Section Eleven: Membership

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Introduction

The membership forms the backbone of your chapter and provides a pool of resources and time to draw upon. It is important that as a chapter leader you stay in touch with the membership and make sure they are happy with what the chapter is doing. Stu dents will be the primary membership with older members in advisory positions. You will have to actively seek out members and keep them once you have found them.

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Member Backgrounds

Potential SEDS members can be found almost anywhere you look. Members can be undergraduates, graduates and even post-docs. Most of the members of your chapters will be from the sciences directly involved with space travel and exploration, but there will most likely be a lot of interest from other majors. Be careful not to exclude any of these members accidentally, as they can provide a healthy balance to the chapter and help out in different ways. In a lot of chapters for example, there are political science, biology, art, literature, business, chemistry and engineering majors. Any posters, pro motional materials or articles should reflect the diversity of your chapter. Please see Who Should be Allowed to Join? later in this section.

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Membership Drives

Membership drives are useful tools for increasing the size of your chapter. They can be in the form of an event (free, of course) that exposes people to what your chapter does. Pre-existing university events such as a club day or freshman orientatio n will give your chapter an opportunity to solicit members and develop its image on campus. A specific goal will often help motivate chapter members during any membership drives.

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Membership Rosters

When soliciting new members at events, make sure all interested parties give you their name, a useful point of contact (e.g. e-mail, phone, campus mail), plus any special interests. Remind them that signing in is not an obligation to join. Some chap ters have sign-in sheets for every meeting so they don't miss any new people. Keep a similar constantly updated record of all those who attend your chapter's meetings, and inform the entire roster of upcoming events, activities and meetings.

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Who Should be Allowed to Join?

Although the organization is called Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, the general philosophy behind SEDS is that it is open to young people just making their way in the space community. If there are older people that are interest ed, ask them if they would like to be advising members of your chapter.