Competition Is Over

Congratulations on completing your state conference for your CTSO! I am sure your students had tremendous success, and enjoyed attending the conference. Attending a state conference is the absolute best way for you to advertise your organization for next year—the kids that attend fall madly in love with the organization, and become your best members—and your best recruiters—next year. That also means it’s nearing the end of the year for your CTSO.

Maybe, like me, you also have one or more students who were just elected to serve as State Officers for your CTSO. That adds another exciting dimension to your chapter, but does serve the unfortunate purpose of taking those kids off of your Chapter Officer team for next year. It is always bittersweet for me when kids win a place on the state team—I’m thrilled for them, but it does leave a hole in what I considered ideal for next year’s chapter. 

So, you’ve returned from state conference.

You’ve done your social media posts, put it on the announcements and bragged to your administration. Good job.

Now what…

We still have one or more months left in the school year, and we actually have a tremendous amount of work to do to end this year and start next year as strong as possible.

Let’s get to it.

Meetings Continue To The End Of The Year For The CTSO

You can’t ignore the fact that many of your loyal members did NOT attend state conference! Between the cost, the time away from school, and the reticence of some of their parents, many students do not have the opportunity to travel with you. You still need to include them at the end of the CTSO year!

They are still valued and respected members.

They deserve meetings. 

But Who Is Actually In Charge?

Even though it’s the end of the year for your CTSO: Your existing officer team, of course!!

Their term will not end until the new team is installed, so you should task your existing team with building strong and positive meetings right up until the end of school. 

Your organization is full and robust—not just a competitive machine. It is important that you continue to hold regular meetings and activities, including fundraising and community service. Not only will that keep your members engaged all the way up until summer, but it will continue to train your underclass officers who will be running for next year.

You Need New Officers

As we narrow in on the end of spring and the countdown until summer, we absolutely have reached the point in the year when we need to consider exiting our current officer team and installing new officers for next year. 

Who are we electing?

As we’ve discussed in past blogs, I’m a great believer in titles for young adults. I feel like tasking them with specific duties and jobs helps them build their independence and sense of responsibility slowly over time, growing until their culminating senior year. As a result, we elect about eight different officers every year in our FBLA and DECA. In addition to Presidents, each organization has an Executive Vice President who can step in if things go sound. Below them are a bevy of vice presidents with different duties and responsibilities. All of these positions are elected near the end of the school year, and are installed in May so they can begin the important work of preparing us for next year.  

Any room on the Board?

In the fall, both of my organizations do a separate, smaller election to install Underclass Representatives. This serves dual purposes: It gives those who lost their election another chance, and it opens up a minor role on the executive team for new freshmen or sophomores who might be new to school or the organization. This is a great conversation for you to have with those disappointed souls who didn’t secure their spot this spring.

Smooth transition of power

Electing and installing in the spring gives us a very smooth and effortless transition of power in your CTSO to end the year. The outgoing officers know that they are expected to meet with the new officer, passing on anything and everything they can to help make their time in office easier. We do this in two ways: One is to have the outgoing officers write up a notebook for the new officers. The second is to have a larger executive meeting where both the outgoing and incoming team come together to discuss suggestions, strengths and areas of improvement.

Election suggestions

Sometimes, I appoint officers. Not usually, because I want the general membership to choose. But, sometimes, something happens that I need to correct or improve upon, and I appoint. Normally, though, this is how it goes: 

• Test – A good way to determine how committed students are to your organization is to implement a general knowledge test for potential officers. While you can’t “fail out” of the election process, it will give you a good idea how serious they might be about the overall organization, as opposed to just boosting their resume. This counts for 25% of the overall score.
• General election – My least favorite part of elections is the actual general election. This needs to be moderated very carefully, so people don’t vote more than once, or do anything else to disturb the sanctity of the experience. My biggest problem with this part of the process is the “popularity race” often at the heart of the election. That’s why it is only half of the total points to earn a position.
• Interview – My favorite part of the process, the interview gives me and the other people included the opportunity to ask important questions of the candidate. The most important question, in my opinion, is what else they will be involved in and what plans they have put in place for time management. While I use the same rubric for each person, I do tailor questions to the candidate depending on their previous role in the organization. Another 25% of the overall score.
• Very important detail – While I have preached for decades that this “isn’t the Patti Buono show”, the elections kind of are on me. Elections are one of the few places where parents and administrators seem to think they can have an important opinion after the fact. While I have no problem defending the process I use for new officers, I would never want to burden students with those problems. To avoid that completely, I oversee everything related to the elections myself. 

Announcements

Despite it being near the end of the CTSO year, it is more important than ever that you flood the daily announcements with information about your organization. Not only do you want to celebrate your wins at the state conference, but you want to set your new team up to be successful next year. This is a fantastic recruiting period, as current students reflect on their year and consider what organizations they want to become involved in next year. 

Their first meeting

Finally, you need to task your new team with running their first meeting. While it should be short and very positive, it is extremely important, as this will be the first time they face the members as a leader. They need to start building that reputation and rapport with the membership that will lead to continued success next year. 

The “Highlight Reel”

We have a Social Media Vice President, because social media is extremely important and vital to today’s teenagers, and we need to be relevant to them if we are to succeed. The transition job for the incoming and outgoing Social Media Vice President is to create the “highlight reel” of everything that happened this year. This is a great opportunity to reach out to all members to create a fun video—to a popular song, obviously—that can be used this year and well into next year as a way to entice new members and reinvigorate existing members. 

Year ending “banquet”

This doesn’t have to be a sit down dinner banquet—it can be as easy as the final meeting of the year. The salient point is that it needs to be celebratory for outgoing and incoming officers and all members.

• New officer team leads – This celebration meeting should be organized and run by the new officer team. It will help bond them with the membership, and give your graduating seniors a chance to relax and just enjoy this rite of passage.
• Honor outgoing officers – While a small present is great, most graduating seniors are moved by having handwritten notes of appreciation following the long year. Consider having all members sign a card for each outgoing officer.
• Honor competitive event winners – We also need to acknowledge the members who have been successful in competition. While this is not our sole focus as an organization, it is a big part, and needs to be celebrated.
• “Paper Plate” awards – We have the incoming officers give every senior a little award—literally written on a decorated paper plate—that celebrates something about them from the year they spent in the organization. This is where we get the “Most Likely to Become a Millionaire, and Chapter Clown awards.
• Food. Always food. – If this is a celebration, it needs celebration food! Keep it simple so you don’t need forks and knives, but definitely serve food and drink. Even high school seniors love a good Capri Sun!
• Remember your advisers! – It is important that we teach this next generation the importance of gratitude, so encourage them to recognize all of the adults on campus who have been helpful and supportive all year. Have the officers invite them, and make them part of the Paper Plate Awards—they’ll love it!

Your Summer Plan 

You didn’t think the year was actually over, did you?

Awwww….you’re so cute.

Now that school is over, we have hit the best, most fertile ground to build our organization for next year.

Tune in on May 22 for part two in this series—Summer Boot Camp!

THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR!!!

Wow, thank you for reading about the end of the CTSO year!!!

Hey, since you’re here! You may as well check out PART ONE, here, and learn about dressing for success, here! Check out our other topics here! Either way, I appreciate you!

Please leave a COMMENT about any tips you may have!! Or comment what your favorite lesson of mine was! How’s your student organization operating?

Feel free to contact me or leave a COMMENT with anything you would like to hear more about! Or reach out with any unrelated questions, comments, concerns, or random outbursts of excitement by clicking here.

Oh! And don’t forget to check out my video series by CLICKING HERE!!!