Membership - acmumn/officer-resources GitHub Wiki

Duties

  • Respond to all student inquiries about club membership
  • Register for and host ACM outreach events (Welcome Week, Paint the Bridge, etc.)
  • Maintain membership list, provide operator with list for door access
  • Mediate between officers and members
  • Publish ACM mailing list

Advice

Adding Members

The process for adding members is:

  • Explain the benefits and cost of membership
  • Direct them to the payment portal (z.umn.edu/acmsm)
  • Put their information in the membership spreadsheet
  • Update the membership spreadsheet to reflect their door access once they forward their receipt to [email protected]

Emailing

Add ACM as a recipient on your first email response to student inquiries, so that other officers know that the student has been replied to. In the same vein, reply in a timely manner! Imagine that you're a student wanting to join ACM; you send in a prospective email about membership, but you don't get a reply for weeks! Wouldn't strike me as a club I wanted to join.

If you're unsure about what to put in your replies to students, or if you're not sure exactly how to write it, take a look at some of the sample emails in the resources repository.

Events and signup

When going to promotional events like Explore-U, we made sure to bring a signup for our mailing list. Specifically, we brought a card reader for people to swipe their UCards through. Make sure to bring a paper signup as backup. Some people's UCards didn't have the necessary information for us to be able to derive their email address. Other people will forget their cards. But for the majority of people, it ended up being extremely useful, and way faster than having them sign up manually. It also makes it seem like we know our tech, which is always important for a tech club. So the benefits outweigh the extra pain building the list of emails later.

For figuring out email address, the swipe MUST give you their full name.

Scanning UCards will only give you their complete first and last name information (and middle initial). In order to figure out their email address, use the UMN directory to look people up. Most people you look up will show up by themselves, but a few people have common/ambiguous names. In my experience, about 10% of swipes will either have ambiguous names, or not show up at all in the directory. Some tips for resolving these issues:

  • UCard swipes give you the exact name, so if multiple people show up in the directory, only the ones with exactly the same name are relevant.
    • So if the swipe doesn't have a middle initial but someone in the directory does, you know that person isn't it. Ditto if the swipe does have a middle initial.
    • Same thing if someone shows up whose last name is longer than what was swiped.
  • Check enrollment by clicking through to someone's page.
    • Look to see if the person you're looking at is enrolled in the current school year.
    • Science and Engineering enrollment is also more likely to be the person you're looking for.
  • Check what campus they're on.
    • For obvious reasons, the majority of registrants are Twin Cities, with a few from Duluth. Other campuses should be a little more suspect.
  • If they don't show up in the directory at all, try using your UMN Gmail. Start typing their name into the To: field and see if they show up.
  • If you do all of that and you still can't narrow it down to just one person, don't worry too much about. Just add every person that's still left to the mailing list. Worst comes to worst, if they're not the person that swiped, they can just click the 'unsubscribe' button in the mailing list.

Other than the signups, you might also want some other things to entice people to your table. Free candy is always a good option. We also passed out stickers. I'm not personally a fan of fliers (I never really paid attention to them as a freshman, even when I got them), but it's not a bad idea to have them. Some people might look at them.

Also, stand in front of the table. Something about being behind the table makes you seem more distant. You want to seem friendly and approachable, and hopefully that will reflect back on the club. It also makes it less awkward to call out to people wandering around the table. Don't just wait for people to stop at your table. Try to pull in anyone you can.

Promotional materials

Printable Materials

There are a few printable things in the Membership Drive folder; posters, fliers, that kind of thing. The SVGs are meant to be opened and edited with Inkscape. Making them with Inkscape means we can scale them to whatever size we want and not lose any visual clarity. Additionally, you'll need to install the Droid fonts for the posters to render correctly.

Live Event Promotion

It's cool to have interesting things that light up, fly or do cool stuff at the table/booth when you're promoting the club. We have a drone that can be used for this purpose, and hopefully no one will decide to hack it while we're demoing >.< Projects by ACM members could also be neat for display if we ever get around to those 3D printers. It's also a possibility to bring the Oculus out more often than just at LAN parties.

Specific event advice

Welcome Week CSE Student Group Fair

The one that's held in the Lind Courtyard. Entirely Science and Engineering clubs, presenting to freshman. It's around three hours in length, and it's usually still pretty hot and sunny when it happens.

  • Tables aren't set up for you; you'll have to carry them out of Lind and into the courtyard yourself. They're pretty heavy, too. Either bring your own, lighter, plastic table, or be prepared to carry it. It's not that long of a distance, so it's not too bad.
  • Make sure to bring plenty of water. You'll be outside and in the sun, and you don't want to lose your voice. You'll also be pretty thirsty.
  • Bring sunscreen and bug spray.
    • One thing I thought might be an interesting idea was to offer free sunscreen for the freshmen. Since it's all Science and Engineering students, most of them probably wouldn't have thought about it, and it also gives you time to talk to them, since it takes time to put on sunscreen. Just a thought.
  • Make sure that everything that you bring won't fall over in the wind. Whatever you bring, make sure it's sufficiently weighted down.
  • Set up near the edge of the grassy area. In my experience, people will mostly mill about the edge of the grass and sidewalks, only going into the middle of the grassy area later. Make sure they see you first. This means check in as early as you can.

Explore-U

Held in Mariucci Arena, indoors. Also around three hours in length, and also freshmen. However, this time it'll be freshmen of pretty much any major.

  • Tables are already set up for you, so no problems there.
  • Again, bring plenty of water.
  • Only four people can be at the table at a time. I doubt you'll have people chomping at the bit to come table for ACM, but you never know.
  • On the day of the event, check in early. In 2016, check-in opened at 11:00AM and didn't start until 1:30PM, and there was still a line of 30-40 groups at 11.
  • Set up near the stairs of the East or West entrances, if you can. Ideally, you should be the first thing someone would see when they walk up the stairs and into the tabling area.
  • Because it's not just Science and Engineering, be prepared to talk to people outside your area of expertise.
    • In particular, don't wait for people to stop at your table. Call out to people walking around and ask them if they're interested. Even if they say they're not interested, or that their major is too different from ACM, convince them. Computer science and programming are incredibly general skills that can fit into any career and discipline.
    • Knowing a little bit of programming can make for a really big difference in pay in a lot of careers.

TODO: Add more stuff later