Start an Educate! Club 

The Role of Student Clubs

  • Our student clubs play a vital role in four aspects of our organization:
  • Most clubs raise money to help support our students in Uganda.  Some clubs ask to help sponsor a particular student or program, which we can help facilitate.
  • Clubs can build long-lasting relationships with the social entrepreneurship clubs and individual students at our partner schools in Uganda.  Both clubs can benefit from the sharing of information, ideas, and experiences.
  • Clubs can communicate directly (most often through e-mail and snail mail) with individual Educate! students in Uganda.  This is essentially a “pen pal” program that serves as a major source of support for our students in Uganda.  Many Educate! club members have formed lifelong friendships with Educate! students as a result of this. Club members in the U.S. and Canada consistently offer encouragement to their Educate! pen pals.  In turn, they receive encouragement in their own efforts at school and outside of school, learn about cultural differences, and become better informed about the current political, social and educational atmosphere in Uganda.
  • Many Educate! club members have volunteered as interns during the summers for Educate! and have had the opportunity to travel to Uganda to meet their pen pals as well as the rest of the students that we sponsor and mentor.  Usually, they are able to help us complete a specific project in a short 1-2 month time frame.

How to Start a Club

If you have received this tool kit, you have already expressed interest in starting your own Educate! student club at your school.  Great!  Now how do you begin?  You may find it helpful to check out the following sample timeline of a new Educate! club’s first year, and if you’d like, you can use it as a model for starting your own club.

Sample Year One Educate! Club Timeline:

Step 1:  Gather friends and faculty who may be interested in joining you in your efforts.   

If you are in high school, you will usually need a teacher sponsor so choose a teacher who you think will be interested in Educate!, preferably one that you know well.  Chat with friends to find out if they’re interested in joining you in your efforts.

Step 2:  Obtain permission and official club status

Find out what the procedure is for starting an on-campus organization at your high school or college/university.  If you are in high school, you will likely need approval from an administrator (usually a principal or vice principal) before you can begin to hold official club meetings. Try to talk to someone who has already started a club at your school and ask them how they did it.  Before setting up a meeting with your school administrator, put together a packet for them with a 1-page proposal and a copy of our recent newsletter.

Step 3:  Have an informal get-together to plan your first club meeting

Once you have the green light from your school administration, you, your friends who have expressed interest, and any faculty members/teachers could meet before or after classes to plan the first meeting. You may want to bring the following to this meeting:  a 3-ring binder or bound notebook for writing down all Educate! club ideas and plans, a school calendar (for scheduling purposes), and this tool kit (of course). Be sure to decide on a convenient date, time, and location for your first club meeting.  Designate a few people to make posters, flyers, table tents, mailbox stuffers, announcements, etc. to advertise the date, time and location of your first meeting.  Don’t forget to have your friends tell all of their friends about it.

Step 4: Hold your first club meeting

At the first meeting, start by explaining Educate!’s mission.  You may want to have a handout about this for all attendees. Then you can show the DVD if you have video equipment or a computer handy.  Other optional agenda items:

  • Vote on a regular meeting schedule.
  • Explain what you envision your club doing.  For example, you may want to focus mainly on fundraising to sponsor an individual student, or on raising awareness at your school about refugees and human rights in Uganda, or simply on communicating with students in our social entrepreneurship clubs in Uganda.
  • Discuss Educate! internship opportunities to get people excited about all of the possibilities (more on internships below).
  • Vote on leadership positions.  You may want two people for each position, so that if one person is missing, the other can always fill in.  Positions you might want to fill:  2 co-presidents, 2 vice-presidents, 2 treasurers, 2 meeting note-takers, 2 publicity coordinators, 3 or 4 event coordinators, and 1 or 2 grant writers.

Step 5:  Have a letter writing drive

One of the best ways to raise money is to send fundraising letters out to family, friends, and local businesses. Ask Maya Ellman for a sample fundraising letter and basic letter writing instructions.  Educate! can reimburse you for any materials that you may need to buy such as stamps and envelopes.  We can also send you Educate! address labels.  Ask each student in your club to bring the names and addresses of 5-10 friends and family members or businesses to the meeting.  At the meeting, everyone can write personal notes, sign and seal each letter.  Place the letters in an envelope addressed to the person you are writing to and don’t forget to include a pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelope to make it easier for them to mail a check to Educate! if they want to donate that way.  You may also want to encourage them to donate online through our website. While everyone writes, you may want to bring music and food to pump up the fun factor.

