club leader can handle the public to have them keep your club afloat for years. Whatever you do then do not disregard public relations because you will fade to dust the moment that you do.