MUN, while very common-place, is often just one of a myriad of different educational simulations/activities that improve students’ critical thinking, public speaking, and leadership, i.e. forensics/debate, DECA, FBLA, Mock Trial; this means that often times students have to make a calculated decision as to what extracurricular they must dedicate their time to.

Extracurriculars aside, many students are academically-inclined and see the time and preparation commitment of MUN as a time sink and choose to not follow through with it.

MUN above all else is a process and an educational experience: it is rare for first-time delegates to hit the ground running and often times, students are discouraged by the rigor of competition and either fade in-and-out of committment or drop altogether; delegates have the potential to grow, but need time to follow through

However, all hope should not be lost! There are plenty of ways to grow a MUN club, even when student involvement seems to be dwindling! Here are a couple tips to bolster your MUN program:

Talk to the school administration - If the school as a whole gets behind the concept of a MUN program, then the administration can become a valuable advertising tool. Taking a few hours to talk to the school administrators about not only the history and presence of MUN as an extracurricular, but also its status as a great educational tool can go a long way. As a result, you can potentially get the administration behind MUN recruitment, as well as get better rooms and transportation resources the more established the club becomes.

Targeted recruitment pitches - Have your senior MUN members travel within your school from class to class, typically in the morning, to talk about the benefits of doing MUN. While MUN can have a great impact on a student’s self-confidence and leadership ability, don’t focus on that. Instead, center the pitches around short-term gratification, such as using MUN as a good resume booster, an opportunity to travel and explore great schools and cities, and meet new people. Marketing MUN as a field trip rather than an extracurricular is a good way to recruit more members before refocusing them on less appealing aspects of the club, like research and debating.

Cross-extracurricular transition - MUN additionally happens to share similar participant skills with other extracurricular clubs, most notably of which are forensics/debate and Mock Trial. Having students from your MUN program contact leadership from contemporary debate and Mock Trial clubs in your school and potentially give info sessions/presentations after the latter’s meetings could be a nice way to transition some individuals with varied interests into MUN involvement.

Because of the potential workload associated with conference preparation and the sometimes exorbitant cost to attend, it can be difficult to persuade potential members to stay active. However, it's important to put student fears and concerns into perspective based on the MUN timeline for the year. Try your best to create a timeline for your students including important milestones, such as introductory procedure preparation, position paper deadlines, committee assignments, etc. This way, students can better plan around their academic schedule.

Additionally, workload isn’t often an issue in MUN clubs until the culmination of conference season later in the year; the fall semester would most likely only include being present at meetings to learn procedure/how to prepare for committee. In concern to conference preparation, a position paper is truly the only necessary component to prepare, and would take the equivalent of one project’s time to complete. Emphasize that such a project is much easier to complete as well, because often times delegates become passionate on the issue at hand, which makes research and writing that much easier to finish.

The first things to really do is to emphasize that the basis of Model United Nations is international relations (IR) and capitalize upon the interests of prospective students - creating that link can engage students, especially those that are globally- or politically-minded, to join the club

Parliamentary procedure aside, speech and debate practice should not be expressly focused on IR or global issues. Simply focusing on getting students comfortable speaking in general is advantageous to the confidence and ability of your delegates going forward. Doing buzzword speeches in meetings (having them create an entire speech out of a real or made-up word) as well as extemporaneous speaking activities can introduce students to the fun side of public speaking.

Similarly to the previous suggestion, have your delegates practice good argument construction by giving them group/debatable topics that can both engage members and produce different views that they can argue for (i.e. school dress code, quality of school lunches, pineapple on pizza, etc.)

Some less active times during the year to capitalize on are the gaps between major regional conferences. There are a variety of things that you can do in these situations, such as having students utilize online tools to refresh on procedure (i.e. BMUN’s Learn website, Best Delegate, etc.) as well as attending local conferences to keep up practice.

As mentioned before, fundraising can have a great impact on program morale; the short-term benefits of course include financial support; however restaurant fundraisers and putting on mock conferences can bring members together by uniting them under a common goal.

Have no fear, because BMUN’s Outreach and Education staff provides pro bono outreach sessions, the sign-up for which is provided HERE. Regardless of the delegation skill level or the topic to be covered, our staff is incredible at creating curriculum to best fit your education needs. Additionally, our presentations can display a good structure for a typical between-class or afterschool meeting for a MUN program. We also offer a program oversight resource, where we sit in on one of your meetings and offer solutions to make said meetings more productive.

The first step here is to balance your involvement as an advisor. While you ultimately want to control the means by which your delegates are educated, you have to encourage your more advanced students to take charge over their delegation. If you have not already, appoint your senior, most capable delegates as head delegates. They will be in charge of reinforcing material that you teach your delegates, as well as keeping them on track with deadlines and responsibilites throughout the MUN season.

