The impetus for this post is a gripe I have about student organization constitutions. Many universities require student groups to generate a constitution as a prerequisite for recognition. Yet how many of our offices have constitutions? How many of our campuses have constitutions? Does any group you belong to anywhere–besides the United States of America and maybe the Rotary Club–have a constitution? (Do an Internet search on “organizations with constitutions” and you’ll get a slew of university “how to” pages for their student groups.)

My primary concern: relevance.

Leadership/followership education is challenging, messy, complicated work. There’s no manual, no surefire way to guarantee success. But because it’s so important—so vital—this work can also be very rewarding. We must approach leadership education thoughtfully by creating relevant and meaningful ways for students to learn and engage. We need to help them see connections between all of their leadership/followership experiences–class projects, part-time jobs, families, student organizations, future careers, and more.

Here are a few things for us to ponder:

1) Effective groups have a shared purpose. In his TED Talk on “How great leaders inspire action,” Simon Sinek discusses the power of people who connect around mutual beliefs and dreams. How do we help students identify and articulate purpose and then use purpose to form and ground groups? Would developing a statement of purpose be more centering than hammering away at a constitution?

2) Effective groups have active participants. How do we help student groups establish organization norms–member-generated and mutually agreed upon standards for participation? And then, how do we work with students to identify and address unsatisfactory performance in their groups and to confront, coach, and even “fire” when appropriate? Some faculty members are now allowing groups to remove project-team members who fail to meet agreed-upon standards. Students generally appreciate this option (and use it), and it teaches a valuable skill (and lesson).

3) Effective groups understand that problem solving is a process. Simply saying that food service or parking sucks isn’t enough. How do we coach students to explore why something is the way it is, first? Our campus library houses our University’s archives, where students can learn things like why our institution once had a child-care center and now doesn’t. Many colleges have well-known “historians,” faculty and staff members who have lived through years of changes and enjoy talking about them. Solutions that show a grasp of the past have a better chance of gaining approval.

4) Do we overuse the term “student leader” when we could/should be saying “students when they’re leading”? When we speak about “student leaders,” we are often referring to students with titles–Resident Assistants, Student Government officers, etc. These students are certainly leading in this single capacity; however, they are also participating in groups led by others. They are following. When non-titled students hear us speak about our “student leaders,” they often don’t see themselves, even though they may, in fact, be leading without a title.

5) How are we learning about leading and following? We have access to much wisdom through TED Talks, blogs, and other resources (all of which can be used with students, too). Are we practicing what we teach? Students are watching us. They see how we are leading and following, both in terms of actual behaviors and skills and in terms of the quality of decisions being made.

What are your experiences with leadership and followership? What initiatives and tools are having the most impact? How have your leadership programs evolved? What work still needs to be done?

Lisa Tetzloff is the Director of the Office of Student Life at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Three quick stories, one important point.

Story #1:
Last week, before my soccer match, I watched a little league softball game on the field next to us. Surrounding the field was a collection of parents multitasking between the game, their blackberries, and babysitting their, even younger, offspring. One parent in particular was having a hard time keeping her little one under control. Her kid kept racing up and down the sidelines while mimicking a train. He put his hand in the air, pumped his fist, and as he passed us let out a loud, “Choo Choo!” Then 30 seconds later he’d come steamrolling back. The kid clearly had extra energy and needed to let it out. The parent, and most parents would agree, didn’t try and stop him from running, instead she calming kept looking a few yards ahead to clear away any dangers that might be in his way. The little kid was motivated to run, so instead of trying to stop him, the parent took on the role of laying tracks for him to keep running.

Story #2:
My brother and I were playing Frisbee Golf and he lodged his frisbee square in the middle of a mud pit. I quickly looked around for a large stick and without much thinking took two steps into the mud pit, reached out my arm, and started to retrieve his frisbee for him. With my foot half covered in mud, my brother said, “never get in the way of a motivated individual.”

Story #3:
At this year’s ACPA conference in Philadelphia, the conference organizers hosted a special social media strategy session with several individuals to talk about how they could better leverage social media for the ACPA community. Throughout the session it was clear that someone needed to step up and lead the charge. Looking around the room, there were many capable individuals, but the question was who was the most motivated and ready? Kathy Petras raised her hand and agreed to lead the group. Since then,  she has been a wonderful leader, and had we had enough data to work with, probably could have predicted so because Kathy was already a trending leader in the community. She was a newer associate that recently took on a leadership position in another committee as well as led an ed session for the first time this year. If we were to tally up her actions, we would’ve seen she was a trending leader and was hunting for her next level of growth. In this case, leading the social media adoption committee was a perfect fit for her.

