Starting from scratch

From UKRag Guides (wiki)

The Starting from Scratch guide provides a great introduction to getting a Rag or similar student charity fundraising group started.

Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Other Sources of Support 2 What is Rag? 2.1 Key Terms 3 Starting from Scratch 3.1 First Steps 3.2 Starting Up 3.3 Rag Resources 4 The four stages of the Rag cycle 4.1 Specific tasks within the cycle 4.2 1. Pre-recruitment 4.3 2. Recruitment 4.4 3. Volunteer retention 4.5 4. Development/consolidation 5 FAQ 6 Acknowledgments

Introduction

This is a guide for students at HE and FE institutions who want to help continue one of the finest traditions within the UK educational sector – volunteering to help the local and wider communities through fundraising for those in need. Setting up an effective Rag means putting a few sensible things together to ensure everyone can do as much, or as little, as they want while volunteering thus sowing the seeds for future years of successful fundraising and recruitment. This Guide is split into three parts:

• A general introduction to Rag

• Starting from Scratch - a quick guide covering the basics of getting a Rag together with no previous experience

• Setting Up A Rag - a more detailed guide, designed to help those with a little more knowledge build and grow their Rag

This guide is not a ‘bible’ that you must follow to create a successful Rag, instead it provides a set of guidelines put together by people who have worked to start, revive and/or expand Rags, based on what they’ve found works. Not everything may be relevant to your situation, and you may find other things that help you outside of this guide.

Most importantly, if you’ve found this guide helpful, and want to add your experiences to it for future Rag members, please join UKRag and pass on your experiences!

Other Sources of Support

UKRag.net As noted earlier this guide is only one suggested path for developing a Rag. It was built using suggestions, feedback and ideas provided by a wide cross section of the UKRag.net community. UKRag.net is the on-line Rag community, whose members consist of both current and former Rag volunteers from all over the country. The community offer a wide and varied experience base via the forum so it’s a great place to discuss ideas, get help and support as well as find out what is going on. UKRag also has plenty of other resources that tackle or expand on many of the themes touched upon in this guide.

Your own Student Union Because almost all Student Unions and Universities have a large number of student societies they will usually have a support network in place to help them. As a result you can usually access this support through locally generated guides or by taking training courses offered. These will often include resources for setting-up and running student societies whilst focusing on your local area and campus, so they’re always worth paying attention to.

Charity contacts/representatives Charities often provide community fundraising packs, giving ideas and how-to's for different types of charitable activities and events. Meeting your local charity fundraisers is always a good idea, and getting such info from them is well worth the effort.

Local Community (non-students) The local community will also have experts in many other areas – for example; if you need help with publicity why not approach a local design firm and ask nicely for a bit of training?

What is Rag?

[Rag](n): a traditional element of the UK (and South African) university systems. In past decades it involved wacky events, and students doing their bit, roughly once a year, to help local charities.

In many places students fundraise without even knowing what Rag is and often as a sideline to their main interests (eg: the swimming clubs sponsored swim) or because of some individual motivation. Having a Rag however, means that any student on campus can benefit from a more organised approach that brings students together with others to share enthusiasm, socialise as well as ideas on how else to raise money.

These days Rag is often defined more clearly as students volunteering their time and energy to fundraise for a variety of charities, whether local, national or international. This definition brings out the two crucial elements for any Rag: volunteering and fundraising. One cannot work without the other. Volunteers are the only real resource any Rag has, and developing volunteers is as crucial as raising funds for all the good causes out there. All the biggest and best (totals-wise) Rags out there do indeed make loads of money – but you will find they all base this on effective recruitment and retention of volunteers.

Rags vary in size – the biggest Rags are generally at the oldest Universities, where tradition has given them good resources and history of success. However, every place where people study, will have a mix of people who already fundraise for various causes. Rag can be about finding and supporting these existing fundraisers, or arranging Rag raids (street collections) and events for new fundraisers or a mix of these approaches. All you need to help make a difference is to have a few core, motivated people willing to take the reigns. From there it’s a case of developing some strategic planning, securing a few basic resources, while recruiting and advertising within your volunteer and punter base.

