Firstly you might want to get a network team together. Getting a team together can be a good way of involving your members and spreading the workload. And the most effective way to keep members is to involve them in AUA activities.

Contact the members within your network

Let them know you’re planning to offer some AUA-based activities within the institution and find out who would like to help. If you can, set up a group meeting as you’ll be much more likely to get offers of help and some ideas.

Familiarise yourself with the AUA’s strategy

Our current strategy is based on three key areas:

Growth – increase membership with a focus on retaining existing members supported by recruiting new members

Relevance – our growth needs to be based on relevance by understanding our members’ needs better

Engagement – AUA would like to take a new look at its purpose and focus, get the support of senior HE staff and enhance our member engagement

Meet with your members

Set up a meeting to get some ideas about the resources, activities or events that would be useful to your members. Find out who would like to be involved in helping out with these activities. To help you we’ve listed some key activities that you can use as a starting point. You can develop a simple plan with targets, dates and a responsible person for each one:

• Awareness of AUA
• Prospecting for new members
• Recruiting new members
• Orienting and welcoming new members
• Involving your members
• Retaining your members