Conflict Resolution Strategies

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Glass Class - Chapter Management

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Sample Fundraising Activities

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How to Host a Social

preview

What’s included in this presentation?

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Sample Chapter Constitution and Bylaws

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Chapter 5th of the Month Report

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Setting Chapter Goals

PREVIEW

What does the chapter goals worksheet look like?

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Five Fantastic Fundraising Ideas for Your Chapter

It’s the middle of summer and you are used to sleeping in. You go to bed late. You find yourself flipping through the channels looking for something good to watch. Most of the time you have a lot of free time on your hands, so why not use it wisely? MAKE IT COUNT this summer and use your time to better your local chapter!

DECA members know that just because school is out for summer, that does not mean you should forget about your chapter. Once school starts, everyone, including your advisor, will be swamped with homework, tests, and various other activities. So use this time to get together with your DECA members, officers, and advisors to begin planning ahead of time so you can start the DECA year right! If you don’t know where to begin, don’t worry! Here are 5 effective and easy fundraising ideas to help you get started!

1. “DECA Night” at Local Restaurants

Many restaurants are willing to donate a part of their profits of a selected day to a desired organization if you book them in advanced! Simply go to the restaurant, ask to talk to a manager and book them for “DECA Night”. Make sure to spread the word to ensure that there are many people present!

2. Car Washes

This is an extremely easy and fun way to raise funds! All that’s needed is a sunny day, water, soap, and customers! Gather your chapter, select a high traffic street, and make plenty of signs. Next, wait for customers to show up to your car wash!

3. Yard Sales

Everyone knows that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure! Get rid of the things around your house that you are no longer using (but are in good condition) and have a yard sale! This can include antiques, books, and electronics. Your entire chapter will have a great number of quality things that different people will be interested in buying.

4. BBQ Plates

Make BBQ plates (or find a local restaurant to make them for you) and sell them for a profit. Many people enjoy BBQ plates and not having to cook or eat fast food every once in a while. It’s easy and brings in a lot of profit!

5. DECA Fashion Show

This is a unique way to fundraise and gets many people involved! Many different stores such as Sears, Kohl’s, and Cavender’s, are willing to lend their clothes out for a day so that you can use at your chapter’s fashion show. Have tryouts to find your models, although, many can be your very own DECA members! Lastly, sell tickets, have a great MC, and play fun, upbeat music!

Make sure to promote these fundraisers the right way! Use social media, flyers, and local newspapers to spread the word! Also, don’t forget to let Texas DECA know about your fundraisers. We want to know what our members are up to! Good luck fundraising!

BY VETERANS MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL

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Three Ways to Get your DECA Chapter in the Holiday Spirit

What better way is there to spend the holiday season than with your DECA chapter? December opens up a multitude of opportunities for your chapter to either grow together as a group, outreach to the community, or host fundraisers to earn money for upcoming competitions! Here are a few ideas from the Magnolia West DECA chapter for your DECA chapter to do as well!

DECA Team Bonding

Competitions are coming up, so use the time between now and competition to build up your DECA chapter! One of the traditions we have at Magnolia West is having a big movie night at someone’s house, where we eat food, watch tons of movies, and just get to know each other better! This is an even better event to do during December because it is chilly outside, and you can enjoy blankets, hot chocolate, and movies with your other chapter members!

Community Outreach

The holiday season opens up a multitude of different opportunities to help out the community around you, and doing this with your DECA chapter is also a great way to build friendships! Start a food drive, a toy drive, a clothing drive, adopt a family to buy Christmas gifts for, package food for families, package and hand out snowman soup to holiday workers, the possibilities are endless!

Fundraisers

Competitions are coming up quickly and you need to make sure your chapter has enough funds to send everyone to competition!  In the past, we’ve hosted movie nights.

The holiday seasons are awesome, make sure you utilize all the opportunities you have to grow as a chapter!

BY: MERRITT COLEMAN

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Fun Fall Fundraising

Does your chapter need some extra funding to do more activities together while in Dallas for State CDC? If so, here are a few fall fundraising ideas to help you get a head start!

Set up a booth at a local fall festival! If your town hosts a fall festival, see if your chapter can rent some booths to make some easy money. At the booths, you can sell fall-themed treats, have fun games, or even hold a photo booth, and at each of the activities you can charge a dollar or two.

There is nothing more enticing than some sweet treats! Some bite-sized, fall themed treats that you could sell at your booth may include, candy apples, bags of popcorn wrapped in green tissue paper made to look like ears of corn, or even harvest hash chex mix. All of these options are yummy snacks that have shown to be successful sellers!  