Key Terms

Rag Any student group dedicated to charitable fundraising as their main activity. Often given a different title such as "Karnival", "Student Charities Fund / Committee", etc.

Raggie A student involved with charity fundraising

Raid A street collection' for a nominated charity or group of charities (e.g., a 'Lord Mayor's Charities' collection). There are also larger collections involving many different Rags referred to as ‘Megaraids’, which often involve basic accommodation (usually a church hall floor) and a social element after the street collection.

Sabbatical / Sabb A person (usually a recent graduate or gap year student) employed by Rag or the Student Union to run Rag / student fundraising and volunteering, usually for a year. In a wider Student Union context, sabbaticals are employed after election to run the Union, and may be responsible for any part of the Student Union.

Student Programmes Some charities work very closely with Rags, these charities will have one or more members of staff whose job it is to work with students and to run events aimed at Rags

Hacks Hack is a term often applied to past members of Rags who have since graduated and left uni but are still active in the Rag World.

Starting from Scratch

Perhaps you’re reading this because you:

• Heard about Rag from a mate at another uni?

• Have been involved in fundraising at school?

• Are trying to set a Rag up at your own Uni?

• Are feeling a bit small and insecure compared to your neighbouring Rags’ that seem to make a shed load of money with everything they do?

• Got overawed by all of the info and banter on UKRag.net?

• Want to make a difference, have fun and meet loads of new people?

Don’t Panic! The point that you’re already interested enough to be reading this guide means that your Rag already has a great resource – you!

First Steps

So, you want to set up your Rag. You’ve got a couple of friends who want to help you get started, and a vague idea of what you want to raise money for. So, what’s next?

1. You’ll probably want to register your Rag as a society within your Union. Your Student Union will have many student societies, and they usually have guides and information on how to set one up. Speak to your Student Officers or Student Activities Manager and they can tell you how can set up your Rag.

2. People are your most important resource, without them your Rag won’t be able to grow and you’ll soon find yourself exhausted. So, start with your friends and persuade them to help. Get your union staff and officers onside and encourage them to point any willing volunteers your way. Don’t forget to work with and gain the support of the Union and University staff, you’ll find the contacts come in very handy as you build your Rag.

3. Charities often provide community fundraising packs, giving ideas and tips for running charity events. The charities with student programmes will usually be able to offer even more support and advice, and may be willing to meet you in person to help kick start your development with ideas and suggestions. To get in contact with the student charity reps, post an introduction on UKRag asking for some help!

4. Consider how you’re going to fund your Rag, as you’ll probably need a small budget to able to pay for photocopying, postage, and petrol and so on. Some unions may provide you with a small budget once you qualify as a society, others may require that you charge for membership to raise some funds. You could also consider applying for a small grant from local trusts or from Lottery funds such as Awards for All.

You’ll find that your Union may have several rules and regulations that you’ll have to work within; for example you may have to write a constitution, or agree a budget for the year. Going through these four steps will help you as you’ll have a much better idea of what you want your Rag to do in its first year, and hopefully extra people to help with the workload!

Starting Up

Once you’ve got a core of volunteers to help you publicise and organise your first events and activities, you need to start recruiting, publicising and fundraising.

1. If you’ve missed Freshers, you’ll need to find some methods of recruiting a few more members – eg: stalls in your Union, posters & flyers and so on. Quite often, when you’re starting out, the best way to recruit is by advertising raids and events, and recruiting through them. If you’ve not missed Freshers, get your stall and information ready – see the “UKRag Recruitment Guide” for some more ideas

2. ‘Off-the-shelf’ events from charities such as Raids are useful to help build a calendar of events without taking up too much effort. Such pre-organised events leave you free to concentrate on events in your Union that need more time. They are also good morale boosters for your volunteers – they’ll be able to see your Rag total go up nice and quickly!

