The Community team got an overhaul In the Spring. Our team grew to the largest it has ever been and we've created some awesome things. Here's what we did...
Branding Guidelines
One of the newest members of the Community Team is Rusty Green- a talented graphic designer and advertising student. Together with me, we created a new and improved brand book equipped with updated colors, typography, and more. Any designers greatest asset is the brand guidelines handbook of the organization for which they design. This resource will yield better visual designs for years to come.
Campaigns
As Community Team Lead, this was my first time leading a team of more than only a few people; the team now has 10 other members. During my time on the team prior to becoming Lead, I noticed that the marketing efforts needed more structure & purpose. The team had goals for how it was reaching the student-base, but under-developed plans for exactly how to do so. That's why I created Community Team Campaigns.
To illustrate, we did a campaign called #FindFounders. The problem we aimed to solve with the campaign is a shortage of consistent value for student entrepreneurs. We felt that Founders was limited in its capacity to provide value to the ecosystem beyond only our events in the Fall, so we created the #FindFounders campaign to 1. provide informative, insightful, inspiring, & educational content via our social media channels, and 2. build credibility around Founders' resources and grow our audience. Check out a post from this campaign here.
A campaign that started last semester and will continue into the fall is #SKYWARD. The sole purpose of this campaign is to direct students' attention to Founders' new initiatives, products, & events. In fact, building this blog feed was a part of this campaign! The slogan we used for its inspiration is "Skyward, together." to emphasize our mission of uplifting & empowering student entrepreneurs. We worked this idea into the site design with the space theme.
We've expanded our total Campaign count from 2 to 6 this Fall - stay tuned!
Oh, and I made sure to take some professional Founders headshots of my team so everyone Is feelin' cool 😎 - find 'em on this page.
Discord
What better way to stay connected to the entrepreneurship community than creating one yourself? The community team this semester created a Discord server to connect likeminded individuals that are passionate about entrepreneurship. This helps us to consolidate startups on campus, reach out to the community more directly, and provide a platform for communication among startups at UIUC. Thank you to our Discord Architects Bora Shim & Thomas Lei. The server will be launching this Fall semester and we're super excited about it!
SCF
I think what I'm most excited about is that our team is rebuilding an old Founders event that went offline. This event is the Startup Career Fair. Special thank you to our SCF Co-Directors Connor Burns & Aman Khinvasara for their visionary ideas on how to make the event spectacular. More announcements about this event coming very soon. View details on this page.
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WEBSITE
Oh, and last but not least, this very site that you are viewing was designed by myself, Russell Green, and Davis Keene over the course of this past spring & summer. What do you think? :)