Point:
Every student group/classroom can be broken up into varying levels of engagement. Based on a specific student’s engagement level, they want to be treated in different ways. A fully involved students wants to be treated in a totally different way than a student lurking on the edge of the wall. A student’s engagement level is constantly shifting though, with a hope of always trending towards more involvement. It’s up to the leaders of the community to thus recognize the individual engagement level of each student, and also to recognize how an individual is trending. Find out who the Kathy is of your community that is trending towards being a leader, then lay down tracks for her to continue to be great, because the worst thing a leader can do is get in the way of a motivated train.

Truly Leading:  Lessons in Leadership was released on May 2, and I’m really proud to announce it here at the SABlog site.  This book was written over the past three or four years, and several of the 21-chapters actually began as postings to this blog.
I wrote it as primer for campus leaders.  It covers both basic and more advanced leadership skills, and the chapter titles lay it out.  “Leading With Integrity,” “Effective Time Management,” “The Art of Delegation,” “Setting Organizational Goals,” and “Conflict Resolution”  are good examples of the basic skills required to lead.

But Truly Leading goes beyond the basics, and addresses those skills that more advanced leaders need.  “How to Inspire Others,” “Being a Better Leader,” “The Power of Ceremony” and “More Effective  Meetings” are aimed at lifting an emerging leader into greater success.

I’ve also included chapters on some very important foundational needs, such as creating a mission statement and some advanced concepts in recruitment.  Organizational training needs are addressed in chapters covering both planning and training retreats, along with presenting a full-blown campus leadership conference.

Truly Leading:  Lessons in Leadership is chock full of leadership tips, suggestions, and guidance.  It is brisk reading, written in a style that reflects the my personal experiences as a life-long leader.

If you’d like a copy, it’s available directly from my website store, or you can purchase it from Amazon.com.  It’s also available as an eBook from the Kindle Store.  It should be available at the Apple bookstore and Barnes & Nobles.com in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for letting me announce this here.  Okay, Fellow Contributors:   it’s time for you to write your new book!

I have recently confronted the realization that it has been twenty years since I participated in sorority recruitment as a student at Lafayette College.  Given most of the readers on this blog probably assume I am 24, you know my secret of graduating from college at 5 years old.

Our campus recently finished our sorority recruitment events and being there with them helped me to recall some great memories with my sisters in Alpha Gamma Delta.  When I was in college I spent a lot of time on recruitment activities with the chapter through various leadership roles, so sorority recruitment time always reminds me of the good, bad and YIKES! times we spent together.  As a sorority member it’s easy to understand the recruitment process after it happens once, but I can only imagine how odd it must be to those not connected with sorority life to observe these events in action.  What in the world could all that clapping, singing, intense discussion and matching clothing have to do with student learning?

When I reflect on my co-curricular learning as a college student, I realize now that the preparation and implementation of recruitment programs had a huge impact.  I wanted to share some of my learning lessons:

• There’s nothing quite like a sincere welcome to a group.  Since my sorority days, I have been part of enough meetings and committees where I have felt like an outsider or “new person” and haven’t been brought in.  I don’t care how old you are.  It’s so valuable to have someone willing to “bring you in” and educate you about the standards, history and culture of a group. I appreciate those who have mastered it and use it to bring others into the fold.
• Remembering names is a skill you can work on.  When you are meeting hundreds of women at lightning speed, you have to learn to remember names and details about people.  Tricks for remembering names have paid off immensely in my work life and in my personal life as well. Even though I’m an extrovert by nature, sorority recruitment taught me to focus on the individuals just one at a time and the value of remembering names and details for the next conversation.
• Tasks and vision must connect. Motivating peers to do most anything is tough as a student leader, but experience as recruitment chair taught me how to clarify the “big picture” and help groups to work with the vision at the forefront.  Writing hundreds of names on index cards wasn’t all that much fun, but I learned how to help others focus on the fact that each step along that process would bring us closer to a great group of new women for our organization.  I think this experience gave me great preparation for supervision roles today.
• Diversity is a pay-it-forward value.  Our advisors and chapter leaders taught us the impact that diversity has on a group.  They made this intentional membership education so that our voting decisions would be as open as possible to allow for the broadest possible diversity in our organization.  Their intentional education set a great example of how important it is to educate.  Today, I am better equipped to teach where it is needed rather than losing patience with people who may lack information or who may still be searching for positive role modeling.
• We all answer to someone. Back then, we were given recruitment rules from the Panhellenic, rules from our national organization, instructions from our faculty advisor, tips from our alumni and directives from any traveling consultants that may have visited campus. It seemed then as if everyone was telling us what had to be done and that we answered to about twelve different “bosses.”  Life is still that way, as I’m taking direction from just as many places with even more “high stakes” involved.  I remember thinking it would get easier “in the real world.”  Now I realize that accountability is everywhere and that everyone answers to someone.

