Welcome to the new home of the oikos community!

We invite you to our new shared space - for all oikees, chapters, representatives, friends, and whoever wants to engage and participate in our international community.

Discover all the different elements in this short user guide and reach out to us through Whatsapp community if you have any question :)

Community Calendar

The oikos Community Calendar is a Google Calendar containing all the oikos International and chapters' events, which are accessible to all oikees. Get access here!

Virtual Office

The oikos Virtual Office is a Zoom Account that is always open, mostly used by oikos International, but can always be used by all chapters. Hop on!

Contact IT team via in case you have any questions or hiccups on the way!

Carrying oikos name is a sign to the world — you're a part of a movement. That also comes with responsibility — to represent, embody the values and spread the word. You'll learn more as you go, but here is a good starting point:

1. The oikos Community Zoom is a Zoom Account that can be used by all chapters to host their external events (discussions, welcome sessions to new oikees, legislative meetings etc.) with up to 100 members.

1. Additionally, our oikos International Zoom Account, (VO), is always at your disposal and can be used by all oikos chapters to host their internal meetings, peer to peer sessions or 1:1 exchanges. You will most likely find many oikees already mingling in different 'Breakout Rooms' around the Office.

Contact IT team via in case you have any questions or hiccups on the way!

Buffer is a free tool that allows you to manage all your social media accounts on the same platform. There are many tools similar to Buffer but at oikos we like Buffer best because it’s free! :)

It is really simple to use and has two main advantages:

1. It allows you to prepare your social media posts, schedule them in advance, all in one place and save you time instead of going separately on each platform.

2. You can share it within your chapter to collaborate on posts or get feedback.

You can link your Canva account with Buffer, which allows you to quickly create new or edit existing visually appealing posts through Canva, without leaving the page.

This section will guide you through variety of tools that will serve your needs for co-creative, hands-on and collaborative efforts!

• Google Workspace (Gmail, GDrive, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms)

• Zoom

Miro is an online whiteboard collaboration tool that we use a lot for project work and collaborative online meetings. you can find our own Miro video tutorial (20 min) created by our IT Manager and dive deeper into how you can leverage this tool for creative online spaces.

Book a meeting with one of the co-presidents:

As chapters, you have access to many different offers and a great community. At the same time, you also commit to certain responsibilities.

• Attending our Legislative Meetings twice a year (April & October for approx. 3h on a weekend) & contributing to collective decision making. At least one chapter representative should join

• Participating in community exchange (eg. chapter programs, oikos Squads, Whatsapp Community Platform, international events)

• Being responsive to oikos International and in regular exchange with us (e.g. email, Whatsapp chat, )

• Using

• Filling the (twice a year, stay tuned for the link)

• Engaging and interacting with other oikos chapters where it makes sense to you, so we keep up a vibrant community

Canva is an easy to use online platform for creating a wide variety of content. Through Canva you can create and edit images, videos, presentations and documents quickly and without much prior knowledge or experience.

Canva is free to use with an option for a Pro account which gives you access to many advanced features. oikos International can provide your chapter with an account that is a part of the ‘oikos Community’ team on Canva which gives you access to all its premium features.

How to get a Canva Pro account for your chapter?

As previously mentioned, Canva is free to use and you may have already had the chance to work with it for your chapter’s needs. In that case you can use that same account for your chapter as part of ‘oikos Community’ team on Canva and use the premium features, while also having access to earlier designs you created on the same account. Otherwise you can select an email address that your chapter members have access to and create a shared Canva account for your chapter on the ‘oikos Community’ team, through which you’ll be able to also access the premium features.

After you’ve decided which email address/account you’d like to access the Canva Pro, reach out to our communications team at marketing@oikos-international.org, and they’ll set you up, providing further support if needed.

How to use Canva Pro?

1. oikos Brand kit - the brand kit for oikos and it’s initiatives is available to you as part of the ‘oikos Community’ Canva Team. When editing your designs, you can always find it on the left side of your screen in the ‘Brand Kit’ tab.