Rag Resources

Rags have to have certain things in place to be able to fundraise effectively – without these you will undoubtedly find your job harder, and take longer. So, everything listed below will help make you more effective. However, remember that Student Unions have limited resources that everyone wants, so work on proving your worth and longevity to encourage the SU to support your requests. Many societies fizzle after a short time so take the time to show you are worthy of long term support.

• Core of people – a small committee of willing volunteers with skills like poster designing, plus a willing bunch of friends/housemates who will help with an evening here and there for you.

• An office or administrative space – any SU, university or college will have a reception, mailroom, general office or Union officers' room. Your own Rag office is essential for running a larger Rag, but many Rags operate fine without, so long as they have a notice board, filing cabinet, in-tray and known phone-number. It also helps to have your office, or communication resources, based near other societies to encourage cross communication and involvement.

• Rag computer – essential for a medium-sized Rag or larger. Where you have access to mass shared computers, this is less important, but it’s still essential that all Rag data (mailing list of volunteers, copies of past posters) is stored somewhere accessible and gets backed-up.

What is essential is that your volunteers can get to Word, Excel, Access, the internet, Rag email and a design package for doing posters – and all can get to the same set of stored Rag files.

• Brand and reputation – something that makes you instantly recognizable on campus as the group you are, that does the things you do – good fun fundraising and volunteering.

Doing all your posters in the same font, using the same format is one method – then so long as you do good events, future posters will always be looked at favourably. This can get very advanced, but the simple basics are always useful.

Building up your brand does take a while – and if things go wrong your reputation can suffer instantly. If things do go wrong, concentrate on the incoming freshers due to come in – they won't know what went wrong, and probably won't care either!

• Strategy – another management word that really matters, even to a small Rag. Strategy is all about working out where you are, where you want to be, and how you are going to get there.

For example - you want to set-up a Rag from nothing? Following the suggestions at the end of this guide is implementing a strategy.

Want to become the biggest events-organiser on campus? Not exactly a short term goal requiring a few years, so you need to build on success, and grow at the right speed – whilst keeping an eye on various indicators that tell you how you are doing. Are tickets selling out quicker each event, and do all flyers in the bar disappear, or are they always there all night untouched? If it all positive, grow your events program – otherwise pause and rethink – maybe you can fundraise from your Union in other ways.

• 'Leadership and management – the biggest challenge in any charity or organisation is effective leadership. With good leadership any other factor can be overcome in some way – with poor or ineffective leadership, no matter how good things are, everything can start to go wrong, or just lose that fun element! Rag leadership is a combination of committee members managing Rag, not just fundraising together, and the Rag chair who leads the team. Having solid, set rules (e.g. only meets Tuesday after lectures) keeps everything polite and effective.

One of the biggest challenges to a Rag is when it grows from something small and fun, to something bigger with more and more people – This transition needs to be managed carefully to avoid breaking what already works, or upsetting those volunteers already in place.

• Volunteers – Remember, Rag 'facilitates volunteer development through the medium of fundraising', i.e., you provide opportunities for volunteers (including yourselves) to fundraise – and this helps your members to benefit as well as the charities. Without strong and clear volunteer policies (equal opps, inductions, committee handovers) your Rag will remain small, and make it harder to recruit new volunteers from your student community.

• Bank account & financial systems – as you are fundraising for charity, you have a number of legal and moral obligations to fulfil. As a result a number of common sense safeguards are essential to help protect you from any potential accusations (eg: mishandling funds) and ensure you don’t fall foul of the relevant charity law.

You will either need a club/society account where more than one person has to sign cheques, or an account through your SU – each particular Union will have their own rules. If you have your own bank account, cash cards are not needed and you’ll want statements monthly, in large-format with plenty of detail.

Check with your Student Union about the best/right way to set up a bank account.

All money has to be paid into the bank account ASAP, and recorded so you know what money is owed to whom. Money can only come out via cheque, and only if a valid receipt or invoice/receipt has been provided. Your SU will usually be able to help you here. One person needs to be responsible for the accounts – the Treasurer. They should always get some training to make sure it is done right - SU's usually provide such training for society treasurers.