Step 6:  Plan and schedule a second fundraiser/event

This is where you can get really creative!  Be sure to start simple, and work your way up from easier to more difficult fundraisers.  Here are some ideas for easier and more involved fundraisers: bake sale, car wash, t-shirt sale, book sale, guest speaker, dance-a-thon, jog-a-thon, tournament (dodgeball, soccer, badminton, broomball, etc.), benefit dinner, auction/raffle or benefit concert or performance.

Step 7:  Build a relationship with one of our partner schools in Uganda and/or with an individual Educate! student that we sponsor.

Clubs can sponsor an Educate! scholar at one of our partner schools to send them through the 2 year Educate! Experience. For each scholar your club sponsors ($650 per scholar), your club can help us empower the high school students at our partner schools in Uganda so they can become leaders who can work to solve the problems facing their local communities and their country. Follow the students at our partner schools as they create a social enterprise during the Experience. A social enterprise is an innovative, effective, and sustainable way to address a community need. Building a well to solve clean water problems in a village is an example of a social enterprise.

Step 8:  Apply for internship opportunities

In late spring (April or May) you will have the opportunity to apply for a summer internship with Educate!  Past Educate! summer interns have been involved in the student selection process for sponsorship, as well as teacher/school networking, educational program development, and the development of our new home base in Uganda. Be sure to share internship application information with your club members once you receive the information from Maya.  Tell your club members ahead of time about this opportunity so they can plan their summers accordingly if they want to apply.

Fundraising Basics

Each Educate! club is different, and certain clubs will focus more of their efforts on fundraising than others. However your club chooses to become involved in your community, you will likely do some fundraising.

Successful fundraising requires some skill, and we’re prepared to help you acquire the basic information you need to plan and execute a successful fundraising event.  The following is a short list of tips that we have put together.  Feel free to email us with more of your own tips as you gain experience with fundraising.

The hardest part of getting a donation is asking! Donations rule of thumb:  the person closest to the donor should be asking for the donation. Create a lot of publicity for your events.  You will need to make a lot of noise.  Talk to your friends, put posters up everywhere you can, stuff mailboxes, make table tents for the cafeteria, and place as many ads as possible (in morning intercom announcements, on the school website, in your school and local newspapers, etc.). If you show people you really care about the cause, they will be more inclined to support you.

Be able to tell people where exactly their money will go when you are asking for donations! Big posters and banners to have at your event or fundraiser attract a lot of attention.

Money Collected from Fundraising

You can send all checks by snail mail to our PO Box in Boulder, CO, along with an event form (below) that briefly describes the fundraiser or event. Please never mail us cash. You can open a bank account for your Educate! club and deposit cash in there, then write a check or postal money order.

Send the event form and checks to: Educate!, PO Box 4847, Boulder, CO 80302.

There is a copy of the event form below.  We also ask that you send an email to Maya Ellman (Educate! Communications Director, maya@experienceeducate.org) before you mail the form and the check or money order to let us know that check(s) are on the way.

Your Support System

Educate! volunteers and employees are always available if you need help and advice.  Maya will contact you periodically to check in, and will serve as your main communicator and supporter.  Eric and Boris are also available to answer your questions and offer some advice.

Staying Organized

It is important to stay organized as you start your Educate! club.  Here are a few tips that may help you do this:

  • Keep a 3-ring binder or bound notebook in which you write all ideas and summaries of every Educate! meeting.  You may want to designate a club member to be the “minutes” person who will keep track of what was done and discussed at each meeting.
  • As soon as possible, you will want to vote for or choose club leaders such as a president, vice president, and treasurer.  You may also want to consider appointing a Uganda club communication director and website manager (if you decide to partner with one of our social entrepreneurship clubs in Uganda and build a club website).
  • For each fundraising event, keep track of what you did in writing so that someone else could re-do it all without you after you graduate, or teach an underclassman the ropes as you go.
  • Plan ahead: keep a checklist of things you need for each fundraiser and check off items/duties as you complete them.