Thinking about going the game route for your booth? One idea is a fun family friendly game named “The Trick-or-Treat Wheel”. This game requires two bowls, one bowl labeled “Trick” (which will have easy challenges written on slips of paper), the other labeled “Treat” (which will be filled with candy). If the player lands on treat they receive a piece candy. But, If they land on trick, they will have to pick their challenge; if they complete the task correctly and entirely, they’ll get a piece of candy too!

Lastly, a photo booth is a super fun way to attract a crowd, and it is so simple to set up! To set up the booth, all you need to do is design a backdrop; hang fall garlands, add a leaf or two, and have some props that you can either buy, make, or get donated, and watch the participants do the rest! With a photo booth you’ll be the talk of the festival

If your town doesn’t have a fall festival, then you can always make and sell items, Homecoming is around the corner and your chapter could make mums and garters; your chapter could also make and sell fall themed deco mesh wreaths (these are fast, easy, and fun to make with your chapter) Lastly you can always host a pumpkin carving contest where participants purchase the pumpkin from you and at the event they compete with others to carve the best pumpkin- and the winner would get a prize! The opportunities are endless when it comes to fundraising. Now it's your turn to go out and put the fun in fundraising!

BY: ALEXIS WESTERN

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5 Easy Ways to Fundraise for your Chapter

Do you want to go somewhere fun while in Dallas for State CDC or do you want to do extra activities while in Orlando for ICDC? If so, you might need some extra money for your chapter and one way to do all of the extra activities is to fundraise. Here are five easy and effective ways to fundraise for your chapter.

1. Movie Night - Organize a viewing of a movie that everyone can enjoy either at your school in the gym, where your school’s theater department performs, or you can team up with a local cinema and get a discounted rate for your students. If your chapter hosts this event at the school your chapter can also run the concession stand to sell candy, drinks, and popcorn.

2. Teacher Challenge - Would you enjoy throwing a pie at your favorite teacher’s face? What about taping them to a wall? With this event ask some teachers, or even the principal, if they would be willing to help your chapter raise money and charge students one dollar for a pie or a strip of tape.

3. Dress Up Days - Do you enjoy wearing your PJs or hat? Well if so ask to host days where students can pay a dollar to wear PJs or their hats at school. Also, this event is very fun in December because your chapter can change it into an ugly Christmas sweater or hat contest.

4. Candy Grams - Want to send your friend some candy and a message? You can charge students a small fee to send out a personalized note and a piece of candy to one of their friends. Students can send as many candy grams as they want. Even teachers can join in on the fundraiser by sending grams to their students or fellow teachers. Also, this activity can be customized to fit holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

5. DECA Donuts - Who doesn’t like a good sugar packed donut to start their day off? Go to your local donut shop and tell them what you are doing and ask if there is any way that you could purchase in the donuts in bulk at a lower rate. Then have your chapter set up a table in the front of the school and sell donuts to students as they walk in, charging them about a dollar per donut.

BY: ALEXIS WESTERN

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How To Make A Great Bulletin Board

Do you have an empty bulletin board in your school? Well if you do, fill it with the latest DECA news! Using a bulletin board will benefit you chapter by drawing more attention towards DECA. Here is how to make an awesome bulletin board to grab everyone’s attention.

Creating a bulletin board can be a lot of fun, but don’t forget the two main components! First, it needs to be, eye-catching; An eye-catching bulletin board will spark interest in every individual. Bulletin boards are a marketing technique that introduce new concepts in an exciting way. These displays appeal to the visual side of learning, they spark curiosity that will cause students to more likely to pay attention to the information being relayed. To begin creating a great bulletin board, start by getting butcher art paper for your background. I suggest white, blue, black, or red. Then get unique with how you choose to decorate the board, as well as what important information you want to get out to your school.

To make the board “eye-catching”, put photos of your chapter having fun time at conferences or at meetings, a shape made out of bulletin board paper, or have large letters that say the bullet points about DECA such as, traveling, competitions, and or business.

When arranging the photos, make them into shapes: the DECA diamond or spell out DECA. When deciding what information to put on your bulletin board keep it sweet and simple. You could put the date and time your chapter’s next meeting is, the location of our district, state, and international conferences, as well as where and who to talk to if someone is interested in joining DECA.

