Chapter ideas that work dots

If you have some ideas of your own that you would like to share please email them to alumni@unlalum.nebraska.edu

Kansas Chapters. . .
Kansas Chapters Work Together to Coordinate Speaker Sean Callahan

NE KS 4 Nebraska (Topeka, KS) and Kansas Cornhuskers (Wichita, Kansas) have been working together on events for some time now. Having Sean Callahan of Huskers Illustrated come to speak has been an event that many alums and fans have thoroughly enjoyed.  For our programs, he has shown a DVD of the new recruiting class and given a spring game overview.  We are planning to expand this to Manhattan this year. Sean will start his visit at noon on Friday, May 2, 2008, in Topeka, then travel to Wichita for an evening presentation. The next morning he will give one more presentation for the Manhattan, KS folks before returning home.

We thought that other chapters clustered together in a close proximity would like to work together like we have here in Kansas to host Sean. For example the chapters in Dallas, Austin, and Houston could work to have Sean come and visit.  We work together to pay his expenses for the trip.

 For more information about this post, contact Gary McGirr - grm@srskansas.org.

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Fox Valley Huskers . . .
The Fox Valley Huskers is a mid-sized club.  We typically have 20-30 members come to our TV Watch parties. To our amazement, we had 60 come for the Nevada game over Labor Day weekend.  We have been in existence for just over 10 years. We are steadily growing--and here is what we found to really help out:

  • We moved to a local sports bar that has a separate, enclosed room--where we can yell, play music and enjoy the game in a smoke-free environment that is quite family friendly.  We often have pre-school age kids in attendance.  Sometimes we'll call on one of the four-year-olds to help with our half-time drawings for Husker prizes.
  • Leadership is the major reason for success--and we have several dedicated leaders who have great ideas, plan and carry out various functions, including the TV Watch parties, Husker gatherings at minor league baseball games and a golf outing.  This is so crucial to our success.  Often I receive emails from Husker fans in Milwaukee, WI--some 100 miles away--wondering where they can join other fans to watch football games.  Once they had a chapter--but it has folded, and I believe that had much to do with inactive leadership.
  • This year we moved our web site to its own domain at www.fvhuskers.com and I have been amazed at how many more people in Wisconsin have found us (eg, Google searches) and have joined this season.  That and word-of-mouth are our best recruiting tools.  I am the web master and use a hosting service (Fatcow) that makes it very easy to send an email that automatically gets distributed to about 120 email addresses at once.  Communications is key--and since most people have email, it is simple to stay in touch with them.
  • We get to know each other in many ways--such as:
    • Pictures are taken of every new member
    • We have a picture video of them on our web site--and sometimes that video is shown on the TV projection screen just before kickoff
    • At TV Watch parties we have a Nebraska map where members can place a pin on the town they hail from
    • We have a photo album available for viewing at each game
    • We recognize new members at half-time of each TV Watch party
    • During our half-time program we sometimes ask a member to tell us who they are and where they are from
    • We have a Nebraska trivia contest at half-time and we recognize the winner by name (and a Husker prize)
    • One of our leaders interviews members and we publish a member profile with their picture in a secure location on our web site
    • We produce a weekly email newsletter called Husker Happenings--and on occasion we recognize a member and sometimes include their picture within that email

We have only one concern now--that of outgrowing our current sports bar location.  Ha!  We'll be OK for a while--and we have a great spot with super support from the owners.  Still, our leaders keep an eye out for new alternatives should be outgrow our maximum seating capacity of about 60 fans.

For more information about this post contact Larry Peterson - president@fvhuskers.com