Questions to Ask a Club President

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   How did you end up as president?

   The answer sorts clubs into two kinds: ones where the role was contested, and ones where nobody else raised a hand. If the president backed into the job, the officer bench is thin and you will be asked to fill it sooner than you expect.

2. 2

   How many people are on the roster, and how many come to a normal meeting?

   These two numbers almost never match, and the gap is the real size of the club. A roster of eighty with nine regulars is a nine-person club with a large mailing list, which is fine as long as you know that before you join.

3. 3

   What does a meeting actually look like, from the first minute to the last?

   You are listening for the ratio of business to the thing you came for. Clubs drift toward announcements and voting, and a president who cannot describe the arc of a meeting is usually describing one that has drifted.

4. 4

   What has the club done in the last month?

   Ask about the past rather than the plans. Plans are free, and every club has a good-sounding list of them. A month of concrete activity, even small activity, tells you whether the calendar survives contact with people's schedules.

5. 5

   What are dues, and what do they pay for?

   A president who can itemize dues has looked at the books. Watch for money that flows straight out to a national or campus body, since that portion buys you a charter and insurance rather than anything you will see at a meeting.

6. 6

   Who are the other officers, and what does each of them actually do?

   Titles on a website are cheap. What you want is whether the treasurer touches the account, whether the secretary keeps minutes anyone reads, and whether any of these roles exist mainly to put a line on a resume.

7. 7

   How much time does a regular member put in compared with an officer?

   Ask for hours, not adjectives. The honest version of this answer usually includes a jump: two hours a month as a member, ten as an officer, and the president somewhere well above that. Knowing the jump keeps you from being surprised into it.

8. 8

   How do new members usually get pulled in and stay?

   Most clubs recruit well and onboard badly. Listen for whether anything happens between signing up and the third meeting, because that stretch is where new members quietly disappear without anyone noticing.

9. 9

   Besides dues, where does the money come from?

   Fundraisers, a sponsoring business, a student government allocation and a long-standing donor all behave differently under stress. Money tied to one person or one annual event is the kind that vanishes without warning.

10. 10

    Do you answer to a national organization, a school, or anyone else?

    Chapters carry obligations: reporting deadlines, required programming, rules about who can be a member. Presidents who have never dealt with the parent body are usually presidents whose chapter is out of compliance and does not know it.

11. 11

    What is the club genuinely good at, and what does it keep failing at?

    The second half is the useful half. A president who names a real recurring failure, such as an event that flops every year, is someone you can work with. One who says nothing goes wrong has not been paying attention or will not say so.

12. 12

    What happened to the people who left?

    Attrition has patterns. Graduating out, moving away and drifting off are ordinary. A cluster of people who left at the same time after a specific dispute is something you would rather learn now than at your first heated meeting.

13. 13

    When people disagree, how does anything get decided?

    Ask whether there are bylaws, whether anyone reads them, and what happened the last time a vote was close. Clubs that run entirely on informal consensus work beautifully until the first real disagreement, then stall completely.

14. 14

    What is in the budget that would surprise me?

    There is usually one line nobody would guess: storage rental, an insurance premium, a website subscription renewing on someone's personal card. That line tells you what the club is quietly committed to regardless of what it says it does.

15. 15

    What is the hardest part of this job that nobody warned you about?

    The answer is rarely the work itself. It is more often chasing people for replies, running an event alone that six people promised to help with, or being the person everyone complains to. Take it seriously if you are considering the role.

16. 16

    Is there anything the club does that only works because one specific person does it?

    Every club has a single point of failure: the one member who owns the equipment, knows the venue manager, or runs the account nobody else has the password to. Naming that person now is how the club survives them leaving.

17. 17

    Who is going to be president after you, and do they know that yet?

    A club with a named, willing successor is a club that will still exist in two years. Vague answers about hoping someone steps up are the most reliable early sign of a group about to go dormant.

18. 18

    If you could change one thing about how the club is set up, what would it be?

    This gets at the structural complaints presidents usually keep to themselves: meeting length, dues that are too low to fund anything, an officer role that should not exist. It also shows whether they think about the club as a system or just as a schedule.

19. 19

    If the club folded tomorrow, what would actually be lost?

    A blunt question that sorts real purpose from habit. Strong answers name something specific that no other group in the area does. Weak answers describe the social side, which is worth something but does not survive a bad year.

20. 20

    What does the club need right now that nobody has offered?

    Ends the conversation by giving them something rather than only taking. It also tells you exactly what you would be walking into, and it is the question presidents remember you for.