Remember that money raised for a particular charity can only go to that charity, not any other.

• Recruitment materials – once you've established your Rag you will always find opportunities to recruit new volunteers, or let potential punters know about future events. Have a readily available supply of “basic” posters and flyers that cover what Rag is, how to get involved/contact you and details of your coming activities. These publicity materials mean you can always go on a publicity blitz at short notice (e.g., you notice the bar is busy, and no-one else has flyered the tables) or help answer a random query from a potential new recruit.

• Collecting tins/buckets – most Rags do collections, whether for Red Nose Day, or every weekend for national charities. Charities often supply tins, but it is very handy to have a dozen of each somewhere safe, ready for when you need them. Don't forget the security seals!

Collecting tins and buckets should ideally be locked away and you should know who has been issued with any. Unfortunately, there are always a few people in any community who will pose as a charity collector for their own selfish ends, so you need to be responsible with your resources to ensure you are not taken advantage of.

• Enthusiasm - Perhaps the most important resource of them all! If you and the rest of your Rag team are motivated and enthusiastic you’ll find it’s infectious and you’ll soon be picking up new members

The four stages of the Rag cycle

This section of the guide provides more detail on how you should go about setting up your Rag and more importantly developing it, so that it becomes a permanent feature of student life at your Union. After all you don’t want all your hard work to go to waste!

As with the resources section, not everything below may be relevant to you or your Rag, so have a read through everything then decide what’s useful to you. If there is anything you feel is missing please feel to post your comments on the UKRag site so that the guide can be updated and improved

Finally much of this section assumes that you will start the process over the summer, to ensure you’re ready for recruitment in Freshers Week. This is the ideal situation but may not always be possible. Don’t worry if you are starting at a different point in time as almost everything will still be relevant.

There are always four stages to whatever a voluntary organisation does. Everything it does revolves around:

• getting ready for new volunteers (having events ready for them)

• recruiting new volunteers (talking to people in the bar),

• keeping them by doing what it is your organization does (giving them the chance to fundraise)

• …and taking what you have and making it all better.

1. Pre-recruitment – getting everything ready.

Making sure all the resources, and anything else you need, are prepared and that you have enough to cope with the number of volunteers you are going to recruit. This is generally done in the summer term/summer holidays, ready for the all important Freshers' Week.

2. Recruitment – getting the volunteers in.

The most fun part of Rag – actually talking to people and getting them to join the biggest and best part of campus life! Recruiting in Freshers' Week is best, as your first years are ready and willing to join various student activities, making them easy to sign up.

3. Retention – working with and using the volunteers you have.

Unless you give all your new volunteers something to do straight away, they will mostly drift away to another society. You should have done pre-recruitment to make sure you have easy activities for volunteers to do almost immediately plus some sort of training in place. This is usually done throughout the autumn term – especially important as well to identify those who might become long-term Raggies, or even better future committee members.

4. Consolidation – getting everything together as a team, doing effective fundraising.

Usually begins just before or just after Christmas. See who is still around after the first big vacation, and that is likely to be the team for the year. This is also the time to get this core of people organizing the biggest events – leaving it later means that exams/dissertations start to get in the way.

Consolidation means planning for the next year – work out what skills are lacking in the new volunteers, maybe decide what event experiences you should you give them if the current events organizers are due to graduate? Consolidation should lead naturally to the handover when the old committee handover over to the new crew. This often takes place in the summer term and allows the new committee to begin the cycle again… i.e. pre-recruitment preparation, ready for the next big bout of recruitment the next autumn.

Specific tasks within the cycle

1. Pre-recruitment

This assumes that you’re a brand new Rag, with nothing in place. Ideally, you’ll want to be doing these steps in the spring and summer, ready for a major launch at the next Freshers Fair. If you’re already up and running, the vast majority is still relevant – if you don’t plan your recruitment, it won’t work at its best.