2. oikos Templates - there’s a set of pre-made templates based on the oikos branding that you can use to create visuals you need or use it a inspiration for your own design. These templates are especially useful if you have little experience with working with visuals or simply need to create content in a short snippet of time.

3. Canva Pro Templates - Canva offers thousands of unique templates for all kinds of designs, which you can access for free with your chapter’s shared Canva Pro account.

• Know you aspect ratios - for the best experience both online and offline, make sure that you’re using the right formats.

Every oikos Chapter gets access to the Google Workspace. Google Workspace (formerly known as Google Apps and GSuite) is a collection of productivity and collaboration tools, software and products offered and marketed by Google. The main applications that are relevant and useful for oikos Community in the Google workspace toolkit are:

• Gmail

• GDrive

• Google Calendar

• Google Docs

• Google Slides

• Google Sheets

• Google Forms

In the short Google Workspace Guide attached bellow, you will find ALL of the basic info you need to get started with your Google Workspace experience and become a pro.

Contact IT team via in case you have any questions or hiccups on the way!

Because we believe that real transformation happens through relationships. This community is about sharing, supporting, and growing together. Whether you're celebrating a win, looking for resources, or just want to say hi — this space is yours!

Joining is very easy - click the following link on your laptop, tablet or phone. And share it with others in your chapter!

We currently have four channels dedicated to different themes and purposes:

how to use the oikos Chapter brand?

✨chapter branding: rules and boundaries

Even though we want to give you as much freedom as possible when it comes to creating content and communicating with the public, there are still some things that are required, encouraged, and not allowed:

‼️You must:

• Use the oikos logo provided by oikos International as the only official one for your chapter

• Respect the oikos values and the oikos Community identity in external communications

✅You should:

• Use oikos colors, fonts, and language in creating content

• Use the tools and resources available & share your work with the community

• Get creative and express yourself!

❌Don’t:

• Use alternatives or make changes to the oikos Chapter logo provided by oikos International

• Use oikos brand, logo, name, or assets from the oikos resource library for commercial for-profit purposes

🔵oikos Chapter logo

Every chapter has its own specific logo - and it comes in two versions: medium and large. They are versatile and offer a lot of possibilities to work with.. Read more about how to use the logos (... and how not to...) in the branding guide.

(access with oikos email)

🖼️oikos Brand image

Our Community is the face of oikos! Our content should reflect the human-centric nature of our work. To aid you in content creation, we have created a library of pictures taken at in-person events, reflecting the energy and diversity of our Community. The pictures were taken with the prior consent of the people in them, making them GDPR compliant and available for use in external and internal communication of oikos International and oikos Chapters.

(access with oikos email)

⚙️tools & templates

We support chapters by providing tools to help you create and get the best usage of the oikos Brand. You have a community Canva team at your disposal with a number of templates available and regularly updated. With the oikos email address, you have access to G Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides) with pre-made oikos templates to create documents and slides for your chapter.

🎨creativity beyond

We don’t want to limit your creativity and encourage you to go beyond what we have to offer! Get inspired and inspire the whole community with your work and exchange to create new things together! Feel always invited to reach out to your colleagues around the globe & ask for support. Likewise, if you’re inspired and would like to contribute to our global oikos Brand, reach out to us!

💡guides & tools for oikos Chapters

Detailed oikos Branding Guidelines:

G Suite Guide:

Canva Guide:

🧩the oikos Brand

Our oikos Brand is what helps people identify oikos as an organization and the impact we make on both local and global levels. Through an easily identifiable oikos Brand we can shape people’s receptions of

our Community and this is not limited to marketing and communications, but should be present in other domains and activities of all chapters. This is vital for the growth of your chapter and our Community as a whole, our recognizability, the impact we make and representing our Values, Mission and Vision.

Chapter Logos are available on the oiToolbox G Drive (oikos email exclusive access). If you have trouble finding it reach out to ___

🖌️the oikos Colors

One of the key parts of the oikos Brand is the blue and white color which over the years has become synonymous with our organization. The main blue palette consists of light blue hex #1d6bf3 and dark blue hex #002842.

