Publicity & Alumni

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PUBLICITY:

Freshers’ Week:
– Running the stall at the sports fair – chatting to new people and handing out flyers, make sure you put a post up behind the stall to attract attention, and challenge people to have a go at shooting. They also run demo sessions in the squash courts upstairs, so book at least one of these.

– Designing/printing freshers flyers – make sure these include contact details and info about the taster session. This year we got 1000 a5 flyers printed in colour, which cost about £30 from instantprint.co.uk. I will pass on the design used this year, but feel free to change it around!
– Taster session – request a hall slot from the SU in the Freshers’ Week planning document, the make sure the coaching coordinator knows the details so that they can plan the event.
– Basketball/netball poaching – get in touch with someone from their committee and ask if they will mention Korfball as an alternative/hand out flyers to the people they turn away from their trials.

EdEx Events: These are events publicised by the SU to encourage people to come and give new sports a go. Try to organise at least one a term – you just have to email the SU’s Publicity Officer and let them know the date/time/location you would like. It generally works well to organise the session within the normal club training slot, then make sure the coaching coordinator knows to plan accordingly, and publicise the event on the Facebook group.

‘Give It A Go’ Week: This was a week organised this year by the SU in November – make sure you request to have a Korfball session promoted. This is basically just the same as having an EdEx session, but it will receive extra promotion as part of the initiative.


EIKT:
– General promotion, e.g. posting on the Facebook group

– Live Tweeting and Facebook updates – remind the website sec to do this
– Photography – this year we used Perry Jonsson, who was great if he is still around next year
– Post-tournoment publicity – contact the Student and see if they would publish an article in their Sports section, or provide a write-up/photos for the SU newsletter

Match Reports: Ask early on to get added to all the team groups so you can see when matches are, then nag the captain to send you a match report. Send these to the website sec and to the SU’s publicity officer. Something a bit longer than normal would be good for the first matches of the season, Northerns, 1st/2nd team nationals and EIKT.  Encourage originality and get the team captains to back you up on that.  If you get limericks, songs etc, they go down a lot better with the club and have a great chance of making it into The Student or The Journal so try for that!

SU Website: Email as many match reports as possible (not just from the big tournaments) to the sports union.  There is no limit to the amount of stuff they can put up, so send literally everything. The SU also do a weekly newsletter and are always looking for cover pictures so send in any photos/write ups you have.

ALUMNI:

– In charge of the alumni email account
– Keeping the alumni page on the EUKC website up to date with upcoming events via. the website secetary

EIKT Alumni Team: Get in touch with alumni to form a team for EIKT, via. email, Facebook, etc. Once you have a few names, ask someone to volunteer to be captain. Kit can be sourced from the kit secrtary, or they might want to design their own strip. After/during the event, collect a list of names of who has played from the captain and chase everyone up about playing.

– EIKT Alumni meal – generally held on the Friday of EIKT. Wait until you have a few replies for the team and then suggest this too. Invite other alumni who aren’t playing, and any older members of the current club. This year we went to Red Fort and then carried on to the EIKT Welcome Social afterwards.

Alumni Association: Membership to the Alumni Association is free, though there is a suggested donation of £30/year. 100% of this goes straight back to the graduates’ former clubs, so signing up just a few paying members can be quite lucrative, especially when budget cuts mean clubs are likely to receive less funding from the Sports Union. It also gets Gift Aided if it goes through the association rather than being donated directly. In return, members receive newsletters from the Association, discounts on Kukri merchandise and invitations to exclusive alumni events.  Targeting those who will have just graduated probably works best.

Alumni Day:  This is day when the alumni get together – e.g. for a match with the current club, and then a meal out in the evening. Email as many alumni as you can think of to invite them to the Alumni Day and also contact the SU Alumni Officer so they can invite their contacts.  Asking people a couple of months in advance gives them time to clear their diaries of engagements for that day. Spread the word as much as possible, once people hear others are going, they’ll turn up too. This year there was limited availability for the weekend suggested by the SU (this was also fairly soon after EIKT so people probably weren’t that keen to make the effort again so soon). Perhaps wait for a decent amount of time for EIKT, plus make sure the SU know about the alumni’s involvement with EIKT (send a write up to the alumni officer) for club points.

Meeting with Graduates: Towards the end of the year, roughly AGM time, arrange a casual meeting with everyone who is graduating that year to tell them a bit about the alumni association and how to sign up. Also, make sure you get non-university email addresses from everyone because not doing this is how we lose touch with quite a few people when they leave.  I can’t stress this enough, loads of the addresses we have are for their uni accounts and they just get ignored after graduation.  Oh, and invite them to join the Facebook group!

General Tips:

·         It takes a bit of effort to encourage people along to help at publicity events so make sure you ask early and keep reminding people.

·         It can be easy to lose track of e-mails so have a designated folder for them and another to put them in once that event is finished.

·         You will be put in charge of our amazing banner. Be sure to take this along to freshers fair, pollockorf, tournaments, etc. 

·         Give your personal e-mail address to the SU’s Alumni and Publicity Officers.  It can streamline a lot of communication between the two of you and it cuts out the delay of waiting for the secretary to check their e-mails and forward them on.

·         Ask me to give you a memory stick of all the documents I’ve used this year, there aren’t too many but it might be useful if you ever want to have a look at what’s been done in the past.

·         Make sure I tell you what I’ve organised for next year that you’ll be taking over!

Any more questions now or throughout the year, you know where to find me.  Best of luck for the AGM!