Once those roles are established, both your head delegates and you should split teaching responsibilities into two main, time-based categories:

Month(s) Before Conference

Organize research workshops for delegates

You should take your delegates through the resources they should be using for country stances and position papers

Resources like the CIA World Factbook, BBC, Reuters, etc. are good places to receive topical knowledge for your country's policy and/or stance on committee topics

For more specific information on domestic policies and case studies, a helpful place to look is none other than Wikipedia. The superscripted, numbered hyperlinks after each fact mentioned can yield helpful peer-reviewed material that can enhance the detail in delegate research.

Distribute committee assignments to delegates

It is unbelievably important to recognize your delegates' strengths and weaknesses when assigning them to particular committees.

Some delegates have specialties or are more partial to different types of debate while others are still in the process of finding theirs.

For example, a more advanced delegate who likes fast-paced debate in crisis would probably resent being in a slower-paced Bloc A. Similarly, a more novice deleagate might languish in a specialized committee, especially if they haven't delegating for very long at all.

While there's no good guide for doing this, try your utmost best to make everyone excited by the prospect of going to conference, while still being cognizant of relative skill levels.

Mentor new delegates in research/MUN procedure

No delegate left behind! Make sure every one of your delegates feels comfortable walking into a MUN committee and participating in debate.

Check in with your delegates either in person or through Google Forms to see how prepared they feel for conference; once there comfortability is assessed, sit down with delegates individually to discuss what questions, concerns, or even fears they might have going into committee. MUN can often times be a very mental activity, so make sure to assuage their concerns and hype them up - the goal is for them to have fun and learn!

Another amazing way to accomplish the above is through simulations. Putting on conference-accurate simulations can give newer delegates a glimpse into what the committe atmosphere is like. It can also give more-experienced members a chance to constructively-critique the performances of newer members.

Week Before Conference

Make sure you sit down with your students and go through their position papers to review the feasability and specifics of their solutions. Make sure the solutions are SMART, or:

Specific - make sure the operative clauses cover the "what, when, where, why, and how" the resolution will work

Measurable - add in a way to gauge the effectiveness of the resolution (i.e. how will you know if the resolution has achieved its goal?)

Actionable - make sure the resolution is able to reasonably be implemented

Realistic - resolution should be within the jurisdiction of the committee

Time-Oriented - the resolution should operate within a reasonable time frame (i.e. policies can't go on forever)

You should have your students practice impromptu speaking on the eve of conference.

At meeting, tell each of your students to give an impromptu introductory speech on topics they might have to debate or on their solutions.

Actively develop your student's speeches by giving them scenarios, such as giving them fake moderated caucues topics and having them come up with a topical speech.

One of your primary goals should be to promote participation overall. Getting new delegates to participate is critical! Drive home to them how they need to raise their placards as much as possible!

Make sure your delegates have prepared their opening speeches. Giving an opening speech can be scary, especially in a larger committee. Getting delegates comfortable reciting their country policy is a good move.

During Conference

Make sure to be your delegates' cheerleader! They need support and you shouldn't spare a moment to hype them up in between committee sessions.

Speak to them affirmingly when giving them feedback. After watching them in committee, make sure the criticisms you provide them are constructive (i.e. talk about what they did well in addition to what they could approve on).

After Conference

You should continue the post-conference enthusiasm and get them excited for next MUN season - this promotes continuity and could help convince them to stay in the program (more pertinent to new delegates).

As mentioned before, continue to give delegates contructive criticism about their performances at the conference. Always encourage them to improve.

Make sure to recognize all delegates, and try to work out an agreement with the administration to shoutout delegates over the morning announcements! This will help bolster confidence and unity amongst the delegation.

While these issues may be demoralizing in the short-term, dealing with and overcoming financial issues will no doubt make your program more resilient and may have the indirect effect of increasing comraderie amongst students. Remedying the financial concerns of both a program and its individual delegates can be achieved through one or a combination of the following fundraising methods:

Conference scholarships can be a great place to start ensuring as many students as possible can attend conference. Simply inquiring conference logistics teams about scholarship availability can help to reduce the costs for members to participate. For example, BMUN has it's own delegate scholarship, which you can learn more about here.

Though this may not be an issue for everyone, it is important to recognize this as a potential roadblock for some current and/or future members.

Highlighting the multiple opportunities for compensation and lower costs can be a huge boon for those unsure of joining.

In fact, BMUN has its own scholarship, the Alumni Scholarship, which we've increased in amount this past conference in order to better cover parts of the attendance, tansportation, and hotel costs for eligible students. If you're interested in learning more about and/or applying to the Alumni Scholarship, you can find resources HERE.

Another avenue can involve reaching out to local restaurants about fundraiser night, which means that on a given night, a portion of the restaurant's profits will go towards your program's treasury. A couple important things to remember here are:

You should reach out several months in advance to several restaurants. Some may not want to cooperate, and early outreach shows proctiveness on the part of your MUN program, which may work in your favor!

Understand that the more profit the restaurant makes on the night of the fundraiser, the more money your program makes! Make sure to advertise at your school and in your local community!