✍️the oikos Fonts

For creating visuals, graphic and video design our primary font family is . For documents and written content we use .

📖the oikos Story

Storytelling should be at the center of oikos communication. Our community is all about people, and we want their stories told and voices heard. In addressing sustainability issues, we don’t want to simply present them. We want to share experiences, inspire, teach and motivate readers with stories of changemakers around the world. These stories should be honest, inclusive and without judgement or prejudice.

A strong chapter should be able to thrive beyond any one President or board. The purpose of handover isn't to transfer files and passwords - it's to transfer knowledge, relationships, context, and ownership.

• A realistic timeline that starts 1–2 months before the transition, not the night before

• A shadowing approach that teaches context no document can capture

• A checklist of the four things you're actually handing over

🌐 : people spend on average 2.5 hours a day on social media (a little crazy right?) !

❓ : how can you get YOUR message through when people are overflowing with information?

🎉 : by using Impact Communication!

“Considering your audience, what information do you want to share and the best way to share it to ensure that the message is understood and, most importantly, inspire action?” - Maxime

☁️ Take a minute to think about what personally touches you and moves you to take action? ☁️

Handover isn’t one day. It’s a process. Here’s the simple flow:

Introduction

Partnerships should begin with your mission, not with sponsorship. The opening question isn't “who could fund us?” but:

What could we achieve together that neither of us could achieve alone?

🧭 Here's What You'll Walk Away With

• A wider definition of what a partner can bring - funding is only one item on the list

• A practical ecosystem mapping exercise, with a ready-made Miro board

• A way to decide which relationships deserve your limited time

• Habits that make a partnership belong to the chapter rather than to one board member

Any relationship where both sides get something real. A partner could bring expertise, speakers, mentors, networks, internships, visibility, venues, resources - or funding. Funding is one form of partnership value, not the definition of it.

Because a student chapter has almost no money and very little time, but sits inside an unusually rich ecosystem: a university full of experts, a city full of organisations working on exactly your issues, and a network of alumni already inside those organisations. Partnerships are how a chapter punches above its weight.

And because sustainability work is inherently systemic. A chapter acting alone can run events; a chapter embedded in a network can shift how its university teaches, hires and operates.

Your easiest and often strongest partnerships already exist one step away: alumni, faculty, university staff, current members, former leaders, oikos International, and current partners. A warm introduction beats cold outreach almost every time - and costs you one message instead of twenty.

No chapter creates change alone. Every university sits inside an ecosystem of students, professors, organisations, companies, alumni and communities that influence each other. Ecosystem mapping moves you from working for change to working with the people who can make change happen.

The core question shifts from “How can our chapter do more?” to “Who else needs to be part of the change we want to create?”

Afterwards, use the map to:

• Inform your annual strategy

• Identify the three or four priority relationships worth real effort

• Reach out to selected actors deliberately, not opportunistically

• Revisit when planning each new project

Before launching an initiative, ask: who in our ecosystem could strengthen this - and what could we create together?

Don't chase partners because they're famous. Look for shared values, common interests, complementary capabilities, mutual value, and room for a longer relationship.

A small organisation deeply aligned with your purpose will usually create far more value than a large one with no real connection to your work - and will still answer your emails in March.

This is where most chapters undersell themselves. Students arrive at partnership conversations assuming they're asking for a favour, which produces a weak ask and an unequal relationship.

That reframing changes the first message you send. A structure that works:

This is where most student partnerships quietly die: the one person who knew the partner graduates, and the relationship graduates with them.

• Document the contact in a shared place, not a personal inbox

• Keep notes on what you've collaborated on before

• Communicate between projects, not only when you need something

• Share chapter updates and thank partners properly

Partnerships stay relationship-led. Your finances need a separate model - and one rule above all others:

Start from mission rather than money, map your ecosystem before deciding who to approach, use warm introductions, choose alignment over prestige, keep relationships documented and chapter-owned, and handle funding diversification as its own separate model.

