Research Question: how can feminist clubs retain and recruit members?

In my time leading the new Harvard Feminist Collective, we have struggled with retaining and recruiting members. Through my interviews with leaders of feminist clubs at other colleges, I’ve found that this is a more widespread problem. Members are the lifeblood of any organization. To ensure the longevity and existence of feminist clubs, we must focus on recruiting and retianing members. I emailed or contacted every single college feminist club I could find, which consistend of eleven clubs. The fact that I could not find a feminist club at most colleges was troubling; perhaps they didn’t have an outwardly facing presence, but that in itself is cause for concern. And even for those that did have public emails or social media presences, three clubs got back to me, which were the clubs that I interviewed. 

Methodology

I was able to interview someone on the board of Northeastern’s feminist club, the incoming president of Notre Dame’s feminist club, and the former president of Vanderbilt’s feminist club. By interviewing individuals at various stages of their leadership involvement, I hope to portray a more holistic narrative of the struggles and triumphs of feminist clubs around the country. 

I also interviewed my co-leads: Kate Klein, Betsey Bennett, and Betsy Pienado. The parallels between our struggles and the struggles of other feminist clubs highlights the importance of an overall strategy guide. I hope well-established and newly founded feminist clubs alike will benefit from my deliverable.

Since feminist clubs are a deeply personal activity for members and leaders, I thought individual narratives would better showcase the trials and tribulations of running a feminist club. 

Interview Narratives

In order to fully take advantage of this strategy guide, I encourage you to first read the stories of Ameena McKnight, Chessley Blacklock, and Tanu Padma. We can learn a lot from individual narratives and absorb the collective wisdom of the group. I summarize the five key strategies that have come out of these interviews at the end.

Ameena McKnight

Ameena McKnight served as the president of Vanderbilt’s feminist club in their junior and senior year. At the time, they identified as a woman. They went to the Women’s Center their freshman year in 2017. Initially, they were a little hesitant about going because they didn't know what to expect, but they pushed themself to go. There, they found a feminist org ran by seniors and juniors, who were open, accepting, and excited about Ameena’s interest. The club was smaller at the time and mainly consisted of the executive board. Some members would participate every now and then, but the core group of the club essentially consisted of the board. Ameena was able to join the board as a freshman rep soon as they expressed interest. 

Eventually, they became more involved, taking on the hefty role as president their junior and senior year. The club grew from a six person executive board with around ten regular attendees to a club with roughly thirty to forty-five people involved.

Vandy requires participants of Greek life to go to a certain number of events for diversity and inclusion. This requirement bumped up the number of individuals that regularly attended general meetings. Ameena recounts that most events had an impressive turnout of around fifty to sixty people. The core aspect of the club consists of general body meetings every two weeks. Anyone can come to the Women’s Center and discuss different topics and relevant current events. General membership goes to general body meetings and they also can go to the open executive board meetings if they are interested in getting more involved. General meetings consisted of slide deck presentations, where the executive board would introduce new concepts before splitting into smaller groups. Discussion cards would serve as icebreakers and the smaller groups would come back and share with the larger group. This format feels akin to a class section at college! Indeed, Ameena recounts that the club was more focused on awareness and educating.  

I noticed that the club focused more on discussion and education than activism. When I asked Ameena why this was the case, they told me that while Nashville is a relatively progressive area, the existence of the club is a form of activism itself. They said that awareness is important “before putting [one’s[ foot in the cause…people need to be aware before fighting for a cause, and some people aren’t aware of issues that are prevalent.”

Once a year, Vandy Fems hosts a weekly convention on intersectionality. They put on events everyday that address different feminist issues. For example, they will discuss pornography as a feminist issue. Intersectionality week had the highest attendance. By contrast, the smaller events had fewer people to attend but it was more personable and informal.

During Ameena’s time with the club, they attempted to start a book club. However, that initiative was not successful because it was stressful during the pandemic to uphold book club meetings regularly. Like many other clubs, they had difficulty continuing during the pandemic. Ameena recounts that the club’s goal was to “stay as connected as we can virtually.” They are not in contact with the existing individuals running the club and thus do not know how the club fares in person. 

In addition to intersectionality week another of Vandy’s signature events was organizing a group to attend the Women’s March in Nashville. They hosted poster-making sessions for their members. Having a Nashville connection helps the club make it inclusive and increase engagement. 

Although Vandy Fems did have a board structure, the splitting up of work was more holistic. Ameena says they wanted to make sure higher status was not “leverage[d] against another person.” Ameena had the title of president, but they maintain that “being president didn’t mean anything internally.” In terms of other structures, the club’s advisor was part of the Women’s Center and they received specific funding through the center. All clubs at Vanderbilt are affiliated with some sort of center, all of which are allotted a certain amount of money.