Set-up the society

- Register with your college or SU.

- Get a bank-account and treasurer

- Identify 2-3 (ideally more) core committee members, and a few friends each who can be called on every few weeks for support.

- Get an e-mail address (e.g. 'rag@myuni.ac.uk', not someone's name) from the campus IT people and put up a simple webpage on the college site – saying who you are, and how to contact you.

Note: UKRag.net provide free web hosting and email addresses so you’ll be able to get an email address there (if required) and help with designing a website.

Research what is already popular

- What charities do students at your college already support? Do they do an annual charity 10k or rugby match for a particular cause? Do you see students running around in silly outfits during Comic Relief?

- What charities/activities do students at existing Rags do? Make contact with local Rags, browse their and charity sites on the web. Use UKRag! There are likely to be reports and info from previous years.

- Check your University handbook and web – who are all the main people? Get a list of VC/principal, deputy, head of major departments and so on. Do a Google search on these people, and their wives/husbands. Check Who's Who in any library – identify what charities they already support. Keep all this on file, and refer back to it, whenever planning a term of events, see who might be able to help and already supports the charity you are fundraising for.

- For larger Universities; find out which biochemistry and medical professors/departments are funded by the big medical charities.

Plan fundraising activities for the next term/academic year.

- Choose a handful of activities that you will enjoy organising and popular with your students.(i.e. There’s no point doing a beerfest where half the students are underage!)The first term is crucial for any year, so make sure this is well planned.

- Recruitment is constant – make sure you plan early enough, so you have time to recruit new volunteers while you do your fundraising activities – Remember that you need to keep your existing volunteers too!

- Volunteer numbers usually grow over a good first term, but drop after. Remember that all your events are recruitment opportunities – so have generic information, about Rag, at all events.

- Don’t plan a massive event in the summer term if you think most or all of your volunteers (and you) might be busy with coursework deadlines before, during or after. Reality checks are a must!

- For any event, find out who did it elsewhere and what did and didn’t work for them. UKRag is a perfect way to get advice and tips, ways to cut costs and effort which leave you with more time/energy to recruit and fundraise better.

Volunteer policies – make sure everything is safe and legal.

- For anything potentially risky (e.g. bungee jumps) speak to your college or SU, and work with them and the event company to cover insurance and health and safety.

- If you do have a formal committee, make sure all the rules and regs about standing for election and how to find out about this are in place.

Marketing

- If you know all your main/key events for a term at least (ideally year), you can now do all your posters well in advance – and speak to the college/local newspaper and local radio about doing articles as well.

Note: If you are planning last minute, all the above is impossible. Pre-planning means you could try asking your local printer to do all your posters/flyers for the year in one go (free or discounted) if you know they are quiet for a week over the summer.

- Set up templates on MS Office for your Rag so you have it all (headed paper, comp slips, fax headers, etc) ready to print our when needed – or get them printed.

- Get a design student to help with publicity – set up decent standard designs. A professional looking design with the right information can make all the difference!

Plan your Recruitment – in advance!

- Book all fresher week resources (society fair, Union handbook) and co-ordinate. i.e. do one set of recruitment materials, and use these for everything.

- Ensure a few simple messages and key initial activities are advertised. Make sure you have a full list of every Fresher week recruitment activity, marketing avenue, mailshot and the like – and get involved early.

- Looking out for potential new committee members. Knowing what your different committee & events jobs entail will allow you to ID the likely candidates as the year progresses so get a clear idea of what tolook for.

New volunteers might not want to ask you about taking your job, so keep all info open and available to maximize volunteer involvement.

2. Recruitment

There is a separate guide to recruitment produced by UKRag so please refer to that for detailed ideas and plans. Some general points however:

- If you only do one major recruitment session in the year, make sure this is in Freshers’ Week, and that you have planned everything in advance.

- A good fresher recruitment drive should get a decent number on your mailing list by the end of the first week of term.

