With our Activities Fairs taking place on both Wednesday 21 Sep and Thursday 22 Sep (12pm-6pm, Sports Centre and then Allerton main hall) we asked Salford student Elle Kalavsky to tell us about her experiences on setting up an official activity group through the Students’ Union!

During my first year at uni, I became a member of the Acoustics Society. This is a fun little group of people hailing primarily from the audio acoustics course, and the society gave us the perfect opportunity to socialise with other people from the course outside of the lecture room. Towards the end of the year, I started to wonder how to make the society better… my conclusion: set it up as an official society with the USSU. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to broaden our horizons further than the occasional pint at a pub social!

Setting up a society can seem like a daunting task at first- how does the society get funding? What if people don’t join? How do I ensure members benefit from the society? What if it interferes with my studies? As someone who has recently set up a society, I can assure everyone that these sort of thoughts are completely normal! However, the University of Salford Students Union were on hand to make the process as smooth and easy as possible.

To get in touch with the students Union, it was just a case of sending an email to see what the next steps would be. I was then set up to have a meeting, and after that I was given some great advice on how to set up my society!

So, society task 1: a committee. This is important because the committee will work as a team throughout the year to make the society the best it can be. A basic committee is composed of a chairperson/president, secretary, and a treasurer. Between these three roles, the society’s finances, activities, socials etc should be managed smoothly. The Students Union were super helpful with this, as they sent an email explaining each role clearly!

Society task 2: a constitution. Another important thing! This basically outlines what the society’s committee need to do, and the general student union rules, how best to manage the society etc. Again, the Union are awesome with help for this, as its all laid out and explained clearly for you!

Society task 3: funding sheet. This is probably the most difficult part of setting up a society that requires funding. This basically entails you listing any predicted income through membership fees, and totalling how much money you will need to be granted to complete all of your activities for the year. I personally found this part quite difficult, as it meant we had to do planning for the whole year with only rough ideas of numbers of people who will take part. Following this, I got the opportunity to be part of the yearly funding panel- this is essentially a group of people from various societies going through people’s funding applications, and discussing between us how much money should be awarded to each society. This was a cracking opportunity, it really helped me to look at how a funding application should be properly done, as well as giving me the opportunity to work on my communication skills, plus I made a few friends!

Society task 4: Prepare for a fun new year!! Once all the admin stuff is out of the way, you’re free to start planning fun-packed activities and socials, and mentally prepare yourself for the year ahead of you: a year of making friends, learning new things, and doing crazy student-like stuff with no shame!

So, if you’re thinking of setting up a society, 100% go for it! It will be time-consuming for a couple of weeks, but the lessons you’ll learn, skills you pick up, and boost in employability will be totally worth it… as well as the lifelong friends you will make!

To see our full Welcome schedule, which includes our Activities Fairs, check out our Welcome mini-site!

If you are a student interested in contributing a blog article for the website, please get in touch at students-union@salford.ac.uk.