Dan Burfeind, the coordinator of student organizations leadership development and assessment at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB), facilitated an informative Zoom conference on April 8 for CSUMB students to learn how to start their own club in the 2020-2021 academic school year. During the web conference, Burfeind discussed the steps to start a club, not only in terms of getting registered, but also in terms of maintaining a high club meeting turnout.
As an introduction to the Zoom conference, Burfeind explained the details of clubs and organizations overall at CSUMB: “There’s three different councils for clubs and organizations, or three different ‘buckets’ that they fit in. There’s Inter Club Council (ICC), which are our general clubs, like honors societies, special interest clubs, like a sewing club, to heritage based organizations. There’s about 60-70 clubs in that council. The next is sports clubs, like rugby, equestrian and lacrosse [teams]. Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) is where our Greek’s are. Any kind of Greek letter organization [fits there] and if anyone is interested in that it’s a much, much more integrative process,” Burfeind said.
Burfeind informed students that April is the time for the “reactivation or registration” of a club. Students can do so by filling out the ICC form listed at the bottom of this article. If someone wants to start a new club, that new organization would need at least five members and a club constitution that states their clubs purpose, what it takes to be a member and how they will host their officer elections, which all must be revised annually. Each new club is also required to have four eligible officers including a president, vice president, treasurer and secretary.
“Those four [officers] count as” the five members required to start a club, “so it’s really the four officers and one other member that you need to start a club,” Burfeind explained.
“The requirements of those officers, which is the challenging part that most clubs struggle the most with, is finding officers because not only do you need to be a name on paper but need to show up for training,” Burfeind said. “Over the summer, we have a 30-minute iLearn course that all officers must complete and a retreat that happens in August that is five to six hours.”
Clubs also need a stateside advisor to oversee their organization. Burfeind said “most [CSUMB] administrators are stateside advisors” and “if you ask any CSUMB employee if they are a stateside advisor, they will know instantly if they are or not,” which gives students an easy way to find a stateside advisor that best suits their club. Club advisors must also have an average GPA and be enrolled with at least six units in progress, and cannot have finished more than 150 units overall, unless they have proof they changed their major in the past.
Burfeind said that “being clear in your organization’s name is very important” and that every club should know it’s main purpose. This is because it can aid a club in their recruitment process. “Recruitment never really ends,” Burfeind said, who encourages students to give their best efforts when establishing their club.
Clubs and organizations “need to be recruiting [potential members] to something. What is it that your club doing that makes people say ‘I want to be a part of that?’ People show up for personal connections,” Burfeind said.
Burfeind reminded students that “the ICC form needs to be submitted by the end of April, and new organizations will get their information added to club organization software and will get a tutorial afterwards” on the next steps they should take before attending their clubs retreat in August.
To fill out the ICC form and start or renew your club, fill out this Google Form.