The strongest oikos partnerships are relationships built around shared purpose, mutual value and long-term collaboration - not one-off transactions.

• Book 90 minutes for the Miro ecosystem exercise before your next strategy session. It's the highest-value meeting on this list.

• List your current partners and ask who owns each relationship. Any name that appears more than twice is a continuity risk.

• Find one high-influence, distant actor on your map and ask your network who already knows them. Warm beats cold.

• Send one partner an update with no ask attached. It is the cheapest relationship maintenance that exists.

This section aims to bring inspiration and empowerment to the oikos Chapters worldwide and encourage cross-chapter collaboration! Let us share a bit of magic with each other and enjoy the beauty and impact of our initiatives globally!

CHECK OUT THE PROJECTS!

Initiatives from Years Backs:

At the heart of a strong oikos chapter is not an event calendar. It's a community - and the job of that community is to move people along a line.

• Four stages - Attract, Connect, Engage, Sustain - to organise everything you do

• Concrete ways to build relationships between members, not just between members and the board

• Why traditions and rituals do more for retention than another workshop

Introduction

A clear chapter identity gives members a shared direction, helps you make better decisions, and creates continuity when leadership changes. Your chapter stays connected to the wider oikos mission while adapting its priorities to your own university and community.

🧭 Here's What You'll Walk Away With

• The difference between purpose, mission, vision, values and strategy - five things chapters routinely blur into one

• A way to build strategy with your community so it survives the next handover

• A three-horizon model so you stop rebuilding from scratch every year

• A method for turning strategy into annual goals with numbers attached

Not a document. It's a shared answer to where you're going and how you'll get there - specific enough to help you say no to a good opportunity that doesn't fit, and stable enough that next year's board doesn't have to invent it again.

Because without it, a chapter becomes reactive. Opportunities arrive - a company offers a speaker, another society proposes a collaboration, a professor suggests an event - and with no strategy, everything looks equally worth doing. You end up busy, scattered, and unable to explain to a sponsor or a new member what your chapter actually stands for.

Strategy is also the cheapest continuity tool you have. Boards change annually; a strategy agreed by members, faculty and alumni doesn't leave with one person.

Strategy written by two people in a café is easy to write and easy to ignore. Involve board members, active members, faculty advisors, alumni where possible, and relevant partners.

Five questions worth an hour of everyone's time:

• Why should our chapter exist?

• What sustainability challenges matter most locally?

• What would we like to change?

• What strengths do we already have?

Shared ownership is what makes a strategy survive leadership transitions - people defend what they helped build.

Before deciding what to do, understand where you sit: students, faculty, university administration, other student organisations, alumni, companies, NGOs, local communities.

Keep all five simple, memorable, locally relevant, aligned with oikos, and useful for decision-making. If a statement can't help you choose between two options, it's decoration.

The test in practice:

Then pick 3–5 strategic priorities. Not ten. Three to five is what a volunteer board can actually pursue in a year.

Every strategic priority should become a measurable annual goal. Here's what the whole thing looks like once it's finished - copy this structure:

Two details worth stealing from that example. Every priority has a named owner - priorities without owners quietly become nobody's job. And one priority is about building the chapter itself rather than filling the calendar, which is the thing most chapters leave out entirely.

Most chapters only ever operate in Horizon 1. That's why the same problems reappear every September - nobody is working on the chapter itself, only on its events.

When designing an initiative, ask: can the next leadership team continue and improve this?

Year 1 pilot → Year 2 improve and expand → Year 3 add partners or alumni → Year 4 seek institutional recognition

Strategic themes give continuity while letting activities change. A theme like “Transforming Business Education for Sustainability” can be pursued through student research one year, speaker events the next, curriculum discussions and faculty engagement after that. The theme stays; the activities evolve.

Strategy should not sit in a Drive folder. Use it to:

• Onboard new members and explain what the chapter is for

• Evaluate project ideas and decide which opportunities to pursue

• Assess whether a partnership fits

• Prioritise limited time, money and people

Reflection: If a new member joined tomorrow, could they explain your chapter's purpose, vision and priorities after one conversation?

