Building your RHA Chapter from the Ground Up

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Building your RHA Chapter from the Ground Up

• Melissa Turkington
• and
• MLiss DeWald
• The Evergreen State College

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Agenda

• Purposing
• Research
• Institutional support
• Advisor resources
• Marketing campaign
• Training
• Other things to keep in mind

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Assess Challenges of your Current Structure

• Determine your purpose
• Two phases of restructuring
• Institutional- what value does the institution
  place on your RHA?
• Organizational- purposing exercises with the
  group

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Do your Research

• Foundational Documents
• Draft or revise your constitution
• GO Constitution
• Glean from other RHA chapters
• Resources
• What are they?
• Space
• Budget
• Time and energy
• Campus networking
• Where is your support coming from?

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Institutional Support

• Administrative
• Make sure your supervisor knows enough about what
  you do to support your needs
• Budget
• Where is your budget coming from? Student fees?
• Know state laws around budgets
• Know how to supplement your budget
• How to break up your budget
• Make friends with everyone involved with money
  handling!
• Informational interviews
• Ask lots of questions
• Know their busy times

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Advisor Resources

• Dont re-invent the wheel
• Advice for Advisers your new best friend
• Articles
• The Wave/Soundings/Talking Stick
• The Chronicle/Academic Publications
• Theories
• Leadership Development
• Group Development
• Network with other advisors

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Get your Name Out

• Branding
• Logo
• Banners
• Balloons
• Co-sponsorship
• Marketing
• Active
• Campaign (Canvas, Table, Mailboxes, Take-aways)
• Host events (Greener Spirit Night)
• Start at Orientation
• Passive
• Facebook
• Website
• Agendas/minutes
• E-mails

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Training

• Train your Executive Board
• Retreat if you cant retreat, do it somewhere
  on campus
• Show retreat schedule

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Training Schedule

• FRIDAY
• Travel to location leave at 3pm?
• 2 hours
• Hiring paperwork/contract (1 hour)
• Go over hiring paper work and have them fill it
  out
• Read the contract out loud and have them sign it
• Team builder (1 hour)
• Name game with chickens
• Amazon river and love turtle game
• Ground rules and expectations for training (1
  hour)
• Set ground rules as a team
• Give them advisors expectations
• Put both of them on the wall
• DINNER (1 hour)
• Personality profile (30 min)
• Success signals/true colors
• How to communicate (based on profiles) (30 min)
• Interpreting your style and working with the
  group
• Read through GO Handbooks

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• Saturday
• BREAKFAST (30 minutes)
• Team Builder/Energizer (30 minutes)
• Lumberjack ninjas
• Officer positional training (2 hours)
• We go around individually train the officers on
  their positions
• Set individual goals- share those goals with us
  in one on ones or with the group
• Set meeting time
• Housing Arbitration Panel Training (30 minutes)
• Go over HAP responsibilities and set meetings
• Basic meeting protocols (30 min)
• Run down of what meetings look like this year
• Constitution (30 min)
• LUNCH
• Programming nuts and bolts (publicity, learning
  themes) (30 minutes)
• Go over handouts and large scale programming
• Attitude (FISH) (1 hour)
• Recruitment and Motivation (1 hour)
• Read article

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Training Schedule

• Sunday
• Breakfast (30 min)
• Assessing group dynamics activity (30 min)
• Clean up and load car (30 min)
• Wrap up (30 min)
• Touch someone who
• Drive home (2 hours)

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Other Things to Consider

• Involve RAs
• Continue training throughout the year
• Create a 2-year plan
• Schedule restructure times
• Integrate other programs and groups

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2 Year Plan

• Greener Organization 2-year Plan (2008-2010)
• Goals
• Affiliate with NACURH by Spring 2009
• Create NHRR chapter by Winter 2010
• 50 active member retention by Fall 2009
• Relative autonomy (Advisor does not make most of
  project/scheduling decisions)
• Represent Evergreen at PACURH by Spring 2009
• Initiate Of-The-Month Awards by Winter 2009
• Absorb the HAP and Free Store by Winter 2009
• Have a GO-centered marketing plan by Winter 2010
• Attend PACURH, no-frills and NACURH by Spring
  2010

Purpose, Duties of the Officers, Active Members
Duties, Membership, Conferences, GO-Sponsored
Councils, General Structure,
and Meeting Structure
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Questions?