- Of these maybe 10% might come to a recruitment meeting a week later. Of these initial 10%, maybe 10% might get involved further. (figures based on recruitment figures over several years at two large Universities)

- Whenever you recruit the numbers who respond are lower than the number you approach:

- Thus you need to approach hundreds of students (although one good poster in the right place can be seen by that many easily) to get a few volunteers.

- Don't be disheartened – the ones who listen to you but don't join, or that seemed to show interest, but faded away: they are likely to be the first people to buy a ticket to an event, knowing more about Rag than the normal student on campus.

Structure recruitment and activities'

- If you have planned a big event for halfway through the first term, you will need lots of willing volunteers to do flyer runs. This would dovetail nicely with recruitment, as just after Freshers' week you will have lots of volunteers who need something simple to do...

- Organising a big event for just after Freshers' week however would mean your core people can either organise that or go recruiting, probably not both.

However you recruit, you will end up with:

- Existing core Raggies, new faces, and a wide mailing list of people wanting to get involved, but without time/inclination yet to be a core supporter.

- Having raised your profile so that your next publicity run can build on your brand, and advertise a suitable event. Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Children in Need – both happen in the autumn, so perfect high-profile causes you can easily sell to people.

Over the first term you should notice your volunteer base change...

- Some will become obvious collectors, while others excel as events organisers. Some might be useless at all forms of admin, but have a gift for getting things for free, etc…

- Make sure all tasks and jobs are clearly identified, and anyone can find out about them – and try them out. If not written down openly, hard for volunteers to know what it is they can try out.

- If all your events are so complex or difficult that only 'trained' committee members can organize them, perhaps you need to consider having easier events – volunteers who can't be a full part of the team, or try new things will leave. Or have less complex versions, as equally important to the fundraising totals, to double up as training.

3. Volunteer retention

Keep your volunteers – they are busy people, with hundreds of societies, clubs, bits of coursework and the fabric of life to distract them.

- Once volunteers are recruited and inducted they have to be given opportunities to get and stay involved – or you will lose them.

- Communication is crucial. Weekly e-mails, socials, open meetings are essential, with balances to make sure you don’t hassle your volunteers or make it seem like they have to spend all their time in Rag to get involved properly.

For many Rags the second term is the best and worst term.

- Generally recruitment will have stopped, and freshers established within student life and other societies – i.e. volunteers naturally leaving with hardly any joining.

- The volunteers you do have need to be used here or they won't stick around for the last term – when the following year/committee is organised.

- You often want to hold your most complex events here, as you know what volunteers you will have before the term starts -any closer to the summer and academic issues get in the way.

More complex recruitment can be undertaken here

– assuming everyone on campus now knows your Rag brand, you can be creative and do things that other societies can't.

- Approaching halls, faculties, the AU, larger societies: form partnerships.

- Get them to do their existing fundraising with your help.

- Their members will get to know who you are, so bring them in to you that way – if they are working with you on joint fundraising, they might want to stay with you when the project finishes.

- Remember their committee members would be very useful to have – organised and experienced officers are very hard to find.

Start preparing your members to become the committee next year.'

- You should already be encouraging new members to take more responsibility to keep them interested but remember that your committee needs new people each year so look for potential recruits and support them as early as possible so they learn the ropes and don’t go in at the deep end.

4. Development/consolidation

The summer term should be a period of consolidation and reflection

– most places have short summer terms, all building up to exams.

- This is where you need to form the committee for the next academic year, and prerecruit for that year.

- Many Rags only fundraise in the summer through Rag raids – This only requires simple organization and doesn't need many volunteers.

- You may want to keep the socials going however as a service to your volunteers – and to keep them thinking about Rag, and maybe joining the committee/core for next year.

- Finally you might want a big end of term social for Rag, or join the Union and help with the summer ball or similar – promote your Rag brand and maintain people contact.

Induct the new committee

- Organise committee skills training for the incoming committee, and group-bonding sessions.

- Have each committee member hand-over to their successor properly.