Build the strategy with your community rather than for them, understand your ecosystem first, separate the five building blocks properly, narrow to 3–5 priorities with countable annual goals, plan across three horizons, design projects that can be inherited, and then actually use the thing as a decision filter.

A strategy you don't use to say “no” isn't a strategy - it's a paragraph.

• Run the private-writing test from the top of this guide at your next board meeting. Five minutes, genuinely revealing.

• Take your next three opportunities and check each against your strategic priorities. If none of them fit, either the opportunities are wrong or the priorities are.

• Write one annual goal with a number in it for each priority. “Raise awareness” is not a goal; “six workshops, 300 students” is.

• Name one Horizon 2 project - something that strengthens the chapter rather than filling the calendar - and assign it an owner this semester.

Introduction

At oikos, leadership isn't only about managing teams or delivering projects. It's about enabling people to contribute meaningfully to the transformation of management education, economics, business, and society. Purpose-led leadership asks one question first:

Why are we doing what we are doing, and what change are we trying to create?

🧭 Here's What You'll Walk Away With

• The shift from leadership as a position to leadership as a shared practice

• Concrete ways to spread ownership without losing coordination

• How the oikos Core Training builds this culture deliberately

• Better questions than “how many events did we run?” for judging a good year

It's leadership organised around why rather than around rank. In practice it moves away from hierarchy, status, and control, and towards shared responsibility, participation, inclusion, self-management, collaboration, reflection, purpose, and systems change.

If that list sounds familiar, it's close to the Teal organisational paradigm - particularly its ideas of self-management, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose. You don't need the theory to apply it, but it's a useful search term if you want to go deeper.

Two reasons, one practical and one existential.

The practical one: chapters that depend entirely on the President are fragile. Exam season, burnout, or one difficult semester can stall everything. Distributed ownership isn't just nicer - it's more robust.

The existential one: oikos exists to develop leaders who can change how business and economics work. You cannot credibly train people for that inside a chapter that runs on command-and-control. How we lead is part of what we teach.

The role of a chapter leader is not to direct people, but to create the conditions in which others can take ownership and grow. That's a genuinely different job, and it often feels less impressive day to day - which is exactly why it gets skipped.

Purpose-led leadership stops being a slogan when it shows up in how meetings and projects actually run:

• Rotate meeting facilitation - a different person chairs each time

• Share project ownership - named leads for initiatives, not just helpers

• Run strategy collaboratively - the plan is better when more people shaped it

• Give real autonomy - including the freedom to do it differently than you would

The hard part is knowing what “giving autonomy” means in practice. It isn't binary - it's a ladder, and you can move one rung at a time:

Two things make this work. First, say which rung you're on when you hand something over - most frustration comes from someone thinking they're on rung 6 while you think they're on rung 3. Second, expect the first attempt at a higher rung to be slower and slightly worse than if you'd done it yourself. That cost is the tuition fee for building a leader.

The Core Training gives chapters a structured way to build this culture rather than hoping it emerges:

A purpose-led chapter stops treating the number of events as the scoreboard. Swapping the question changes the behaviour:

A practical test: at the end of the year, can you name three people who can now do something they couldn't do in September? If yes, it was a good year regardless of the event count.

Purpose-led leadership means starting from why, spreading ownership deliberately through how meetings and projects run, using the Core Training to build the underlying skills, and judging a year by the leaders it produced rather than the events it filled.

The goal is to move from “running activities” to building a community of purpose-driven leaders capable of creating systemic impact.

• Hand your next meeting agenda to someone else and let them chair it. Resist the urge to rescue them.

• Open your next board meeting with “why are we doing this?” about one item on the agenda. If nobody has a clear answer, that's useful information.

• Name one newer member as lead on a small initiative this month, with your support available but not assumed.

• List the decisions you made last week. Circle the ones someone else could have made. Delegate one of them permanently.

