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.