University of Leicester Students' Union | Setting up a new society

How To Set Up A New Society

This document hopes to answer some of the questions about setting up a new society.

A society is a group of students of the University whose aims and objectives are recognised as being in accord with those of the Union and of benefit to students of the University.
A society may become affiliated to the Union by application to the Executive Committee. Affiliation means that the society is recognised and supported by the Union.

What Makes a Society?

In order for a new society to come into being it must satisfy the following requirements:

The proposed area of activity of a new society must not be already be provided for by existing clubs, societies or associations.
It must have a written Constitution and Code of Practice. These documents set out how the society will be run, who the officers will be and how they will be elected. Both the Constitution and the Code of Practice must be based on the Union's model documents, and must be passed by the members of the group and then submitted to the Students' Union Executive Committee for approval.

These are the basic requirements for a society to be affiliated to the Union. However, most societies require funding from the Union in order to support the activities they provide.

In order to start this process you will need to make a draft constitution and code of practice to submit. Once these have been produced e-mail them to student_development@le.ac.uk and then it will be considered by the Executive Committee.

To make a draft code of practice click here

To make a draft constitution click here

In order to be entitled to funding from the Union a group must satisfy the following requirements:

The group must have met all the requirements to be affiliated to the Union.
The group must charge a membership fee to all members. The minimum membership fee is currently £1.50, but groups are free to charge more if they wish. The membership fee should be used to provide services and activities for the members of the group.
The group must have a minimum of 25 full members. These must all be students of the University. Other people may be members of the group but they may not be full members and do not count towards the 25 members necessary.
The Treasurer of the group must attend finance training before any monies will be released to the group.

In practice, what this means is that in order to set up a new group you must find at least 25 students who are interested in becoming members of the group.

There are various ways in which you can promote a new society to students in order to recruit new members. The Student Development Officer will be able to help and advise you on how to do this.

Get in contact with the Student Development Officer about setting up a new society. They will be happy to provide you with help and support with writing the constitution and getting the group off the ground.

Make an appointment to talk about the group and what you want to do with it. You can email the Student Development Officer at student_development@le.ac.uk