After various attempts of finding ideal oikos Impact Framework, we have currently landed on this one. The framework can help guide the reflection of your chapter work, and help oikos find collective narrative of the work that we do.

Everything that we do aims to answer one question...

Thematic pillars capture the main areas of change that our initiatives aim to advance. They help us understand what issues and opportunities our collective efforts are addressing.

this is the place where you show your true leadership

strengthen your leadership skills | build resilient, high-impact chapters | connect local action to global movement

for all the sessions, use the same to join online meeting!

NOTE: the program is tentative to change based on community's feedback and needs.

Introduction

Every chapter runs activities. Far fewer chapters create lasting impact. This guide helps you design projects that move beyond “we hosted an event” toward “we changed something, for someone, and it's still changing things.”

🧭 Here's What You'll Walk Away With

• A way to find a real problem worth solving - not just an event idea looking for a justification

• The mindset shift from “running activities” to “creating meaningful change”

• A simple, repeatable design flow you can apply to your next project, starting tonight

• Tools for building the right team around your project, piloting smart, and making sure it survives your own graduation

It's the practice of designing a project backward from the change you want to create, instead of forward from “what event should we run.” It covers everything from spotting a real problem, to co-designing the solution with the people affected, to building a project that's measurable and built to last beyond your own board term.

It applies any time your chapter is about to launch something - a workshop, a campaign, a partnership, a long-term initiative - not just for big flagship projects.

Because oikos chapters are run by students with one- or two-year terms, a packed academic calendar, and a turnover problem most companies would never survive. That combination makes it dangerously easy to default to “let's just run the workshop we ran last year” - it's familiar, it's safe, and it fills the calendar.

The problem: familiar isn't the same as impactful. oikos's whole reason for existing is to develop future leaders who integrate sustainability into business and society - and you don't build that muscle by repeating events. You build it by learning to diagnose real problems and design real solutions, the exact skillset this guide is meant to train.

Think of project design as a funnel. You start wide - exploring problems and people - and narrow step by step until you have something specific, fundable, and measurable.

Stop asking:

❌ “What event should we organise?”

Start asking:

✅ “What impact do we want to create, and for whom?”

Explore the problem through four lenses:

This is, in our opinion, the single most important idea in this entire guide. Strong projects are co-created, not delivered.

Before launching anything, ask:

• What do people actually need (not what you assume they need)?

• What has already been tried - and why did it work or fail?

• What barriers exist?

• What would success look like for them?

❌ Weak: “Let's donate books to the local school.”

✅ Stronger: “Let's find out whether what's actually missing is mentorship, digital access, or teacher support - then design around that.”

People should walk away from your project feeling consulted, involved, and respected - not “managed.”

Not every well-attended event creates impact. Compare:

Before launching, be able to answer in one breath: how exactly will this create change?

Strong projects are collaborative by design. Map your people into two rings:

Avoid the temptation to scale immediately - it's the fastest way to burn your team out and your credibility with it.

Recommended approach: Pilot → Learn → Improve → Scale

• ❌ Launch across 20 schools immediately

• ✅ Pilot in 1 school → improve → expand

💡 What is the smallest version of this project we could test first?

Don't bolt measurement on at the end - bake it in before launch.

Ask:

• What would success look like?

• How will we know if change happened?

Ask:

• Can future teams continue this?

• Is the process documented?

• Can someone who's never run this project pick it up and replicate it?

Strong oikos projects outlast leadership transitions - that's what separates a project from a one-off favour to your CV.

After every project, gather the team and ask:

• What worked well?

• What didn't?

• What surprised us?

• What would we improve?

Strong oikos projects don't start with “what should we organise” - they start with a real need, get designed with the people affected, build the right ecosystem of support, get piloted before they get scaled, and are built to survive your graduation. Measurement isn't an afterthought - it's baked in from day one.

Success isn't “how many events did we organise?” - it's “what meaningful change did we create, and will it still be creating change after we're gone?”

• Run the “donate books” test on your current project idea: are you assuming what people need, or have you actually asked them?

