5 steps to starting up an organization on campus
Starting up a new organization on a college campus may seem like a daunting task, but it can be accomplished when you break it down into simple steps. Through developing the SJU Creative Collective, we’ve been able to establish a road map to move the organizational development process along efficiently and effectively.
Step 1: Conduct research to determine what needs your campus requires your organization to fulfill.
When establishing an organization designed to benefit the campus community, your first step is going to be to determine what needs your organization should meet, based on research. You’ll want to conduct focus groups, surveys and interviews with your target audience in order to understand what they expect from your organization and what would motivate them to take part in it. When we began developing the SJU Creative Collective, we sent out a carefully-crafted questionnaire to students in the Communications Department to determine what they felt has been missing from their experience, and what they would like to see offered through our organization to fill in those gaps. We also conducted interviews with department members and visited classrooms to hold focus groups to gain more elaborative feedback. By conducting similar research for your own organization, you should have the information necessary to determine what direction you should head in to adequately meet the needs of your campus community.
Step 2: Establish your motivation and design question.
A design question assists in formulating a solution to a problem you are facing. Framing your design question will take a couple tries in order to figure out precisely how to hone in on the problem you’re looking to solve. After a few revisions, the Creative Collective formulated the following design question: How can we effectively provide meaningful opportunities to creative students interested in media production and building their portfolio, while also providing creative content for clients such as clubs and associations on campus? After creating your design question, you should establish your Golden Circle. The Golden Circle, created by Simon Sinek, is an organizational goal-setting strategy which emphasizes inspiring action through leading operations with a set purpose or belief in mind. Establishing our Golden Circle has allowed us to clearly define WHAT it is that we will do, HOW we will do it, and most importantly, WHY we are doing it. As for the Creative Collective, we recognize that SJU is full of talented and passionate students, but they lack space to utilize and improve their skills. While being part of the collective, students will be provided this space which encourages creative innovation and self-development. They will have the opportunity to gain professional experience and design meaningful content to further develop their career.
The Creative Collective group working through their own Golden Circle
Step 3: Conduct research on similar organizations’ strategies.
It is important to conduct research on similar organizations’ strategies and processes in order to get a better understanding of how their organization functions. We were able to research other organizations through a comparative media analysis, where we analyzed the Instagram accounts of three accounts that functioned similarly to our vision for the Creative Collective. The accounts that we analyzed were SJU’s Hawk Hill Productions (HHP), Temple University’s Diamond Edge Communications, and Drexel University’s Art Organization (DART). Each of these appeared to be helpful to our research in different ways; helping to give us a better idea of how we intend for the Creative Collective to function and present themselves on social media.
HHP is probably one of the largest organizations on campus; a club that remains relevant throughout SJU history and is crucial to planning and providing students with fun events to attend on campus. We wanted the Creative Collective to function much like HHP’s, in the sense that it will become a highly valued organization with leadership positions that will last throughout SJU history from this point forward.
As for Diamond Edge Communications, we learned that Temple’s organization is more of an advertising agency that specializes in PR, brand strategy, account management, copywriting, media planning, and art direction for other organizations on campus. While this organization is similar to what we envision for the Creative Collective, there are differences we aim to implement, including a more frequent posting routine and an organization that mainly specializes in content creation and functions as a resource for students to build their portfolio.
Finally, the last organization we researched was DART. They advertise themselves as Drexel’s student-run art organization that is open to all Drexel students, regardless of major. We take inspiration from DART in their unified aesthetic and incorporation of photos and graphics in a unique, eye-catching color scheme. We also recognize the value in Drexel having an official organization that provides students with the space to explore their creativity and learn more about certain skills through workshops and events.
Analyzing these other organizations, especially with neighboring Universities, has expanded our horizons of understanding what exists and where we can potentially improve. When beginning your organization on campus, be sure to research other organizations, because it will give you a good idea of how to move forward in creating a lasting and effective result.
Step 4: Develop branding and organizational structure
When developing our branding, design, and structure, we went through many different options before making decisions to ensure that we were making the collective the best it could be. When creating our logo, design, and color schemes, we knew we wanted to do something different and outside of the box. We decided on using a wide range of colors, iridescents, and tying them together with some neutrals. We chose a more cool tone look with blues, pinks, and purples, while bringing it all together with black and white. We also added hints of orange to make the logo really stand out. Our logo is the SJU hawk but without the red, thus showing the Saint Joseph's aspect as well as the creative aspect. We wanted our design to be different and really eye-catching so that students would be intrigued.
In addition to design, we also focused on the structure and organizational features of the collective. We established designated roles for the collective so that everyone involved can have a job and an area of focus. Students will have the opportunity to be positioned in any of the roles that are available. There will be editors, directors, and other leadership roles that provide great opportunities. Our mission statement is: as a group of young professionals with a passion for collaboration and creation, we at the SJU Creative Collective work to produce content, such as marketing materials, branding tools, graphic designs and other forms of digital media, for SJU organizations and surrounding communities. This collective provides students the space and resources to utilize, develop, and demonstrate their drive for creativity. This statement embodies everything that this collective wants to become and everything we want to provide for the students of Saint Joes. We want to make it known that SJU cares about giving its students the opportunities and skills that they need to be successful when they are ready to leave the nest.
Branding example created by the group for the SJU Creative Collective branding kit
Step 5: Launch organization and make the community aware of its availability
Through the utilization of social media networking, the collective hopes that we can establish an engaging presence online. This can be done through our engagement with other organizations here on hawk hill ranging from athletics to clubs and even our local greek life chapters. Collaborating with these organizations will play a fundamental role in the collective’s mission of providing its members with the proper opportunities to learn, develop, and showcase their skills on a local level. However, in order to remain realistic in our expectations of establishing a growing level of membership we intend to primarily advertise the collective to somewhat experienced students (most likely those already in the COM Department) in this field. This must be done first due to the overall nature of the collective’s reliance on peer to peer sharing / teaching of content creation skills.
Our overall goal for this collective is to provide new opportunities for students on campus to learn, develop, and improve their skills while simultaneously gaining experience in the development of content creation. We aim to create an environment in which students feel welcome to provide feedback in order to ensure the collective’s values of cooperation are held in high regard. By committing to this, we are able to provide a safe space in which students are able to unleash their creativity through collaboration & learning alongside their peers. We aim to design this collective in a way that properly reflects our values of creativity, fun, and free spiritedness. Through this approach we intend to establish a community of students who feel confident in their ability to flourish. The first step for the development of the collective is to establish a foundation and finalize the structure of how it will operate. We will then continue to promote the collective through the use of social media presence as well as on-campus advertisement in order to recruit students and begin formulating content. With this in mind, we can predict the collective will progressively grow while providing perpetual benefit to the campus community. We aim for this collective to not only benefit the students involved, but also those who seek the skills and services offered by the collective as well. Although there is still a lot of work to be done, the Creative Collective is on track to success.
