It’s possible to like the moments of your matches

As a small local, as many of you probably know, it’s not always easy to find a  sufficiently stable members’ base. This seemed like AEGEE-Leuven’s destiny, until Heleen Yu, their previous President, suggested creating a Tinder dating profile for the local. AEGEE-Leuven was quickly convinced, and so it happened:

“Hi there! My name is AEGEE-Leuven, and I am (pardon my arrogance) by far the coolest European youth organisation in Flanders. I strive for a democratic, diverse and border-less Europe where the voice of youth is heard and their participation in society appreciated. It’d be awesome to have you as a member, so ask me anything you want to know!”

AEGEE-Leuven made their profile a bit more ‘love-proof’ by designing a romantic European profile picture, saying that they could take their matches ‘wherever their hearts desire’. Now, wouldn’t you fall for that? Their Tinder team currently consists of Tom, their President and Alessandro, AEGEE-Leuven’s sweetest Italian.

AEGEE-Leuven’s profile

In their first evening on the app, AEGEE-Leuven got 17 matches already! About ten days into the Tinder world, they had over 50. The cool thing about this original way of promotion is that it allows to get in touch with people you would normally not reach or with people who wouldn’t take the first step to attend an activity. You can talk to them personally and convince them to become a member which works a lot better than distant promotion like flyers, posters or even Facebook.

Five people have so far confirmed their membership, which makes for about 10% of the people they’ve spoken to. Not bad, if you ask me! Several others will attend the social programme during their SU ‘Burgundian Bicycles Vol. II: Crossing Borders’ and the final ‘become a member’-hits will be delivered there. Surprisingly enough, it’s mostly boys who swipe AEGEE to the right, even though there are a lot more girls on the app. AEGEE-Leuven’s gender is set to male for now, looking for both men and women.

The application also has a function to share moments, through which it is possible to share pictures with your matches. The local uses that mostly to share the different aspects of AEGEE but in general to convey the awesome AEGEE spirit!

There are two problems though. Since Tinder can be installed on different devices using the same account, everyone with the account details can read each others Tinder conversations. This made for some embarrassing discoveries reading each others “flirts”. Oopsie for the person who was going all for it.

Oopsie! AEGEE-Leuven got reported.

The second problem is that when you use a Facebook profile as a local, you’re first of all going against Facebook’s rule book, but you also are very prone to getting reported on Tinder. That’s something which has already happened once! AEGEE-Leuven got reported for misconduct and spamming (they admit to the latter). After promising it wouldn’t happen again, the “Tinder police” released them.

Another awkward moment was when their second match turned out to be a scam who ‘was desperately looking for some hot fun’ and asked when they could meet up ‘because she was feeling naughty’. Of course, as tempting as that sounded, the team politely declined and went on with their purely professional promotion.

And so, AEGEE-Leuven embarked on a romantic journey with their Tinder matches, and we wish them a long and happy life together!

Written by Tom Etienne, AEGEE-Leuven

It’s September, the new academic year has just started, and this means that the recruitment season has just started too! Several AEGEE locals are making big efforts and organising lots of activities for fresh members and international students who can become potential AEGEE members, many of them starting from mid August already.

Organising such activities requires a big dose of creativity and innovation, as well as PR campaigns on social media, taking care of logistics, and much more. For all those locals that are working hard on recruiting new members, we have a special prize. AEGEE-Europe is now looking for our Master of Recruitment throughout the Network!

Holger Schmitt, Network Director of AEGEE-Europe, is launching this new competition in cooperation with the Network Commission and The AEGEEan. Following the example of The AEGEEan’s Local and Member of the Month awards, he came up with the idea of this recruitment competition. “Many locals have developed a very structured and exhaustive strategy how to recruit members. Now it is the time to highlight your concept, your activities and share it with all AEGEEans”, he stresses. Therefore, The AEGEEan is now looking for successful and innovative recruitment strategies that AEGEE locals have been using from August until October.

According to our Network Director, the recruitment strategies will be used as best-practices in order to develop a toolkit for recruitment strategies which will provide alternative ways of recruitment, which will be divided into categories, depending on the human resources available and the size of the local. Based on his experience as a board member and Network Commissioner, Holger highlights the three steps needed for recruitment:

1- Motivation: Get them interested by telling how awesome AEGEE is and explaining all the opportunities AEGEE has to offer

2- Communication: Give them a flyer, card, invite new members to the next meeting, activity and make sure they are on the mailing-list, Facebook group and they like your Facebook page.

3- Integration: Keep constant contact and give them a small task to fulfill in order to ensure that they will stay and want to contribute