Sorority recruitment was a whirlwind, but when I think back on all of the “life lessons” I gained from that experience these are my most used today.  When I was a potential new member back then, it looked like all kinds of fun that might teach me something in the end.  Today, I look back and realize that the 18 year old woman who made the decision to get involved during all that craziness made one of the best educational decisions for life and leadership in the future.

I’d love to hear from both sorority members and everyone else too.  Let’s talk about recruitment!

Most student club advisors will tell you that club engagement goes through waves; some years are rockstars and others are duds. Almost every club starts the year with aspirations of rockstardom, but within a couple weeks, the excitement and motivation of the leadership team fades, and thus, the entire club activity withers. In pondering this problem, I’ve been talking more and more about an idea called engagement-based leadership (EBL), meaning that leadership is not a one-time elected thing, but rather an ongoing, ever-changing position rewarded based on engagement. Before I talk more about EBL, first let’s dissect the problem of why student leaders fade within a month of being elected.

Several years ago, I walked the second day of a 2-Day Avon Walk For Breast Cancer with my wife and some friends. Anyone who’s ever done the walk knows how grueling it is. Blisters alone are painful, but the average Avon walker can expect to endure multiple layers of blisters building up until his or her entire foot becomes one big blister. It’s disgusting and painful and makes the second day of the walk intense. The organizers know that completion of the walk is extremely difficult without a continuous onslaught of support from spectators and volunteers. That’s why for every walker, they commit to line the entire path with at least five cheerers. On the last leg of the walk, my feet blistered up and shot a pain through my body with each step. Mentally and physically I was ready to quit. My motivation was gone. But then, as we turned the corner, there was a smiling old lady sitting in a wheel chair, wearing a cap to cover her bald head and holding a sign that read, “I’m why you’re walking, Thank you.” Like a bolt of electricity, my whole body reenergized and plowed toward the finish line. Imagine if the only rewards for walking the race were in the beginning when they pumped us up, and at the end when we crossed the finish line? The attrition rates would be horrendous!

Like the Avon walk, student leaders begin the year excited and motivated about the idea of the journey they’re about to start. They might have just attended an award ceremony where the outgoing leaders were showered in praise for the hard work they did throughout the year, which further motivates the incoming leaders. So much support. So much praise. And then, let’s say within a month or so, reality sets in. The real work starts, and the “blisters” of being a leader build up. But unlike the Avon walk, with a motivational checkpoint waiting for you at every street corner, the next motivational checkpoint for student leaders most likely won’t be for another six months, during their outgoing ceremony when they are praised for all the hard work they did throughout the year. Thus, within the first couple months of being a leader, the excitement and motivation fade and the attrition rates go up. It should be noted that some leaders drop off for other reasons, such as class overload, work overload, or personal issues.

What’s a solution look like?

As the advisor, you could make sure to set up a collection of individual checkpoints for your leaders throughout the year, so you make sure they stay excited and motivated. At bare minimum, let’s say you create checkpoints that happen once per week for ten minutes where you praise them for the work they are doing and remind them of the bigger picture of student engagement. Just one leader multiplied out for eight months, that’s just under five hours of your time. Now expand that to 50-300 leaders. If you don’t think you have a life now…

Enter EBL. The goal is still the same, keep the leaders motivated on an ongoing basis so they can survive through the typical student leader burnout, but in EBL, the tactics change. In EBL, you are moving the motivational checkpoints away from you as the admin/advisor and pushing it to the students. EBL builds in a peer-to-peer motivational system that is ongoing and ever present. Now it doesn’t matter if you have 50 or 5000 student leaders. Actually, the more leaders you have, the better.