- Get specific training arranged for e.g. Treasurer, chair and poster designers.

- Handovers are VITAL. Set the example and communicate as much as possible, preferably in a hard copy form (i.e. written down).

Plan the flavour for the following year

- E.g. raids only, halls-events, for a particular charity only – whatever you want.

- Remember that some new volunteers might have different interests – be flexible!

Identify potential partnerships and start discussions to work together.

- Look at what was done previously with Rag and other groups

- See who does major fundraising – e.g. AU charity Xmas ball

- See what existing events can get a charity angle – Grad Ball to Charity Grad Ball

FAQ

How can I contact other new Rags?

If you’ve got hold of this guide there’s a good chance you’ve already discovered www.UKRag.net if you haven’t then that’s a good place to start. On the site you’ll be able to chat with other Rags around the country.

'What about actually meeting other Rag members?

If you would like to meet people face to face then there are a number of ways to go about this

1. Get in touch with Rags near you, the contacts section on UKRag has details on many of the countries active Rags.

2. Sign up for one of the Big Rag events, a number of the charities run big collections known as Megaraids where Rags from across the country meet up at a weekend for a collection, even if you’ve never collected before this is a great way to meet other people in the Rag world, checkout the “what’s on” forum and calendar (on UKRag.net) to see what events are coming up, or get in touch with one of the charity reps.

3. Rag Conference takes place each January. It’s a chance for Rags to meet up with charity reps and companies who deal with Rags. In addition to meeting people, it’s also a chance to attend the training seminars to learn new skills.

I don’t have much time can I still set up a Rag?

Of course you can, Raggies are students who in their spare time help fundraise for charities, the amount of time you put in is up to you. If you make sure you’re not alone and you have a few friends you’ll find that you can still do something. If you haven’t got much time then start off by running off the shelf events that are run by charities.

How much will it cost me?

Rag should cost you little or nothing; most Rags find that as a society you will get a small budget to help cover costs such as printing and phone calls. If your society charges a small membership fee then that will also help to cover costs. In certain circumstances you will be able to claim back some out of pocket expenses such as travel to raids from the charity concerned, but remember you will need to agree this with the charity first.

I’ve tried to set up a Rag but interest has been low'

Don’t worry recruiting for Rag can be difficult after all people know what the Rugby or hiking clubs are, the concept of Rag can be harder to get across. Starting small isn’t always a bad thing, it will be easier to get together to discuss things and keep everyone up to date.

One of the best ways to recruit people is through word of mouth, if Rag and the events you run are fun people who turn up or are involved will tell other people and you will find you can recruit people that way.

I want to run an event but I can’t get enough people to sign up

Try linking up with another Rag, if you haven’t got enough people for a collection or a bungee jump for instance if you split the costs and recruitment with another local Rag is a good way to ensure the event can take place and meet other people.

Try to build up links with other societies or sports clubs in the union if you can get other groups to contact all their members is an easy way to recruit people

Finally make sure the event you are planning is feasible for the resources at your disposal it may be that until you recruit more people to help you organise and publicise your event.

Acknowledgments

This guide has been written and collated by members of UKRag: Becky, emo, IanB, Jasonicus and Zippy, based on contributions from the following members:

AdamM, APU-Liz, Ash, Becky, Big Dave, Bondus, Camberwell Carrot, Chris(ESCA), Duck Paul, Emo, Flymo, Gareth Wall, Gill, Helen Lancs, IanB, Iain, Jasonicus, jbp, Kate, Kelly, Laura, Leafy, Lesleyb4, Little Rich, Liz, Lorna, Malky Watson, Martin, Mash, Moodydaniel, Pop-Tart, QUB_RAG, RAG-Monkey, Red Jen, Reeltime, Rob Waddington, Ruth, Schnurrbs, Seaneeboy, Teresa, Umist Rag, Useless, Vick, Vikki, Zedwina, Zippy and Zoey.

If you’ve any questions on the guide, or any feedback about how well it has worked for you, please drop by the forums and let us know.