I asked Ameena how the club incentivized busy college students to come– and the answer was free food. Of course, free food isn’t the reason why people would stay involved, but a clear incentive helps people get their foot in the door.

Through the Vanderbilt example, we can see that a signature event helps ground the club. Having an accessible executive board allows freshmen to get involved ASAP. And it’s important to take circumstance into account; each feminist club must adjust its programming to suit their environtment. For Vanderbilt, education was the priority and the prerequisite for any sort of activism.

Chessely Blacklock

Chessely Blacklock hails from Vermont and is the incoming president for Notre Dame’s feminist club. She first got involved in the club in 2019, her freshman year, through the club fair. She ended up applying for a board position at the end of that school year as a service chair as a sophomore. As a junior, she transitioned to secretary-treasurer. She just concluded her term and will continue to contribute to the club as president. 

Notre Dame didn’t admit women into the college until 1972, and Chessley tells me that the first feminist movements at the college correlated with this admittance. However, they are not sure when the club got its official status because college records are not comprehensive. Today, the club takes care to preserve its institutional memory through Google Drive. The current iteration of the feminist club was established 2016. 

The executive board’s structure consists of a president, a vice president, a secretary-treasurer, two media managers, a communications head, and two events managers. Because the club also struggles with recruitment and retention, Chessely plans on starting a general board open to incoming first years so they can get involved from the get-go, as leadership currently is upperclassmen heavy. Next year’s club will thus have two boards– the exec board and underneath it, the general board. The executive board currently consists of ten individuals, and Chessely estimates the general board will consist of ten to fifteen people. Chessely also hopes that lower commitment positions (where individuals can put it on their resumes) will provide a more casual entry into the club. In terms of general membership, the listserv has around one hundred people but monthly general meetings end up having a turnout of fifteen to thirty people. 

The club’s signature event is their menstrual product drive. They were able to partner with an organization called “Campus Cup.” They gave the club three-hundred free menstrual pads and Notre Dame’s feminist club were in charge of distributing them. In terms of regular events, the club hosts monthly meetings, which consist of seminars on current events. The club also sends out monthly emails, which contains a feminist digest. In Chessely’s words, everyday newspapers don’t “cover as many headlines as they should.”

I asked Chessely about the strengths and weaknesses of the club. What stood out about Notre Dame’s feminist club was their strong alumni base. Their institutional knowledge comes from these alumni; the student activities organization has little knowledge of the history.

Like many other student organizations, the club also faced difficulties via Zoom and had to re-establish themselves this year. She also mentioned that Notre Dame’s status as a Catholic college complicates their ability to engage with mainstream feminist issues. The club has worked hard to establish itself on campus and they want to make sure they don’t get their club status revoked.

Chessely is optimistic about the future of the club. Shesays that “If I can leave [the club] better than I found it, I think I will have achieved something.” To that end, she is interested in bringing in a big speaker. The main takeaways from Chessely’s narrative to me are to have a signature event, provide easier access for freshmen to get involved, and to have monthly materials sent out.

Tanu Padma

Out of the three clubs, Northeastern’s feminist club resembles Harvard’s Feminist Collective the most, given its existence in the middle of Boston, which contrasts with Vanderbilt and Notre Dame’s existence in the South. I interviewed Tanu Padma, who currently serves as the Communications Manager of the club. The current president, Jess, told Tanu about the club. Tanu first decided to join on a more casual level during “COVID times,” listening in at meetings. Then, the club mostly hosted discussion based meetings. Tanu was motivated to join after learning that a lot of the Executive Board members were seniors. 

The executive board is required to go to every general meeting. Unlike Vandy, where roles are more malleable Northeastern’s feminist club has rules and regulations for each role. The President is in charge of overseeing everything. The rest of the board consists of a social media manager, a collaboration manager (who approves partnerships), a budget manager (who “churns in the forms to make sure there’s enough money”), and the communications manager, a position filled by Tanu. The events committee is more of a separate branch; one person oversees the committee, but the collaborative environment means everyone who is part of the committee can come up with and implement ideas.

Tanu portrays the club as “re-establishing itself” this year. Previously, the club mainly hosted discussion events as well as their signature event, hosting the Vagina Monologues. Their main programming comes from the events committee. The club tries to host an event every month. For example, their April 7th was a fundraiser; they hosted a casual Galentine’s meeting where they watched a movie and consumed baked goods; they also hosted letter writing events.

A key component of retaining members is making sure the club has consistent and solid programming.  Tanu states that it is easier to advertise what the club does when the events committee plans engaging and varied activities. The discussion-based meetings are led by an executive board member, but sometimes general members want to be involved. Tanu saw an increase in engagement in that realm this spring semester. Involvement is as easy as saying,“Hey, I have an idea for a topic for next week, can I be in charge of leading the discussion?” 

