These 10 steps have been prepared to help you organize and
manage the enormous task of starting a new AMSA chapter at your
school. Starting a new and successful AMSA chapter is indeed
a difficult task, but is an extremely rewarding task, too. Again,
remember to have all of the required paperwork in by the petition deadline, or the reward for your efforts to start a new chapter will have to wait one more year.
The bullets for these steps have been set as check boxes
so that you can check off each task as it is completed. Hopefully
you will have checked off all of these tasks before the school
year is out. Good luck!
1. Call
the AMSA National Office: 1-800-767-2266
Join AMSA over the phone (if you have not already joined)
Ask to be listed as the chapter
president for the chapter at your school (you can always
change this later if necessary)
Order FREE Recruitment Materials to recruit others
at your school to join AMSA (applications, copies of The New
Physician magazine, membership benefits info)
Review information on all of the AMSA
benefits (students will ask you about them, and you'll need
to be able to answer their questions)
Review all of the information in the Chapter Officer Resource pages,
especially the online Chapter Officer Survival Guide
3. Talk with your advisor
Get your advisor to support what you are doing. If
you ever get to the point where your advisor starts
telling other students that they need to join AMSA, then your
chapter will be in very good shape for a very long time.
4. Contact
your school's office of student activities
Different schools have different rules and regulations with regards
to starting a new organization. Be sure to work within your school's
guidelines, and use your office of student activities as a resource.
They're sure to be able to give you the scoop on how to set up
a bank account at your school, how to reserve rooms at your school,
what type of activities work well at your school, etc.
5. Recruit
your friends or peers to become officers
There is a lot involved in starting a chapter, and it doesn't
hurt to have some help. Contact your advisor and see
if he/she knows of any motivated students who may be interested
in helping you out. Try to have at least a core group of officers:
President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary. Other potential
officers include Community Service Chair, Publicity Chair, Special
Projects Chair, Administrative Director, Recruitment Coordinator,
Legislative Affairs Representative, Webmaster and more.
6. Plan your first meeting
This meeting should be an organizational and recruitment
meeting. At this meeting you should:
Show the recruitment video
Pass out applications for local and national membership
Pass out AMSA recruitment materials
Have your advisor on hand if possible, and have him/her
say a few words about why joining your organization is a good
idea
Try to have food at your first meeting to encourage people to attend!
Be sure to widely publicize your 1st meeting!
Post flyers all over campus (don't forget to put one in your advisor's office!)
Visit classes where you know there are a lot of students and announce your meeting to the class
Give meeting announcements on to teachers of classes
with lots of students and ask them promote your meeting at the beginning of their classes
Get a list of all students at your school from your
advisor, and send a personal invitation to them in the mail
7. Raise
money for your organization
Select an amount that you want to charge for local dues. This
varies from chapter to chapter (from $0 per year to about $50
per year). Consider offering the option of joining for 4 years
at a discounted price (at 2.5-3.5 times the cost of a 1-year
membership). Offering the 4-year option may help you raise a
lot of funds early, and it may help you get money that you might
not have received in the future anyway.
Send letters to anyone you think might be interested in sponsoring your chapter. Many chapters have been successful with local hospitals, local health stores, area restaurants, etc. This is an easy fund raiser to do and can reap huge rewards.
Visit your school's alumni office and get a list of MDs that
graduated from your school. Send letters to all of them and ask
them for a small donation to help those who are following in
their footsteps. Even if you only get 5% of the people to respond,
you can still make a ton of money! (And while you're at it, ask
them if they'd like to volunteer to allow your members to shadow
them while at work.)
Premedical Chapters
We are proud to present a new national partnership with Kaplan Test Prep. Kaplan is a leader in MCAT review and AMSA has partnered with them to give our members great discounts and our chapters with tools to become even more successful. Not only will members receive a $200 off stackable discount, but AMSA chapters receive 2 Kaplan MCAT Review Courses to auction off to members (and
generate chapter revenue with) as well as 1 FREE MCAT Course to be used solely by a Chapter
Officer on the Executive Board. (Or, if you have two officers taking MCATs this year, you both
receive 50% off. Three officers, 33%....get the picture?). In addition, Kaplan has committed to
expanding the local partnership on campus by holding admissions, personal statement, interview
and MCAT practice test workshops for AMSA chapters. Need more information? Click here.
8. Plan projects to get people involved
People will be most interested in health related projects!
(this helps you define a niche for your organization at your
school)
Contact your local Red Cross and United Way…they're certain
to help you find good projects that specifically address health
issues
Do special projects at area hospitals: cards for elderly, toy
drive for children, etc.
Download materials from the AMSA Resource Center: STATS (Students Teaching AIDS to Students).
This manual will tell you all you need to know to set up a successful
health-related project that really helps the community.
Apply for grants! AMSA offers grants of up to $400 for medical chapters and up to $200 per project
for premedical chapters. Get more details on Local Project Grants. Grants are awarded in
three cycles; deadlines each year are August 20, October 20 and
January 20. You MUST complete the three requirements for chartering
as described previously in order to be eligible.
Premedical Chapters
Mentorship Program-contact
the national office and get the contact information for the
chapter officers at the medical school chapter(s) nearest you.
Try to set up a mentorship program between the premedical students
and the medical students…this is NOT hard to do. At most
schools, so many medical students are willing to help that some
of them need to be turned away. Match up people by some common
interest: hometown, undergrad major or medical specialty interest.
9. Plan Meetings
Be sure to have at least one to announce at your big
recruitment meeting
Most chapters have meetings once every two-four weeks and
they try to focus on a particular issue at each meeting. You
can bring in a speaker, have a panel, hold a workshop, etc. Some
popular topics are:
Various aspects of the admissions process
Paying for medical school
Going to medical school for free (National Health Service
Corps, Military)
Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Medical Ethics
Managed Care
Primary vs. Specialty Care
Life in Medical School
Joint Degree Programs
Alternate Health Careers
And much, much more! For more meeting or project ideas, visit
AMSA's Web site and read information on AMSA's Action Committees.
10. Attend the AMSA National Convention
If you are successful at only one thing this year, let it
be this: get people to go to the national convention. Why? There
are three very important reasons:
It's a ton of fun! - You will spend five days attending awesome programming sessions, participating in amazing workshops, hearing outstanding speakers, meeting wonderful students and having a
great time out on the town. Be sure to keep an eye on the AMSA
Web site for details of programming at this year's convention. You don't want to miss it!
You'll want to be there when your chapter's petition to charter is reviewed and hopefully approved at the national convention…it's a big moment for your chapter! Also, if any questions arise concerning your chapter and you are not there to answer those questions, your petition may be postponed until the next convention.
It will have lasting effects for your chapter. You and your friends will go back to your chapter filled with ideas for making
your chapter successful and motivation for getting the job done. For example, one of our largest chapters, Vanderbilt University,
was a very weak chapter until they began sending people to convention a few years ago. Now, as a result of sending people to convention every year, they are extremely active and are setting an example for others.