How does it work?

It’s no secret I’m a fan of Whole Foods (also known as Whole Paycheck). Because there’s a WF on my way home from work, I tend to frequently stop in and grab a few items. Over time, I realized that WF is one of the top five places I visit the most every week, which makes me a pretty darn engaged customer. In fact, WF should probably be rewarding me for being so engaged. Enter FourSquare, Yelp, and SCVNGR. For those unfamiliar with these three sites, they are, simply stated, mobile check-in tools. I can be anywhere in NY and check in that I am there via my mobile phone. Nothing special yet, until you start to receive prizes, titles, and recognition for checking in more often. For a while, I was crowned the Mayor of our WF because I was the most engaged customer. But then my speaking travel schedule picked up and for several months I disappeared and rightfully so, someone else took over as Mayor.

EBL rewards students based on their engagement. The more engagement “points” you score, the more rewards, titles, and recognition you receive. To repeat from above, leadership is not a one-time yearly elected thing, but rather an ongoing, ever-changing position that is rewarded based on engagement.

There certainly is much more to debate and discuss here, but consider this post only a surface-level introduction to the idea. I’m not interested in getting into the weeds just yet, so I purposefully left out many of the operational details. This isn’t a pitch to integrate FourSquare, Yelp, and SCVNGR into student activities, because engagement is more than just being there. Engagement also could mean clicking on a link, reading/commenting on a post, or expressing your opinion at a meeting…etc.

The Value of EBL?

Admin/Advisor – Student Leader attrition rates will drop, which means student leaders will stick around longer and be more active in their clubs. The increased activity will make clubs more successful throughout the year. The admin/advisor also won’t have to do as much individual student leader motivational check-ins.

Student Leaders – Like a video game, the rewards and benefits built into EBL will keep the student leaders motivated throughout the entire year on an ongoing basis. They are going to have more fun because their clubs are more active and engaged. They also won’t feel as much guilt about dropping off the map and letting the club die due to some personal issues they didn’t plan for ahead of time. A new leader with the most engagement points is ready to step up to Mayorship.

Students – They will have a larger group of active clubs to join. After joining they don’t have to rely on a disengaged elected leader to keep the group going. Leadership is open to anyone who wants it and is willing to work for it.

Wrap Up

EBL is a blend of game theory and student engagement theory. Every student affairs professional knows the pains of deadbeat leaders and thus dead groups. EBL is a new paradigm in thinking about leadership. If we want to break out of the normal student engagement levels of 16-40%, we have to think differently. The ideas, tactics, and tech tools we use have to embody this new way of thinking. It’s not just about making paperwork more efficient, that’s just extracting more energy from the resources you already know exists. It’s about exploring new potential energy that is sitting dormant in the 60-84% of the rest of your student body, that’s a massive untapped pool of energy.

I always hope for that perfect storm of aligned experiences when sending a small group of organization representatives to a conference.  In my mind, the students will be empowered with questions and ideas to pursue upon the return home; their energy ignites a new sense of motivation in their group; and they begin to pursue their new definition of the future.

Sound great?

Hasn’t happened for me yet, either.

Sure, our students had some great presentations and excellent experiences but nearly always my student groups struggle to accurately communicate the true picture of what they experienced.  They struggle to not use too many “inside jokes” when describing their time at the conference and nearly always ended up engaged in a conversation about “why can’t we send more people next year?”  Given that our travel funds are not likely to increase anytime in the near future, we needed a new plan.

So, my insanely talented staff member (that’s you, Matt!) says, let’s try blogging.

Our office now requires any students traveling to conferences sponsored by our department to blog each day while they are there.  We create a blogging site for the group’s travels and make each of them the authors. I love the fact that those of us not attending the conference can keep track of their experiences and that we can comment and have dialogue while they are there. We also send the site around to our student affairs colleagues and division leadership so that they can get some insight into student experiences.

This has enabled us to document these travel experiences and now see, in writing, what we already knew about the impact of spending time with other students who are similarly committed to common goals.  As one of our student orientation coordinators posted, “I don’t think I ever got completely used to everyone actually understanding ‘Orientation Speak’ and being able to have in-depth conversations about different aspects of their programs.”