The turnout for these more serious monthly meetings are similar to the turnout for their regular meetings, as the monthly events take place during the regular meeting time. Turnout usually consists of fifteen to twenty people. Interestingly, members from one semester don’t roll over to the next semester, but turnout numbers stay consistent from semester to semester. Tanu recounts that a lot of people turned up to the first meeting of the year, but they didn't continue with the club the subsequent semester. Thus, the club wants to focus on retaining members.

Their email server has one thousand four hundred recipients, a mixture of alumni and current students. They actually still have various people trying to join the email list throughout the semester. In terms of actual numbers, there are seven other people on the executive board. Tanu says there are another fifteen to twenty additional ppl who come to meetings. They offered a virtual option for this semester, and a couple people join through that. In terms of institutional support, the club mainly gets financial support through Northeastern. They provide the club with money so the events committee can carry out its programming. 

Strategy Recommendations 

The three case studies demonstrate what an established feminist club can look like. 

For the newly established Harvard Feminist Collective, there were three main problems we faced were as follows: 1) Establishing institutional norms, 2) Consistency, 3) Low barrier to entry opportunities for engagement.  

I talked to my co-leads, Kate Klein, Betsey Bennett, and Betsy Peinado about the challenges and successes of our club.

We naturally had trouble establishing institutional norms due to our status as a new club. Betsey mentioned that although we have a faculty advisor— Professor Caroline Light, head of the WGS department— faculty were not as receptive to coming to events as we thought they might be. That seems to be in part due to lack of prior presence on campus. By contrast, the other club I head has a very easy job getting speakers as it has been around since 2016. Part of establishing institutional norms means having good publicity, as Betsy mentioned. If there is an established process for how board meets, plans, and advertises for events, then events will also be more established and consistent. 

In terms of consistency, Betsey felt that we did a good job creating a space for open and free dialogue. However, since we didn’t have a structure to emulate (which will change now that we have the helpful examples of Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, and Northeastern), we weren’t as consistent in our programming as we would have liked. Kate pointed out that we lose momentum when we have a lull in events, and it seems that quantity is important (though not at the cost of quality).

We also want to provide more ways for individuals to get involved in the club. We had some consistent freshman attendees and we would have liked them to be able to join board as a frosh rep of sorts. If they didn’t have the bandwidth for an official position, I would have liked to make it easier for them to lead their own event for example. As Betsey pointed out, this would be a way to have clear buy-in from underclassmen. One idea Kate suggested was even to have a comp similar to what WIB does, where there is a concrete product produced as a frosh rep. 

I’ve outlined some of the problems my club specifically faces. Below, I provide five key strategies to counter not only our challenges but the challenges of other feminist clubs. In order to get individuals to join and stay, you have to give them something worth doing, which is why the strategies revolve more around the actual substance of the club

Key signature event

Having a key signature event gives feminist clubs a focus. Some events to consider are the vagina monologues, intersectionality week, a menstural drive, a Women’s March outing, or, as the Harvard Feminist Collective hopes to launch next year, a formal end of semester tea with open discussion. 

Consistent monthly programming

There are various events and structures one could implement. Some include a monthly general body meeting that also serves as a current events seminar. That meeting could also occur bi-weekly. A feminist digest/monthly newsletter also gives board something concrete to work on. While each month’s busyness may vary, having a consistent meeting is the main ingredient. Fun events are the buttercream frosting, a great addition, but not necessary.

Flexible Board Structure

Allow for underclassmen to get involved as soon as they express interest. Allow individuals to have lower commitment labeled positions so they feel more concretely tied to the club. While there may be defined board positions, allow for flexibility and a collaborative environment.

Awareness over activism 

Until members have a good understanding of mainstream feminist issues, the club should not engage in activist activities. While spin-off projects should be encouraged and supported, the main focus of the club should be educating its members. Feminist clubs can potentially become too engrossed in a specific issue and lose sight of its mission to be inclusive (which requires educational programming for the less informed).

Fun incentives

The work that feminist clubs do is needed and important, but in order to help get people initially interested, hedonistic incentives are needed. Some examples include free food at meetings, social events that are open to consistent attendees of general body meetings, and some programming that isn’t too intellectually heavy. When individuals develop personal relationships with each other, they will buy more into the work they do together.

Conclusion

Harvard can be a tough place. There’s a lot of bureaucracy to navigate, but if you cut through the noise, you can find pockets of amazing. I hope to use the strategies I outlined above to make the Feminist Collective a pocket of amazing for myself and many others.