2022 - 2023 Operations
Read about our goals for this school year and structure of our club
Overview
WHEN programming and activities this semester is organized into three distinct (but not separate) strategic focuses to ensure smooth organization: Fundraising, Awareness, and Marketing. We highly encourage all WHEN members to be involved in the planning & execution of at least one of the three focuses’ initiatives. The following sections will outline each focus. In club-wide meetings, we hope for the teams working on each strategic focus to provide updates and gather support from one another. Furthermore, we want for these meetings to be an opportunity for members to get to know each other, and will be a space to plan even mini club bonding activities
Fundraising
This strategic focus captures WHEN’s mission to raise funds that go towards creating direct change in women’s access to higher education. Our fundraising efforts primarily focus on AUW’s Pathways for Promise program, through events like WHEN & WEAR, our high-profile annual charity clothing sale.
Awareness
This strategic focus encapsulates both internal and public events or programming. The Awareness team will be in charge of brainstorming and organizing any non-fundraising events WHEN wants to hold, such as panel discussions, film screenings/watch parties, expert Q&A’s, etc. More internally, we want to create a weekly dialogue session with members to present/lead discussions throughout the semester about a variety of topics relating to gender equality, sustainable development, and equitable access to education on the global stage. Our hope is for members to engage in topics of interest, learn about different issues, and get to know one another in the process! This system allows WHEN members to be the educator and the listener.
Marketing
The goal of the marketing team is to create a way to share knowledge fostered within the WHEN Club to the outside community. The internal dialogues, as explained above in Awareness, will also be the basis for an educational social media series, as the Marketing team will be responsible for creating graphics based on the dialogue’s key parts. In addition to creating graphics based on dialogues, the Marketing team is going to be sharing other stories and facts related to women’s higher education. We will also be promoting our events throughout the year through social media. This means creating all promotional and informative materials for events, as well as designing any merchandise (such as stickers) in the future. The marketing team will need to create, edit, post, and manage the schedule of graphics on WHEN social media accounts.
AUW Relations
Because of WHEN’s affiliation with AUW, one of our primary goals has been, and will continue to be, maintaining a strong relationship with both the university and the AUW Support Foundation. As in past years, we will work in conjunction with the Cambridge office to fundraise and spread awareness of AUW, the students attending the university, and all things relating to gender equality and education access. Specifically, this component of WHEN functions to strengthen communication and enhance our connection to this organization in which we so heavily believe. AUW relations therefore consists not only of communication and cooperation with the university and support foundation, but of updating club members on the happenings of each and ensuring that everyone has a steady grasp on AUW and the purpose of our work.
Members / Community
This portion of WHEN is intended to work on fostering engagement, involvement, and passion among club members while simultaneously building a close-knit and supportive clubwide community. Because member engagement is essential to all aspects of our club’s operations, from fundraising efforts to increasing awareness of issues surrounding women’s education, building a strong internal network is imperative. This includes planning club bonding activities in which members get to know each other better, as well as encouraging all club members to take on key roles within the Fundraising, Marketing, and Awareness Teams. The role also consists of finding club partners to collaborate on joint awareness and fundraising projects. Organizing fun and effective virtual bonding activities will be especially necessary this semester, as members will be living both on and off-campus.
Internal Communications
The purpose of this segment of WHEN is to facilitate open communication club-wide. This includes creating Facebook updates from the executive board, managing the email e-list, sending out newsletters with updates and content on AUW students/alumni, taking minutes at exec meetings and creating sign-ups for awareness or fundraising events. This role is instrumental in keeping members and the executive board on the same page with fundraising or awareness related activities.