In today’s changing financial and social climate, is it still feasible—and beneficial—for students’ unions to rely heavily on student volunteers to make activities and events happen?
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This week, the Student Opportunities Managers Network (SOMN) had a fantastic session diving into the unique challenges of supporting medical students' involvement in student opportunities. 🩺✨
From unions with a central medical society overseeing various groups to those supporting individual clubs independently, one thing was clear—medical students often don't feel a strong connection to their SU. Instead, they rely heavily on their schools and established traditions, which can make engagement tricky.
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At the December Student Opportunities Managers Network (SOMN) session Elisabeth Whittall will be sharing more information about an ongoing project considering what the future of student volunteering will look like at University of Manchester Students' Union.
Ahead of the session, Lissie has written a short blog about the project and what questions they are still facing.
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Last week we spent a few days in Manchester at Membership Services Conference. Hosted by the Union at Manchester Metropolitan Students’ Union. Organised by Alan Roberts, the SU and NUS. We’ve been involved in some way for many years and it’s always a pleasure.
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I know that student opportunities can be ‘risky business’ but that shouldn’t stop great things happening - that’s why we’ve developed training to give coordinators and early managers a solid introduction to risk management in student opportunities.
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In this paper, we share the story of our Sports Membership Review at City Students’ Union and what we learnt along the way. Faced with rising costs, students with tighter budgets, and an ongoing merger, City Students’ Union recognised that their sports membership model might no longer be working for them. Organised Fun led a research project exploring sports membership models and ultimately made a recommendation ready for the trustee board.
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Last Friday, Students’ Union UCL invited me to London to judge the final presentations of the UCL Consultancy Challenge. I spent the afternoon enjoying presentations about sustainability in urban gardening, social media solutions to volunteer engagement, redesigning training programmes, and designing new fundraising initiatives for charities. As their consultancy specialist judge I sat alongside senior staff from UCL and we had to decide on the winning project.
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Summary of our session delivered in August 2023 at Membership Services Conference
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A summary of students' union and university approaches to academic societies in 2021.
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We exist to challenge the image of what a trustee should look like and to empower organisations and individuals to see the value of young people. This is something our movement has in common with Students’ Unions, and particularly student opportunities teams: every day we see the value of young people, and have full faith in their ability to add valuable insight to important discussions.
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