The use of blogs has enabled our students to do more active reflection on these conference experiences and has allowed us to use the sites to help other students understand what the experience might be like the next time around. We get pretty active commentary from participants about what they like and don’t like about the conferences and, when warranted, our structured reflection topics allow for some time for them to pause during a busy conference and make meaning of this experience that the university has offered to them.

For our department, we reported themes communicated in these blogs as part of our annual report in hope of illustrating the impact that off-campus professional travel has on our student leaders.  Themes of increased pride in our university, increased confidence in their own leadership efficacy, and enhanced sense of community with other student leaders certainly made this student affairs professional proud.

If you’d like to take a look at one of them, here’s a link to the blog from our delegates at the National Greek Leadership Association conference in Hartford, CT this year.

http://bscgreeksgotongla.blogspot.com/

And just for fun…check out the Wordle the blog for our Student Orientation Coordinators’ trip to the regional NODA Conference (at the top of this post) and the Wordle for our Program Committee’s travels to the NACA regional conference (2) pasted below.  Looks to me like they had a good experience…and had some fun along the way!

So, how do you facilitate reflection when your students travel? Any interested in blogging?  If you are, let’s correspond and if our students attend the same conferences we can cross-promote their sites!

Part of the semester planning ‘round these parts is to conduct a student leader training for all of our new, incoming club and Student Government (SGA) officers. We talk about things like communication, team building, conflict management, member recruitment and retention…ya know, all the million dollar words in student affairs. Most years, our group of student leaders consists mostly of returners with some newbies thrown in for fun – the returners naturally mentor the newcomers and everything is hunky dory. Last year, we got a group of nearly ALL newbies with only one or two returners interspersed. It was a long, but very rewarding year, and at the end of it, as if they were scripted, they all gushed about how much fun they had and how much they’d learned. They were free with the compliments to the office staff and our advising skills, but they also reflected on how much they didn’t know coming in that just wasn’t covered under the umbrella of million dollar training topics. As student leaders are so apt to do, this particular group pooled all of their genius, sarcasm and new-found expertise, and imparted insight onto us for inclusion into all future upcoming student leader training sessions.

I would now like to share their list with you because 1, it makes me laugh, but 2, because these are little things we, as SA pros, don’t always stop and think about, but could make or break a student leader’s experience.

Top 25 things I wish someone would have told me about being a student leader…

As compiled by the Spring 2010 Burlington County College SGA and Club Officers

1. It is a lot of work, but don’t forget to have a good time!
2. Being a student leader is a large time commitment – it will be worth it in the end. The more you give, the more you get back.
3. You need a lot of dress clothes for meetings and events.
4. There is a lot of paperwork to be done. Be patient with the OSA’s (Office of Student Activities) processes and follow the guidelines.
5. You will meet tons of great people.
6. You are given so many opportunities and rewards – academically, personally and professionally.
7. The advisors are awesome resources and awesome people.  They want to see you succeed. Do not make any of them angry with you.
8. There is a Mt. Holly campus. You will have to go there for events. (one of our smaller locations with very specialized course offerings, but equipped with a beautiful event space)
9. You will get to go to the President’s house for a tree-trimming party. Be prepared to sing Christmas carols.
10. Network and build relationships!  Recruit EVERYONE! “The more the merrier” really applies to being involved with Student Activities and the people you meet will become your friends.
11. You will learn WAY more than you originally thought.
12. Get yourself organized from the get-go. Use your club’s office space to help! The best way to do this is to keep your club space clean!
13. Find a balance between being a student leader and class/family/work/friends/etc…
14. BE CREATIVE and don’t be afraid to try new things.
15. Give yourself way more time to plan things than you think you’ll need – you’ll need it.
16. There are people out there who want to join your club but don’t know about it yet – Tell them!
17. If you have a small club or inactive members, don’t underestimate a good co-sponsorship opportunity. You can’t do it alone – teamwork is imperative!
18. You will grow as a person.
19. Update your bulletin board often!
20. Market your meetings and events in ALL locations, and remember that fliers are not the end-all-be-all of advertising.
21. The OSA is a one-stop-shop for event planning resources.  Don’t take it all on yourself and never be afraid to ask for help!
22. The OSA and SGA offer student leadership development workshops – attend them!
23. Don’t doubt yourself or change your plans because a few people disagree.
24. Check your personal drama at the door.
25. Take the time to reflect on your experiences so you can do it even better the next time around.

