Founding a society where there is not one

Put both jobs in one society and you lose some of each. The student who wanted the Friday night dinner stops coming once it becomes a political project, and the student who would have run the stall never joins, because from outside it looks like a religious club. That decision comes before every other one on this page.

Nobody will appoint you to make it. Where your institution has neither a Jewish society nor an Israel society, you can start one without anybody’s permission beyond the paperwork, and the paperwork is the smaller half. You can begin this week, alone. Being nervous about putting your own name to it is the correct response and not a sign that you are the wrong person for it.

One thing before you circulate anything. Founding a society puts names in public: yours on a constitution, other people’s on a list. Read the section on how visible to be before you put out a sign-up sheet.

One society, or two?

A Jewish society is a home. Its purpose is that Jewish students have somewhere to be Jewish together: a Friday night dinner, a festival, a room where nobody explains themselves first. Its membership is largely, though never only, Jewish students.

An Israel society is a campaign. Its purpose is argument in public: stalls, speakers, motions, answering what gets said about Israel on your campus. Its membership is anybody who agrees with the case, and in many places most of it will not be Jewish.

They carry different risk too. People who come to a festival party are not always willing to be seen at a concourse stall in a contested week.

Three rough tests:

• Enough Jewish students to fill a room, no home for them: the Jewish society first.
• An argument being lost in public, few Jewish students: the Israel society first.
• Both true, and six people committed: both, with separate names and overlapping committees.

With three people, found one. Two societies at half strength is worse than one that works.

What your institution actually requires

Find this out before you recruit. Every item below is a fact somebody can give you in an afternoon, and getting one wrong costs you months.

1. How many founding members registration needs, and whether all have to be enrolled.
2. Whether affiliation to your students’ union or equivalent is compulsory, or the only route to rooms and funding.
3. Whether a model constitution is expected, or whether you write your own.
4. Which committee roles are mandatory, and under what names.
5. Who approves a new society, how often they meet, and the next date.
6. Whether the society holds its own bank account, or claims against a central one.
7. What room booking rights come with registration.

Write down who told you, what they said and the date. Those rules change, and the person who explained them moves on.

Find the one member of staff who will help

Somewhere in your institution is one member of staff who will help when something goes wrong. A chaplain or faith adviser, an equality or welfare officer, a long-serving academic. The job title is not predictable. The existence more or less is.

Find them in a calm week, before you need them. Ask for something small first: how the approval process works, or whether a room can be held. You are learning whether they are helpful, they are learning that you are reasonable, and both matter later. What you tell them can be passed upwards, which is fine for a room booking and worth a thought before anything sensitive.

Who else does this

External bodies exist whose job is helping students found societies like yours. They bring speakers, small grants, training, security advice, and somebody at the end of a phone. Coverage differs by country, so this page names none. To find yours, ask your chaplaincy, and ask a neighbouring society who helped them. Ask the nearest synagogue or Jewish community organisation who supports students where you are.

Where this backfires: outside funding or branding gives an objector a ready line about an externally run lobby group. Some take the training and decline the logo.

Make the first event social, not political

A society that launches with a debate recruits the people who already argue. One that launches with food recruits everybody else, and the arguers will come anyway.

So the first event is a room, food, an end time, and no speaker. Give the end time, because people commit more readily to something with a stated finish.

What you say to the first four people

These do more work than a poster, and you can send the first two tonight.

“We’re starting a Jewish society here. Come and eat on Thursday at six and help us decide what it does.”

“I need four names on a form to register this. Will you be one? It commits you to nothing but the form.”

“I don’t know yet what it’s going to be. That’s what Thursday is for.”

“There’s a sign-up sheet, and I’m the only person who’ll see it. Say if you’d rather I didn’t write your name down.”

“We’re a society for Jewish students here. We’re asking for what every other society gets.”

How many people will come, honestly

Small. A first social where no society exists commonly draws five to fifteen people, and a first committee meeting three or four. Nine sign-ups producing four attendances is ordinary.

That is not a verdict on the cause, on the campus or on you. It is what a founding looks like. The society you compare yourself against has forty years of history behind it.

Deciding how visible to be

This one is about safety. Make these decisions together, before your first public sign-up, and put the answers in your minutes.

The membership list. Decide who holds it, where it lives, and what people are told when they join. Ask at sign-up whether somebody is content to be contacted. Keep it where more than one of you can reach it and nobody else can. Never publish it, and never leave a paper sheet on an unattended table, because that sheet records who is Jewish on your campus.

Meeting locations. Most societies settle on publishing the room for open socials and giving it on request for anything contested. Both cost something. Publishing fills the room and tells anybody who wants to turn up. Withholding loses you the people too hesitant to ask.

Names. Many students’ unions or equivalents publish committee names as a condition of registration. Find out whether yours does before anybody signs, so that no officer discovers it afterwards.

People genuinely disagree about how open to be, and both errors are real. Visibility deters some students from joining at all. Discretion means the student who most needs you cannot find you. That decision is the founders’, not ours.

The other societies

Some will be hostile. Most have no view. A few will be glad you exist and say so.

Assuming the first covers all of them produces the isolation it predicts. In the first month, ask three other societies about a joint social. Pick ordinary ones: a food society, a departmental society, a society of another faith. A shared quiz night is worth more to you than winning an argument.

Where a society is genuinely hostile, keep every exchange civil and in writing, and never approach them as a delegation. Let the behaviour be theirs.

When somebody objects to your affiliation

This happens, to both kinds of society and more often to an Israel society. It arrives as an objection at the approval meeting, or as conditions attached to registration.

Note this before you go in: the question in the room is whether a society may exist, not whether the political argument is right. Being drawn into the second loses the first.

• Ask for the written approval criteria in advance. A decision is meant to be made against them.
• Turn up, with two other founding members. An objection to an empty chair wins.
• Answer with your purpose, in the words above, and nothing more.
• If refused, ask that day for the reasons in writing and the appeal route.
• Tell your staff contact the same day, whatever the outcome.

This works, and first-year students with four founding members have done it many times.

Handing it on from day one

From your first meeting, keep one shared document holding the logins, the staff contact and the recurring dates, reachable by two of you. Recruit at least one founding member with more than a year left. A society registered by people who are all about to leave has one year in it.

Once you are registered and running, a society that outlasts you covers the year and the handover. If you are building a community group off campus instead, starting a group from nothing is the better page.

Three lines, before you tell anybody

Fill in the blanks129 words

Two questions from memory first. Which of the two societies are you founding, and what is the test that decided it? And of the seven things your institution requires, which ones do you still not know?

Then write these somewhere you will see them.

If it is Monday morning, then I will message the four people I already know and ask them for a coffee this week.

If fewer than six people come to the first social, then before anybody leaves I will take every name, one fact about each person, and fix the date of the next one.

And for the meeting that decides it: if we are given an approval date, then I will request the written criteria beforehand and turn up with two other founding members.