If you’re here, you’re probably thinking about starting an student org on campus.
First… congrats! Most people don’t even think about taking the first step. You are and that’s wonderful. Mind you, it won’t be an easy journey, but it’ll be worthwhile if you commit to it in the long term. Starting something you believe in, with people you believe in, is one of the greatest joys I think anyone can have.
But I also want to be clear. Founding a student org is an inherently unique experience. By no measure do I have all the answers or am an expert on the topic — I’m not sure you can be.
I think, though, that many lessons I’ve learned building my campus org have (at least some) universality.
And yes, I haven’t introduced myself yet! My name is James. I’m a student at Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s innovation school at USC. I started a student org at USC called OK. We focus on creating a platform for students — across USC’s twenty-three schools — to create ambitious creative projects with students they otherwise wouldn’t meet. In less than a year, we’ve brought on 30+ talented creatives, developed relationships with a range of supporters (including Notion!), and worked on some really cool projects.
My goal for this playbook is to be light on text and heavy on insight. Hopefully that’s the case :)
I’ve organized my advice in three core ideas:
“All the world is made up of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.” - Peter Pan
But especially trust.
Being a founder of a club is a long journey. It’s also extremely hard… like way harder than I thought. Starting OK and running it as president has essentially been a full-time job. I literally quit my (actual) job the semester I founded it.
So you need to make sure that you’ll have people around you who are similarly down for the long haul.
Recruiting a team is both the most important and challenging decision you’ll make in founding an org. Above all else in the process — I think you should prioritize trust in recruiting your co-founders. You want to find people you have a track record with, who are unafraid to challenge your ideas, and who genuinely care about you as a person.
Because leadership is about dialogues, not monologues. And if you can only listen to things you want hear, your org will never take off. College is perhaps the fastest-paced environment there is — and if your club can’t constantly update and iterate on feedback, it likely won’t last long.
Ry & Noy, my co-founders at OK, were friends I had worked extensively with over a year before we started the club. If I wanted to choose the easiest path, I wouldn’t have asked them to join me. At times, their feedback can be harsh and their patience can be thin, but they’re the best people I could have chosen. Our trust has remained infallible and that’s helped us weather the roller coaster ride of managing our org.
Our thesis with OK is that the best work comes from students who have actual ownership in what they do.
“Help, but do not disturb” - Jorma Panula
Too many clubs run on a strict top-down hierarchy, where members of the executive board decide what projects are made, how they’re made, and when they’re made. Frankly, that discounts the basic value of college. It’s a time where spontaneity and serendipity are at abundance and you can meet a hundred people in a day if you want.
When so much constraint is applied, there’s no good reason why a student will take time out of their (very precious) free time to be involved in a student org.
Instead — and this is tough — give your members radical ownership. Let them ideate on what projects, events, and other endeavors they’ll work on from the ground up. There’s a natural tendency to control everything when you start an organization because you want the experience to be as perfect as possible. But it has the inverse effect. A space where they feel their voice is not heard and their actions are unseen is suffocating for members.
Sure, there’ll be roadblocks, speedbumps… you name it. But letting people be free and supporting them in their learning is the greatest catalyst for your club to grow.
Don’t just hear it from me. Here’s Steve Jobs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lEnMmH9qh4
“Nobody Cares” - Al Davis
And that’s great. Because that means the short term is irrelevant.
It’s an impossibly high standard to run a good student org. Nobody (seriously nobody) cares about your problems. For OK, we had to raise almost $2000 for our first annual showcase. Every single day leading up to that event was terrible. We were scrambling for dollars, calling everyone in our contacts, and doing whatever we could to make sure we delivered. Our members had exorbitant last-minute funding requests — some items cost hundreds of dollars and would make or break our showcase.
And not one person cared. We had to deliver — that was it. If we failed, nobody would have remember we even existed.
Yet that’s what makes this whole thing so fun. Objectively, the work is not worth the struggle. But that makes it so much more rewarding when you do succeed — when you see the smiles of students at your events, when you laugh at all the sleepless nights you endure, and when you see what you’ve built from absolutely nothing.
Just savor the moment. You won’t have another shot at doing this in the same way. So relish in the good times, the bad times, and the so-so times. I promise you won’t regret it.