Adrianne Dahms is a student activities specialist at Burlington County College, Pemberton, New Jersey.

Wayne State has announced some great news; they are introducing the WSU Marching Band!

"We are excited to announce…debuting this fall…the Wayne State University Warrior Band! This band will play at football games, basketball games, and other university special events.  A director is being hired and plans are getting set!  Many of you have expressed interest and attended information sessions about the band and we thank you. The WSU Warrior Band is open to all WSU students!"

With my sister being a member of marching band all four years of high school as well as many of my former residents being members of the marching band, I have always enjoyed the synchronization and the dedication it takes to be a member of such a huge team. Here are some reasons why:

Creative Way to Stay In Shape

In Drumline (2002), you saw a little bit of the hard work that the members of the band have to go through. I couldn't do it, but it would be an interesting way to lose weight. It must be great to have a whole bunch of people suffering with you.

Taking Pride in Something Bigger than Yourself

I was thinking about the quote that pretty much defined their goal. "ONE BAND, ONE SOUND!" This definitely helps people with skills later in life: working as a team, being selfless. All those things are vital to the success of the band.

Former resident and fellow band members

Building School Spirit

Students become more invested in not only themselves, but the school as a whole. Not to mention, students want to see and support their friends carrying the pigskin and carrying the tuba. It allows students to be even more invested! I took pride in knowing that the drum major was friend from high school.

Friends from high school in rival college bands

Did anyone else do band? Or were they involved in another tight group, i.e. choir, etc.?

Our campus starts fraternity and sorority recruitment next week and I know that many others are also embarking on this unique time of year.  With so much focus on these groups this week, it has turned my thinking to this area and the unique opportunities and challenges that face our students who choose to lead these groups.

Let me put it out there from the start… I am a sorority member myself and am a huge proponent of the benefits of membership.  Membership in that organization definitely made me the leader that I am today and I can attribute a great amount of my personal growht to the opportunities I was given.  Love them or hate them, fraternities and sororities are a part of many of our campuses.

Leadership in these organizations brings about significant and intense experiences for students and I'm thinking recently about what makes them so unique.  These organizations make committments to holistic support of students whether in academic, social, service, leadership or other settings.  I'm thinking that might be the ticket and have something to do with why being a chapter president is such a tough job or why membership decisions are so significant and frought with advising challenges for us.

Membership recruitment (i.e. "formal rush") activities bring a lot of "hooplah" to our campus each year, whether good or bad… there's a lot of hooplah.  There is intensity from current members, prospective new members, administrators, and non-members and everyone has a lot to say.

So, let's hear from the SA blog public…. what do you have to say?

When it comes to goals, we’ve had the S.M.A.R.T. mantra pounded into us.  You know, your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable,  Realistic and Time-based.  It’s a handy rule of thumb when it comes to setting those organizational and personal goals each year.

That’s a useful tool.  But let me offer you another tool. Dream Big.
Set an extraordinary goal, something that’s not “smart.”  Set a goal
that’s a real long shot, something that’s not easily attainable or
realistic.  Companies sometimes call them “BHAGs”– big, hairy audacious goals.

Why would you want to set an impractical goal?  For one simple reason:  big goals are inspiring.

It might be difficult to make that 8 a.m. Organic Chemistry class if
your only goal is to pass.  You might be more inspired to get up early
and study if your goal is to be a great heart surgeon.  Sure, medical
school could be years away from now, and practicing medicine even further way if you plan to specialize in cardiac surgery.

But having that big goal may make the difference between actually getting up and going to class or sleeping in and just barely passing (or flunking).  It helps to be inspired. 

When I was in graduate school, my fellow grad students had an
expression to deal with all the tedious busy work we got assigned:
“anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.”  But when we were
inspired by a big goal, we would come in early and work latedoing all the little things it took to achieve it.   

Come up with that organizational goal that will inspire your
members.  Having that big dream can make the mundane chores seem more
important.  Think of the difference it makes to have a big goal.  Could you get your members to participate in a fund raising car wash if the goal was to take all of the members to see a movie? 

Now, imagine if the goal was to take all of the members to the national convention in New York. 

See the difference a goal makes?  Inspire your members with a big goal.  You just might attain it.