BY: ALEXIS WESTERN

How to Make Your Mock Conference a Success

As we all know, conference season doesn’t start until January – but that’s no excuse to put off practicing your events in a competitive environment! Chapters that host mock conferences often do better at ICDC (looking at you, Ontario) and have members who end up more prepared for the business world. The benefits of mock conferences can’t be overstated, so we’ve come up with 3 steps to help your chapter host one:

1. Plan out a date and location ahead of time.

This sounds obvious, but many times a conference has failed because officers didn’t coordinate a place and time for the practice proactively. A common misconception that prevents many chapters from hosting practices is that the conference needs to be as formal as a District CDC, when in reality the cafeteria works just fine! Dates for conferences should be announced at least 4 weeks ahead of time and confirmed with school administration. This way, the few hours of commitment on a weekend can be scheduled off for members, and scheduling conflicts can be avoided.

2. Find volunteer judges.

Judges don’t need to be business professionals – parents, teachers, and even upperclassmen with experience in competitive events are perfectly valid judges for a mock conference. Most parents and teachers are more than willing to help out, but it’s always a good idea to do something nice (i.e. buying coffee or providing snacks) for volunteers. Again, make sure to ask for judges ahead of time to make sure that there will be enough to judge all of the necessary events.

3. Make sure competitors are familiar with their events before the conference.

Although a mock conference is a great place for competitors to get accustomed to a competitive environment, it’s not the time for members to be familiarizing themselves with their events for the first time. At the general chapter meeting leading up to the conference, encourage members to check this to go over their event guidelines and performance indicators.

Bonus: Set up meetings to go over feedback forms.

After your judges have filled out an evaluation form, members might not know how to interpret their scores or improve in certain areas. Officers and upperclassmen can be put in charge of competitive clusters based on their experience in competitive events and go over evaluation sheets with members after the mock conference. This way, your members will know how to improve their performance before the next conference.

BY: EMILY GAO

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How to Manage a DECA Social Media Account

When it comes to marketing and branding, the importance of social media simply cannot be ignored. The possibilities of how to reach your target audience are endless, and in today’s era, media is the key to being effective and efficient in your marketing strategy. Now that we recognized the importance of social media, running a DECA social media page can be broken down in three simple steps!
 

1) IDENTIFY YOUR GOALS AND AUDIENCE

Identifying your goals on social media is extremely important when you are trying to develop a personal, chapter, district, or even association social media page. Establishing a goal allows for a reference to track your monthly progress, and it helps to give you a purpose when developing each month’s material.

Setting your target audience is also a crucial aspect in this process.  This allows you to personalize material each month to the trending interests of specific individuals; therefore increasing engagement numbers. The key to a successful social media page is keeping up with the latest tips and trends, so your page sparks an interest in whoever you are hoping to reach. By being relevant, you better your chances of a like, share or retweet.  Recognizing what material works also increases your page efficiency, therefore eliminating wasted time publishing unsuccessful material.

TIP: People like to stay updated and in the loop, but that can sometimes be very hard to do, while still being engaging, so to make it easier fill your social media page with things that are made to update and inform in a creative format such as infographics, images or even video!

2) MONITOR AND MEASURE WHAT MATTERS

Social media is competitive and saturated, so it is essential for you to test and track your results in order to identify the most effective strategies against your competition– which is why social media analytics are so important. By using analytical tools such as Hootsuite, Google analytics, DrumUp to name a few, it allows you to track engagement numbers and isolate what material works for your page so you can continue with it. 

Some key things to track on your social media page: Likes, shares, retweets, engagement levels, how often you post, and lastly follower responses (tags/comments) The purpose of your social media page is to promote your brand and share it with as many people as possible in hopes they find it engaging, so by tracking the success of each article or post, you are getting direct feedback from your target audience so you can make adjustments accordingly.

As a page, it should always be a priority to increase follower engagement. One way to increase the involvement and followers is to personalize the page a little bit. Establishing more of a family environment allows your followers to feel a little more comfortable and like they belong when you go that extra mile to personalize the account.

Reminder: Don’t forget each form of social media attracts a different audience! So be diligent and do your research on where the majority of your target market is located (The NewsCred infographic located below is a great resource for demographics on each application.) Because of this, do not  be disappointed if success on one account receives more or less traffic/engagement than any of the others. However, do not let this information stop you from expanding your network onto another account.  It is always beneficial to be present on all forms of social media.

3) HAVE FUN!

Your followers should always be a priority, but if you are not happy with the material you are posting, the truth is your audience probably is not satisfied either. Do not overwhelm your followers with repetitive and lengthy information. BE CREATIVE and remain consistent on all accounts! This is your opportunity to express what your business, organization, or your personal brand is all about! Relatable gifs, images, infographics, and pictures can be a great addition to your posts!

