On FAQs:

I'm working on putting together some Frequently Asked Questions on how to effectively start an activist organization here at Brandeis. But I want your input! What challenges have you faced when you started a group? What things took you some time to figure out how to do? What do you want to know?

It should go without saying that any answers we'll provide are general--the nature of every club is different. Some of these questions are just questions for you to think about when you're starting or maintaining a club. Here are some basic questions that I hope will be answered on the FAQ:

The basics
-How do I register my new club? (The union's response can be found here, but we hope to give you a better sense of the time/effort it takes.
-What is the real difference between a recognized, chartered and secured club? What are the pros and cons of each?
-Writing a constitution is mandatory for a club. But, how much do people really pay attention to constitutions? What's the benefit of a well crafted constitution and how do I make one?
-How do I get funding for ...?
-Where do I go to reserve a room in...?
-When and where is the activities fair? What are some strategies to get more people to sign up for my club at the Activities Fair?

Club Organization
-What are some different models of club organization? What does it mean to be "bottom up," as opposed to "top down"? Should my club have an e-board?
-What are some interesting ways to organize on facebook, and other social networking sites?

Club Sustainability
-The first few meetings of my club went really well, but as the semester goes on, attendance drops. What are some ways to boost attendance?
-How can I build an e-mail list?
-That awesome leader we had graduated and all his/her knowledge built up after 4 years went right out the door, too. How could I have prevented this? What can my club do to keep its memory?

Outreach
-Check out our organization list t0 find other Brandeis activists!
-When are ARC meetings with representatives from other clubs?
-How can I outreach to other like-minded clubs?

So help us out! What do YOU want to know? Post in the comments or email: afertig AT brandeis DOT edu

Last night I attended a very fruitful meeting in which members of ARC discussed our history, mission, structure and plans for next semester. I want to personally thank members of Students for Environmental Action, Positive Foundations, Student Peace Alliance, Democracy for America, Brandeis Labor Coalition, QRC/Trisk, SOAR/ICC/Posse Plus, the Democrats & Brandeis for Barack Obama for attending. It was quite high attendance, as you can imagine just from the list, which indicates to me that people are really excited to see what ARC can do. Let's make it happen!

This post is a quick run down of what was discussed at the meeting.

First the wonderful Rachel Kleinbaum went over a little bit of the history of ARC, and how it has been difficult to get the Brandeis Administration to give us a *lasting* space. We do have a space near the ICC, but that space will be physically demolished. That's why it's important for us to see what we can do without a space.

I then discussed some of the mission and goals of ARC.

• to coordinate between groups, and to reduce redundancy of action
• to decrease the time it takes activists to learn how to be activists on campus and increase the amount of time we can spend *doing* activism
• to act as a resource for all activists
• to know the "who's who" of the Brandeis activist world. For example, if you're doing an environmental project, ARC will let you know who has been involved in the environment
• to serve as a resource to let activists know what types of projects have been done and create new ideas of what can be done
• facilitate coordination between activists groups to work with administration
• space to network and create community

We talked a little bit about the mission statement (which is more or less what we have on our "About" page, but I think could use a bit of grammatical fine-tuning.)

Finally, we got to the structure of ARC.

More or less, ARC would consist of meeting of a liaison from activist groups every week in addition to four key coordinators. Those four coordinators would primarily be interested in fostering ARC--they are part of the activist community, but they must be committed to ARC itself. Liaison meetings are opportunities to talk about the events groups are planning, how we can coordinate, what problems groups are facing and how we can help them. It's a great opportunity to network. Each member organization should have one designated liaison that goes to these meetings, but if any activist wants to attend the liaison meetings, they are more than welcome!

Here are the 4 positions in ARC:

• Outreach coordinator - facilitator at ARC liaison meetings, responsible to make sure things are productive and keeps the meetings focused. Also responsible for reaching out to new organizations and maintaining relationships with current member groups.
  

• Secretary - take notes at liaison meetings. Responsible for ARC's institutional memory. Fills in for Outreach coordinator as facilitator of ARC liaison meetings in the event that the Outreach coordinator cannot attend.
  

• Communications Director - Website and Calendar- in charge of these two aspects, maintains and organizes the blog.

• Training Coordinator - bring trainers to campus, go to person for activist questions about how to do things on campus, administration policies and so on.

We decided that the coordinators should be Rachel, Phil, Lily, Aylin and myself. Aylin has said that while she doesn't necessarily want to do one of those outlined jobs she does want to be heavily involved with ARC (please correct me if I misrepresented what you said!!) Bear in mind that ARC is not a top-down organization. Membership is what really makes us tick, not the coordinators.

One major discussion we had involved who would be allowed to be members of ARC. Are we a partisan organization? Do we allow in Democrats, Republicans, Green-Rainbow party members, etc.? Do we allow in organizations that actively work to elect a candidate for a governmental position? For now, it's been decided that whoever is at the meeting is "in," but that we'll table the discussion of partisanship until a later point. The crucial thing is to get ARC up and running.

Overall, everybody seemed optimistic about the fate of ARC, and I'm about to head out to the first coordinators meeting. We have, I think, a good structure and some fantastic people working it. I can't wait to see what we do. As for now, coordinators will be having discussions during the summer about ARC.

Thanks to Julia Simon-Mishel of Student Peace Alliance for taking the minutes at the meeting last night--I relied heavily on her notes. If you have any comments, suggestions, tips, quibbles, complaints or whathaveyous of any sort about my take one what happened last night, please feel free to comment.

Welcome to the Brandeis Activist Resource Center Blog!

The aim of this blog is to help coordinate between all activist organizations on campus. This is a tool for the Brandeis Activist community to collaborate, commiserate, and communicate with fellow activists.

If you are a member of the Brandeis activist community, you can email the administrator who will make you an author of the blog. That means you can post stories, images, announcements and comments on this blog. It is strongly encouraged that you do so! The more quality posts we all make, the more vibrant this virtual community will be. That means more readers and more exposure for our clubs. ARC will try to keep posting regularly so that readers have a reason to come back. In short, this community is ours, let's make the best of it.

Two basic rules of the road:

• This is a place specifically for the Brandeis University community. That means that while posts can/should comment on issues of national/international import, posts ought to be focused specifically on what we in the Brandeis community are doing about those issues.

• This is a public forum. While blogs are often conversational and/or controversial, it is easy to think "nobody reads this," when in fact, they do. In other words, think twice, post once.

Consider this our virtual space. This is a place where activists can articulate their message to the general Brandeis community and show everybody what Brandeis Activists are doing!

Best,
Brandeis ARC