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FAQ’S & RECRUITMENT Question: How do you start a

Chapters bank account?

Answer: For community chapters, go to your bank and open a personal account in the name(s) of your Chapter Organizer(s). You’re going to want to open a business account. You don’t need it. There’s a lot of extra paperwork that goes with a business account, and most likely your chapter won’t be making enough for it to be worth it. Make sure each person whose name is on the account has a debit card attached to the account for any chapter related purchases and deposits/withdrawals.

Answer: In a nod to our Not In Harry’s Name campaign, fair trade chocolate is a good one! “Pretzel wands” (pretzel rods) and cookies always work well too. MuggleNet and Leaky have some great HP-themed recipes, but if you’re not feeling that ambitious, store-bought snacks will be appreciated as well!

Question: What’s an easy snack to bring to a meeting?

Inside this Issue:

Welcome Back to School!

Hello Chapter Organizers! Whether you are the head of a community chapter or a school chapter, the next couple of months are going to be busy with recruitment and the beginning of campaigns. This issue of this newsletter is going to deal with all of your frequently asked questions and recruitment tips from us here on chapters staff as well as you guys! As part of the HPA chapters community, we are all here to help each other and give each other tips. So remember to utilize all of the tips in this newsletter and remembers that there are so many resources available to you on the HPA website and the NING! You can also email any of your questions to chapters@thehpalliance.org!

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Answer: One of the best things to do is to make sure that you always have something planned. It’s great to start a chapter, make a name, and get members, but make sure that you always are in the process of planning or doing something. Keeping your group busy (it can be something fun like planning a Yule Ball or hosting a Quidditch match) will keep people focused will prevent a lull where there’s nothing to do and people drop out due to boredom. Of course, don’t go overboard on such, and understand that members may show up less if personal obligations come up. Sometimes the best way to keep people engaged is to plan a small party just for your chapter or to have a meeting that is just a discussion about Snape or something like that.

Question: How do you keep a chapter together after the “new club” excitement is over?

Question: What can a chapter do with only a few active members?

Hi. My name is Pam, and I have been on the Chapters Team for over two and a half years. I first heard about HPA through The Remus Lupins. I went looking for concert dates and found out they were going to be playing at LeakyCon 2009. I saw that it benefited HPA, so I went to the Web site to learn more. I found out there was no chapter in my area, and I'm from New York City, so not having a chapter was just wrong. I created one, and three years later NYDA is still going. I became a member of chapters staff in 2010 when they created the Prefects.

My favorite part of being on the chapters team is getting to know other chapter organizers. It's great to have people to talk to who are going through the same things with their chapters as I am. I also love hearing about what projects other chapters are working on, and more than once I've mentioned some of them to my chapter so we can do them, too. In my job as Community Chapters Prefect, I've been able to really get to know our community chapters. I'm all about chapter unity. The best resource we have is each other.

Featured Staffer: Pam Harris

I would love to know what your chapter is up to. Feel free to contact me

at pam@thehpalliance.org!

You can still do plenty! With a small group like that it’s easy to find campaigns that you are all interested in and to pursue them. You can still host events and run campaigns, it’ll just take a little bit more work from all of your members. And chapter meetings can be whatever you want them to be! Feel free to work on recruiting more members, but you don’t have to make that your main priority. Whenever you have events, just remember to actively advertise and spread the word as much as you can to get other people to join – and you never know who might end up joining your chapter as a result.

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Question: How do I get people to know about/come to meetings?

Question: How would you describe the HPA in advertising?

Answer: It depends on whom you are advertising to and where you are. Most of the time you can say that the Harry Potter Alliance is a non-profit organization that

uses parallels from the Harry Potter novels to make the world a better place creating a unique kind of social activism that engages youth and communities. As a chapter, you

are representing the HPA in your local communities in both campaigns and

awareness. Chapters are one of the key ways to spread the word about what the

HPA does.

Answer: There is a ton of ways to advertise you meetings! You can always use social media to spread the word, or put up flyers around your community/campus. Libraries and Independent bookstores are a great place for community chapters to organize. Once you have people come, you can keep people coming to your meetings by creating a facebook group to let them know!

Question: How does a chapter register as a non-profit?

Answer: Technically, if you want to be affiliated with the HPA then you shouldn’t be registering as a non-profit. Additionally, non-profit status comes with a lot of paper work and technicalities that are going to be hard to work with. If you need a tax ID number to get meeting space for free or some other reason, you should contact chapters@thehpalliance.org and we can help you out from there!