By implementing these three tips on your DECA social media page, one can almost guarantee your engagement and page awareness will increase!  Social media is an ongoing and strenuous task that requires a lot of research, documentation, and preparation but do not let that scare you out of pursuing a better media presence. The more effort you put forth, the larger the reward.

BY: MADELYNE ONSTOTT

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How to Increase Membership

1. Reach out to students in marketing or business classes! Invite these potential members by having your officers speak about the benefits of being a member, or deliver a letter to each of the eligible students with reasons why they’d love to join. The time spent to do these show those students that they are valued. Generally, students enrolled in business or marketing classes will have a greater inclination to join DECA because their curriculum and projects may work well together.

2. Promote on social media! Share on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and any other social media platform the perks of joining DECA. It’s even better to have your officers post on their personal pages, because it may be likely that the people following your chapter’s DECA page are already members. (Bonus Tip! Take advantage of DECA’s Geofilter Library, use them at your school.)

3. Did someone say freshmen? At many schools, there are “club nights” or “freshman orientation” where every student organization is encouraged to set up a booth and share information on what they do. It’s important that you make a great, lasting impression by being the loudest, proudest, and most exciting booth. Think about handing out flyers, making a poster, and giving out candy!

4. Share your DECA story. If people hear how great of an impact your DECA experience has had on you, they’ll be compelled to join and be involved. It’s as simple as sharing how you learned about DECA or insight on the competitive events or anything else you find meaningful.

5. Advertise and market yourself! Create flyers, banners, giveaways – really anything – that will increase your chapter’s exposure around school. The more people read, hear, and know about DECA, the more likely they will consider joining. However, it’s good to keep in mind that your promotion materials should brand DECA appropriately and professionally.

6. Set specific goals! Your Chapter Officer Team should get together to set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Agreed Upon, Realistic, and Time-based) and determine the best way to achieve those goals. Discuss the number of members you hope to achieve, how you will get their attention, and what will captivate your target audiences.

7. Find ways to engage and challenge members! One idea is to create a competition for who can recruit the most members, and have members submit ideas for parties and reward the best one. Creating more opportunities for members to practice leadership will attract members who are looking for a club to invest in. For instance, social groups can be a great way for members to help officers with group activities and get involved.

8. Recruit professionals and alumni! These types of members are underrepresented on a statewide standpoint. Try hosting a parent night which can serve to inform parents about DECA and give you the opportunity to network with community leaders. Or maybe host a presentation for the school board about what DECA is and what it can do for students. It will give faculty and counselors insight as to why it would be a beneficial program for students looking to get involved. Another tip is to try getting your own chapter officers to interact with old members to make sure they’re coming back. Even if they were ghost members, encourage them to participate! It means more when an officer is trying to recruit you compared to an advisor. We ❤ our elders (and advisors)!

BY: EMILY NGUYEN, JESSICA GALLARDO, KAITLYN SMITH

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Benefits of Increasing Your Chapter's Membership

For many of us, school has just begun and the craze to increase chapter membership has likewise kicked into high gear. DECA membership ranges from competitive, noncompetitive, and alumni though all are beneficial to a DECA chapter in their respective rights. However, it's important to remember why exactly we strive to achieve higher membership numbers in the first place. Remember that while it's still great to increase membership, we must still create interpersonal connections with all members and ensure they are all included in the DECA chapter's activities instead of merely getting lost in the busyness of school life and DECA craziness.

One of the greatest benefits of increasing chapter membership is gaining a unique perspectives on issues and increasing the pool size for potential ideas. By increasing the number of people, each with their own individual viewpoints and thoughts, we can gain an insight into how we can approach situations differently and/or gain new, original ideas of what we can do that would have otherwise been lacking.

Another advantage to increased membership is having more people to network with each other throughout the year. With the addition of new members to a DECA chapter, we can network with and meet more people than we would have been able to otherwise in a smaller chapters. As we are preparing students for life after high school with interpersonal and speaking skills, the opportunity to meet even more new people would be a great asset to those in your DECA chapter.

Finally, increased membership can greatly benefit your DECA chapter by increasing your capabilities for chapter campaigns over the year. A larger number of people in your chapter would allow you to have more members of all types utilizable for when your chapter needs as many helpers as possible. Therefore, the potential of your DECA chapter can increase greatly because of the new scope to utilize the increased number of members and their respective skills.

BY: MICHAEL NGUYEN

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