Your program could organize a bake sale on campus, featuring selling homemade bakes goods (i.e. cookies, brownies, etc.) for a reasonable profit. However, selling food might be explicitly prohibited on your campus due to school policies so make sure you get permission from your administration before doing so!

In a similar vein, running concessions or otherwise selling goods (food, merchandise, etc.) at sports events, like football games, can be profitable. This may be difficult if it is not already an established practice at your school, but it’s something you can always bring up to the administration or sports teams.

Your program could also organize a campus movie night, and could establish a recommended donation of $5 to $10 and ask teachers to offer extra credit for watching the movie.

An important reminder here is to be cognizant of peoples’ financial capabilities. Even though the end goal of this activity is to make money for your own program, tell students that they don’t need to pay if they can’t afford it.

The movie should have some educational value if you are going to ask teachers to provide extra credit for it.

You could create letter-writing campaigns to members of your community for donation-based funding!

The letters should contain all necessary information including information about tax deductions and what the funds will be used for (check with your school or school district’s treasurer’s office for the required wording and numbers, you may also need to file paperwork in order to do this).

The letters should also include information about why Model UN is an important part of your school community and its implications on the larger world.

Make sure to send these letters to your community members in addition to those involved in school activities! This could include local businesses, parents, etc.

One of the more time-sensitive but effective methods of fundraising involves starting your own school MUN conference! We'll cover this in more depth in the "Expansion" section.

There are a great number of larger programs that host conferences as their main form of generating revenue (i.e. Santa Teresa HS/San Jose, CA/ SCVMUN; Foothill HS/Pleasanton, CA/ FHSMUNC; Laguna Beach HS/Laguna Beach, CA/LBIMUN; etc.)

Admittedly, it is time consuming; while it may take a whole year to do, it is still the most rewarding method of fundraising.

At these conferences, you could also sell MUN gear branded with your conference or program logo (i.e. sweaters, t-shirts, socks, ties, pins, etc.) for profit; but make sure you’re not buying too many at a loss!

Over time, as your program increases in size, your financial benefits would increase. School administrations tend to give funding to clubs proportional to their size, so you may naturally find it easier to secure funding as your club grows.

Reformatting your officer corps means reassessing what roles are necessary and what roles aren’t, which can be difficult if your program is rooted in its ways. However involved you, as an advisor, want to be in your delegation, the key lies in teaching your students self-sufficiency, and having them assume roles that can make the program move more efficiently. Each program should have an amalgam of the following responsibilities (if not by name, then by role):

• Secretary General
  • In charge of hosting the conference (if a conference is something your program offers)
  • Manages the outward facing component of the club (interacting with other schools, advisors, administration, etc.)
  • Oversees officers/ Under-Secretary Generals and delegates work and specific responsibilities to them
  • Picking up general slack around the club, if there are tasks that have remained undone
  • Long term planning - the "SG" provides the vision for where the club should go and puts reforms in place to achieve that goal
  • Communications with the advisors (if large enough, can be handled by a USG of External Affairs)
• Chief of Staff/Head Delegate
  • In charge of the secretariat (if the club is large)
  • In charge of delegate education and conference preparation (if the club is on the smaller-side)
• USG of Publications/Media
  • Creating Social Media presence, recruitment, printing for conference, advertising MUN program
• USG of Fundraising/Special Events
  • Creating fundraising events to bolster the club's scholarship fund and treasury
• Treasurer
  • In charge of funds and collects money for conferences (ir program is big enough)
• USG of Logistics/Internal
  • Food for meetings
  • Discussing with administration to book meeting rooms

With a small delegation, putting on a conference can be extremely difficult. There are a great deal of factors to worry about such as, but not limited to, delegate attendance, chair expectations, and conference organization. This all can be admittedly a lot to handle and delegate, especially to a small club - here are some potential courses of actions to help put on a conference:

Run a school-confined conference - There should be no rush to put on a large-scale conference if your delegation is small and inexperienced. A good way to cultivate good chairs and gauge conference viability is to put on a smaller conference within your high school, with MUN program members serving as chairs and regular high school students as delegates. Putting on a smaller conference gives you a chance to give your MUN students. chairing experience while also gauging your organizational skills.

Teaming up with local schools - You might not be the only small program in your area and there’s bound to be other MUN programs willing to put on conferences. Reaching out to local MUN programs on the circuit and discussing the potential for collaborating on a joint-conference together might increase attention towards your conference, and might increase your potential delegate pool for your conference (i.e. neighboring programs to participating schools).

Outsource chairing - A lot of regional conferences opt to not train their students as chairs, in order to give them more delegating experience. For example, the well-known SCVMUN (which takes place in Santa Teresa HS in San Jose) recruits chairs from BMUN and UC Berkeley, as well as SCVMUN alumni, to run its committees while members of the Santa Teresa HS MUN program serve as delegates or staffers. This might put a lot less strain on your own program while giving your advanced students an example to strive towards when learning how to chair.