How to hand a club’s contact list to next year’s executive

Most clubs do not lose their list on purpose. It lives wherever the person who built it happened to work: a sheet in their personal Drive, the contacts in their phone, a form linked to their university account. When they graduate, the list goes with them, and next year’s outreach lead starts again from the group chat.

Student unions expect the list to survive. UBC’s AMS asks every club at its yearly renewal for an “Up to date Membership List (including student numbers)”, alongside new executives’ contact information, and its calendar marks April as the “End of Term & Transition Period” (AMS Clubs Handbook). Other unions have their own rules, so check yours. Either way, the list has to be somewhere the next executive can open.

Create one Google account for the club, such as a club email address, and keep the club’s files there. Some student unions provide these: the AMS says it “can also offer Google Workspace accounts” to clubs (AMS Clubs Handbook). Ask your union before you make your own.

If your club has Google Workspace, a shared drive is better still. In a shared drive “the team” owns the files, not the individual who created them, and files stay when a member’s account is deleted (Google Workspace).

• ·Two people hold the password. Usually the president and one other executive, so the account never depends on one person.
• ·Recovery details belong to a role. Set the recovery phone and email to the current president, and change them at every handover.
• ·Change the password at handover. Outgoing executives keep no access they no longer need.

Sharing a file with the club account is not enough. The file still belongs to you, and if your account goes, it can go too. Transfer ownership instead: in Google Drive, share the file with the club account, open Share again, and choose Transfer ownership next to the club account’s name. The club account gets an email and has to accept, and after that you become an editor (Google Drive Help).

Many club contact lists are really one executive’s phone contacts. Move them into a single list the club owns, with one row per member. If they are in Google Contacts, you can export them as a Google CSV file from the Export option under More actions (Google Contacts Help), then paste them into the club’s sheet.

Keep the columns short:

• ·Name, and phone number in international format (+1 604 …)
• ·Email, and student number if your union asks for it
• ·When they joined, and how (clubs fair, sign-up form, event)
• ·Graduating year, so next year’s executive knows who to check with

If you track event replies in the same file, the column layout in how to track RSVPs in a Google Sheet fits alongside it. Before you leave any WhatsApp group or community, make the incoming executives admins of it.

The new executive’s first question is always “where is it?”. Answer it once, in a document stored in the club account. List every account, file, group chat and deadline, who holds access, and what is half-finished. The template below is a starting point.

A contact list is personal information that members gave the club for a reason. Treat handover as the yearly clean-up. This is general guidance, not legal advice; your student union and university may have their own rules, so check them.

• ·Keep only the fields you use. If nobody needs birthdays or home addresses, delete the columns.
• ·Keep only people who joined.Everyone on the list should have signed up, not been added from a class list or another club’s chat.
• ·Remove people who asked. That includes graduated members who asked to leave the list. Ask the rest whether they want alumni updates.
• ·Share it inside the executive only. Do not forward the list to sponsors or other clubs.
• ·Clean up the copies.Delete old exports from your laptop, phone and downloads once the club’s copy is confirmed.

Avently keeps each event’s guest list in a Google Sheet in the Drive of the Google account the host connects to Avently. If an executive signs up with their personal account, those lists sit in their personal Drive and leave with them. Avently does not move or transfer ownership of sheets. So sign up with the club’s account.

1. Step 01

   Sign up with the club’s Google account

   Create the club’s Avently account and connect Google with the shared club account. Avently can create each event’s guest list there, or you connect a sheet already in the club’s Drive.

2. Step 02

   Answers land in the club’s guest list

   Avently sends each member a WhatsApp invitation addressed to them by name, and writes every answer to the guest list as it arrives, not to anyone’s phone. How to word the invitation is covered in how to collect RSVPs over WhatsApp.

3. Step 03

   Next year’s executive signs in to the same account

   At handover, the new executive signs in to the club account and finds every past event’s guest list in the club’s Drive. Lists from before you switched still need moving by hand, as in Step 2.