Educate! Club Fundraiser/Event Form

Name of school: ___________________________________________

Date of fundraiser/event: ___________­­­­­­

Description of the fundraiser/event: ________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

Amount raised: ____________

Please enclose the money and send to:

Educate!

PO Box 4847

Boulder, CO 80302

If you have any pictures from the fundraiser or event that you would like to be put on your club’s website please include those as well or e-mail them to us.

NOTE:  please send Maya Ellman a quick email at maya@experienceeducate.org and

with your event name and how much you raised so we know to expect your money.

Sample Educate! Club Proposal

To whom it may concern,

I am interested in starting an Educate! club at (your school’s name).

Educate! is a 401c non-profit organization that was founded by Eric Glustrom in 2002 to help refugees in Uganda receive an education. Educate!’s goal is to educate and empower the next generation of socially responsible leaders in Africa.  They help students become leaders – agents of positive change – who find creative solutions to challenges faced by their community.

The to Educate!’s success is the supportive relationships Educate! mentors build with their students.  Educate! believes in the importance of personal investment – investing in relationships as a key to empowerment.  Educate!’s mentors (who teach a course in socially responsible leadership at 25 different partner schools in Uganda) create supportive relationships with Educate!’s students, thus making a crucial personal investment.  Educate! is growing as a result of exponential empowerment.  Empowering just one individual can create a ripple effect with long-term impact as that individual goes on to inspire and in turn empower others.

Student-run Educate! clubs exist all over the country. These clubs play a vital role in four aspects of the organization:

  • Most clubs raise money to help support efforts in Uganda.  Some clubs help sponsor a particular student or program.
  • Clubs build long-lasting relationships with social entrepreneurship clubs at Educate!’s partner schools in Uganda.  Both clubs can benefit from the sharing of information, ideas, and experiences.
  • Clubs members communicate directly (most often through e-mail and snail mail) with individual Educate! students.  This is essentially a “pen pal” program which serves as a major source of support for Educate!’s sponsored students in Uganda.  Many Educate! club members have formed lifelong friendships with Educate! students as a result of this.  Club members in the U.S. and Canada consistently offer encouragement to their Educate! pen pals.  In turn, they receive encouragement in their own efforts at school and outside of school, learn about cultural differences, and become better informed about the current political, social and educational atmosphere in Uganda.
  • Many Educate! club members have volunteered as interns during the summers for Educate! and have had the opportunity to travel to Uganda to meet their pen pals as well as the rest of the students that Educate! sponsors and mentors.  Usually, they are able to help Educate! complete a specific project in a short 1-2 month time frame.

I have gained the support/sponsorship of Mr./Mrs./Ms./Professor/Dean _(name of faculty/staff club representative), who has agreed to attend club meetings and serve as our main advisor.  We hope to hold our first meeting on (date of first meeting). Weekly (or bi-weekly) meetings will be held on (weekday mornings/afternoons/evenings) at (meeting location).

I have attached a copy of Educate!’s most recent newsletter.  If you are interested in learning more about the organization, please check out the website at http://experienceeducate.org. You may also contact Maya Ellman, the Director of U.S. Operations and Communications, at maya@experienceeducate.org or Eric Glustrom, co-founder and President of Educate! at eric@experienceeducate.org. Thank you for considering this request for permission to start a new club at our school.

Best,

(Your name, printed and signed)

(Your phone number)

(Your e-mail)

(Your home address and/or mailbox at school)

 

Past Successful Club Initiatives

Book sale (Kitchener, ON/Forest Heights High School)

Ugandan Film Festival (Berkeley, CA/University of California, Berkeley)

Iron Chef Uganda (Berkeley, CA/University of California, Berkeley)

Annual Dodgeball Tournament (Amherst, MA/Amherst College)

Casino Night (Amherst, MA/Amherst College)

Annual Date Auction (Amherst, MA/Amherst College)

“Peak to Peak” mountain hiking to raise $ for Educate! students (Boulder, CO/Fairview High School)

Soccer ball donations to schools in Uganda (Texas/Emily and Andrew Smith)