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Hertfordshire SU: free societies membership

Wednesday 10-02-2021 - 16:41

This year in an effort to keep student communities alive, Hertfordshire SU have been implementing free society memberships!

As a result, there’s over an 11% increase in society memberships overall, and academic societies had an increase of over 100% - more than double the number of students got involved with academic societies than last year!

Making society memberships free this year has resulted in a number of positive benefits for the student communities:

  • Students are generally more willing to give societies a try (which has been very important in a union where societies aren’t particularly long-established)
  • Commuting students in particular are more able to get involved
  • New societies are being started more often and attracting sustainable membership numbers, which has historically been a struggle
  • Different types of students are getting involved which will hopefully have a knock-on effect for the society committees in the future
  • Any pressure on committees to deliver ‘value for money’ has been removed, reducing a potential added cause of stress in covid-times. 
  • Societies are trying different kinds of socials and activities and being more collaborative.

The activities team have had a really great year with this – they think the students understand the activities co-ordinator roles better and that they have a better relationship with many of the society committees. 

To facilitate the free societies a number of issues were thought about ahead of implementation:

  • Some societies have a high membership fee as it goes towards subsidising the cost of an expensive hobby or activity – can the internal budget cover these costs in some way to ensure the activity can continue?
  • How do we retain members afterwards – particularly commuting or distance learning students who are most often left out of societies?

The next steps are ensuring the societies have a good handover and how to maintain interest in societies - especially if campuses are re-opening next academic year, as this may have an effect on commuting students and distance learners.
 

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