Brookes Union heretohelpyou bulletin Oct

Help Us to Help Students Here to Help You... Campaign Update October 2013

brookesunion.org.uk/HERETOHELPYOU

#HERETOHELPYOU @BROOKESUNION brookesunion.org.uk/HERETOHELPYOU Activity Update: October 2013

Brookes Union

As you may know, Oxford Brookes Students’ Union is now ‘Brookes Union’. Along with this new name, we have a new brand identity that we launched after a period of extensive student consultation.

With this new brand identity we have a new campaign: the “here to help you…” campaign.

The foundation for this campaign dates all the way back to 1921, when we had our first recorded Student Council meeting. The meeting was set up to establish the purpose and ethos of the Students’ Union.

Although we’ve undergone significant change since then, our core ethos is still the same.

We are here to help every student love their time at Brookes.

We seek to do this for each individual student, in whatever way we can. It’s more important than ever for us to reinforce the message of why we are here: we are here to help.

Our role in students’ lives

experience to its volunteers. 1 in 4 Brookes students are involved in the 67 societies that we support. We pay for running costs, provide space to meet and create a structure for them to recruit new members, amongst many other things.

Brookes Union: Here to Help Students…

As a service provider As a not-for-profit organisation, it’s vital that we spend our money wisely, to ensure that for every penny that comes in, we can give students as much back as possible. In order to do this, we focus on specialist services that we know we can deliver with excellence.

For example, the one-to-one support that Brookes Union Advice staff deliver to thousands of students on an annual basis. Last year alone they helped recover over £60,000 from Student Finance England for students struggling financially. The Brookes Union Safety Bus that helps students get home safely every night, and gives valuable

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Brookes Union: Here to Help Students…

As a facilitator There are things that students want, that we’re not best placed to deliver. Trying to do these ourselves would not be a wise way to spend Union funds.

Therefore, in these instances, we’re here to help make it happen by striking deals with partners who can do it better than us – Like the new O2 Academy partnership that has already seen 8000 discount cards being distributed to students, offering discounted entry deals and Brookes-only priority tickets to see live music.

#HERETOHELPYOU @BROOKESUNION brookesunion.org.uk/HERETOHELPYOU Activity Update: October 2013

The Campaign’s Aims 1. Raise student and staff awareness of who we are, what we do and why it matters.

2. To allow students to make the most of their membership with the Union (which every student automatically receives). To fully benefit students need to engage with us and our services, and for that to happen people need to know about everything we’re doing, and just how important it really is.

HERE TO HELP YOU... ‘Help Squad’

3. Improved awareness will help increase the Union’s ability to help students. We are a self-sustaining organisation, which means the more students interact with the Union, the more we can generate and reinvest, both in terms of money and ideas.

Please help us to help students It’s so important that every student at Brookes understands the role of the Union. As the ‘here to help you…’ campaign moves forward, we will do our very best to ensure the message is far reaching.

However, we would like to ask you, as staff at the University, for your help in the following: •

Helping to communicate the purpose of the Union’s role, as described on page 2.

•

Telling students that we are here to help them, and that they only have to ask. They can contact us at any time, day or night through our social media channels or website and they can fill in a form on the campaign website: www.brookesunion.org.uk/heretohelpyou

•

If you are student-facing staff, we would really like you to keep a small stack of our business cards, in the event that students ask about the Union, or even display our “here to help you” powerpoint slide.

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HERE TO HELP YOU...

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#HERETOHELPYOU @BROOKESUNION brookesunion.org.uk/HERETOHELPYOU Activity Update: October 2013 NSS Scores A key part of giving students what they need is by reacting to feedback. We recognise that we have been scoring low marks for student satisfaction in the National Student Survey (NSS), and perhaps this is a combination of us not communicating thoroughly enough how we can help people, or how we’ve helped others in the past. It could also be that we’re not getting ‘out there’ enough to hear how we can help more.

If students are continually told their Union is no good for student satisfaction they will not be willing to give us a chance. We want students to give us a chance - We are already doing great things for students; and there are even more students who we can help love their time at Brookes.

We’re committed to getting the message out: The Promotional Team A group of students have been employed as our promotions team for this campaign, selected because they are friendly, work well as a team and have good communication skills.

It’s important that we take a peer-to-peer approach to deliver this campaign, so employing these students is not only beneficial to their personal development, but also the wider campaign.

While out promoting the campaign the team will be wearing their bright orange hoodies. Please help them to do a good job by giving them the freedom to talk to students.

Many thanks for your support, Joel Holmes President, Brookes Union

We encourage you to go online to understand what we’re doing: www.brookesunion.org.uk/heretohelpyou -4-

HERE TO HELP YOU...

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