With large student organizations, it can sometimes be hard to initiate bonding and try to develop a sense of belonging amongst members. Her Campus at MSU, has a large chapter of over 80 active members. This semester, we have implemented themes to our general meetings and it has helped us gain higher attendance at the meetings. Members are having more fun and it offers an ice breaker for members to get to know one another.
I’ve accumulated some ideas for themes to engage members from themes we have done as a chapter and themes that have been trending on TikTok.
Character/Cosplay
This theme was more popular and more successful than I thought it would be. Personally, I threw on a No Face costume from Spirited Away.
Rhyme Without a reason
This is currently a trend taking over TikTok.For this, you have people form groups of two or three if their costumes rhyme with one another. If you’re looking for ideas for this one, turn to TikTok!
White Lie
This is the theme we used for our first meeting of the semester and it was a great bonding/ice breaker activity. Personally, I used “I’m not annoying in our group chat” and “I don’t treat my cats like they’re my birth children.” Both were very obvious lies that our members got a kick out of because I do send too many memes in the chat on top of having to send the not-so-fun messages about chapter operations.
Anything But a Cup
We used this one at our first meeting and our events director had whipped up some mocktails for us! I used a fish bowl, but we had some members with really funny ones. One used one of the boxes used for Chinese takeout, one used a reusable sandwich bag and a soup ladle, and one stole a bowl from the cafeteria.
Jos and Bimbos
One of our members actually threw a party using this theme, but I think it would still be fun and possible to do at a meeting or at an event. For Jos, some of the ideas people came up with were Jojo Siwa, Sloppy Joe, Joann’s (craft store), and Cotton-eyed Joe.
Pajamas
We did a movie night where the theme was PJs, but you could still use this theme for a normal meeting. The PJ theme is very comfy and would make for some cute pictures.
Holiday Themes
Some holiday themed ideas are an ugly sweater party (which you could do a gift exchange or cookie decorating with), Halloween, Valentines/Galentines (pink or red), etc.
School Spirit
For this, just have members wear your school colors or your school’s merchandise. You could also turn it into a spirit day for your club by having members wear your club’s merchandise.
There are a lot of different ideas out there to start implementing themes into your meetings.I wish we would’ve started them sooner because they have only made our general meetings more fun and don’t affect general operations. Just make sure to give your members enough notice to plan for the meetings.