Question: How do I get people past the “Harry Potter” stigma?

Answer: This can be a huge challenge, but also one that it completely possible to overcome! When I talk about the HPA, I often focus on things we have done first like the money we raised in Helping Haiti Heal and the 87,000 books we have donated, and the Imagine Better Library. It’s a lot more than a “fan club”, which is the main stigma I have encountered. Just by being passionate and sincere, there are going to be a lot of people

who will take you seriously.

Question: How do you put the HPA on a resume?

Answer: You can do exactly that! Remember to mark it as a 501c3 non-profit and use language that puts what you did in a more professional tone. Words such as “led” and “facilitated” and “developed” will go a long way!

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Attention:

Check out the New Chapters Buddies

Program:

The Chapters Team is working on creating a

chapters buddies or pen pals program and you

will be asked to fill out a form in the next couple of

weeks! Questions/Comments should be emailed to

becca@thehpalliance.org!

EqualityFTW in October!

Thanks to our amazing community, the HPA

raised roughly $95,000 (and counting) for

equality initiatives in the next year. One of our first

projects will be essentially a continuation

of the EqualityFTW (in name)! We will let you

know more as we get the details, but your chapter should definitely think

about planning an event in October to go over

voting initiatives in your area!

Recruitment Tips from COs!

We listened as you each gave advice on how to recruit new members! Here they are! Enjoy!

Since we already had our Nerdfighter group, we have a nice group of ready-made members! We have used our facebook page and Nerdfighter notes to find new people and we will just add the fact that we are an HPA chapter to our info and BOOM! recruitment. -Lisa

I find that tabling seems to work best for recruitment. It makes the biggest impact when you can talk to people face to face and they get a sense of what the current members are like. The most important thing though is to have them put down their e-mails so that you can follow up with them! – Janae.

One thing that I've found very successful is advertising at Nerdfighter events or Wizard Rock shows in my area. For example, a couple of months ago, Mark from Mark Does Stuff went on tour and we were able to recruit a few members from that event. Also, I'm usually a walking billboard. I find that if I wear HPA or Nerdfighter shirts, a lot of people comment on them. In fact, I was wearing my Pizza John shirt at the mall last week and ended up meeting a fellow Nerdfighter who is now interested in our chapter. - Beverly

For a community chapter - starting a quidditch team. Firstly, this gives some of our more hesitant members (i.e., lurkers) a way to get to know people in an extremely informal setting. Secondly, it strengthens and grows a core group of members because there's a way for us to meet regularly and create friendship bonds without actually having meetings. And finally, (in answer to the question) once those bonds are formed, other people see that you're having fun and want to join in. At which point you get to give your whole HPA schpeal about fighting the dark arts in our world just like Harry fought them in his, and oh, we also happen to have an event coming up and a bunch of people from the team are gonna be there, so come on down! - L.A. Auror Brigade

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The most important thing for us in attracting members has been doing events and projects. If people can actually see that we are doing something really cool and fun, that seems to make them more willing to join in. - Danielle

We try to be visible on campus in different activities so that people hear about us. We also do a lot of non-traditional advertising like chalk signs. - Stephanie

School fairs and quidditch games are both great ways to introduce the HPA to potential members. Most our members have come from one of those two venues. - Kara

Every time we have any sort of event, we seem to find new people, which is very cool. As a community chapter, we also try to be always on the lookout for public events we can show up to as a chapter (one example was our city's LitFest, where we found new supporters just by walking around and talking to people). Having a booth is obviously helpful, but even just having conversations with people ("What brought you here?" "Blah blah, and you?" "We're here as part of the Harry Potter Alliance. [Insert "sales pitch" here]") can work. - Elizabeth

Letter From the Director

Hey guys!

Another month has come and gone, and the HPA has had a pretty busy summer with WRTV and EqualityFTW! As we head into October, there will be even more going on as the HPA supports Equality initiaves including marriage propositions in Maine, Minnesota, and Washington as well as an education provision in Maryland! Your chapter could host a party to watch the debates or create events about supporting these and other local propositions!

Additionally, I’m really excited to announce that the Chapters team at the HPA will be launching a couple of new and exciting programs that will hopefully giving chapters an opportunity to branch out and be in more communication with each other! That’s all I can tell you for now, but be on the lookout because some amazing stuff will be happening VERY soon!

D.F.T.B.A. :)

-Becca