• Call one alum from your chapter this week and ask what they wish they'd known before launching their first project.

• Write your project's one-sentence change logic (Problem → Activity → Reach → Outcome → Impact) on a sticky note and put it where your team will see it at every meeting.

• Pick one project currently “stuck at idea stage” and identify the smallest possible pilot version you could test in the next 4 weeks.

Introduction

Many chapters are great at counting - “200 people attended,” “5 events conducted.” Those numbers matter, but they don't tell the whole story. This guide helps you move from activity thinking to impact thinking, in a way that's simple, practical, and aligned with how oikos reports impact globally.

🧭 Here's What You'll Walk Away With

• A clear answer to: who benefited, what changed, and how do we know?

• A way to separate reach (who showed up) from beneficiaries (who actually got something out of it)

• A simple framework for spotting change across four different types - learning, behaviour, ecosystem, systems

• A fillable, copy-this-tonight structure for writing your own one-sentence impact statement

It's the practice of checking - after (or during) a project - what genuinely changed, for whom, and how you know it's true. It's not a report you write to satisfy oikos International; it's a tool that helps your own chapter learn faster and make better decisions next semester.

Use it after any initiative - a workshop, a campaign, a partnership - and ideally, build it into your project design before launch (see Impact Project Design → Step 7).

Because oikos's entire value proposition to students, universities, and partners is that we develop leaders who create real sustainability impact - not leaders who are good at filling calendars. If your chapter can't say what changed because of your work, you can't:

• tell a credible fundraising story (see Fundraising Strategies - sponsors fund impact, not activities)

• prove to your university that you deserve continued support

• hand over a project to the next board with any idea of whether it's worth continuing

• genuinely know if you're living up to oikos's mission, or just staying busy

This isn't bureaucracy. It's the difference between doing things and doing things that matter.

Before measuring anything, ask: what was the main intent of this initiative?

Common intents:

• Raise awareness

• Build sustainability leadership

• Encourage behaviour change

• Strengthen partnerships

Why this matters: success should be measured against the original purpose - not against a generic checklist. If the intent was awareness, measure learning and mindset shifts. If the intent was behaviour change, measure actions actually adopted, not just who showed up.

INTENT → INDICATOR → MEASUREMENT

Example: Awareness → Knowledge Gained → Survey Results

These are not the same thing, and conflating them is the single most common mistake chapters make.

Key message: Attendance alone ≠ meaningful benefit.

Ask: what changed because of this initiative? Think across four types of change:

• Learning change - what did people understand better? (increased ESG awareness, improved sustainability literacy)

• Behaviour change - did people act differently? (reduced single-use plastic, joined sustainability initiatives)

• Ecosystem change - did collaboration improve? (stronger NGO partnerships, business involvement)

• Systems change - did structures improve? (curriculum integration, new campus sustainability policies)

❌ Weak: “200 people attended.”

✅ Strong: “200 people attended, and 68% reported improved sustainability understanding.”

That one extra clause is the entire difference between an activity report and an impact statement.

Quantitative evidence (what can be counted): participants reached, organisations involved, funds raised, waste reduced, volunteer hours, repeat participation.

Qualitative evidence (what can be experienced): testimonials, participant reflections, observations, quotes, stories of change.

“This project completely changed how I think about sustainable consumption.”

A single initiative can create change at multiple levels simultaneously. This is the oikos Cross-Level Impact Lens:

After every initiative, gather your team and ask:

• What worked well?

• What did not work?

• What surprised us?

• What would we improve?

Sharing these learnings is what transforms a single project into an oikos best practice - and lets chapters across the world learn from each other instead of repeating the same mistakes in 40 different countries.

PROJECT → REFLECT → DOCUMENT → SHARE → BEST PRACTICE → OTHER CHAPTERS

One-sentence impact statement:

“The conference strengthened sustainability awareness and fostered stronger collaboration between students, academia, and industry.”

Impact is not what you did - it's what changed because of what you did, for whom, and how you know. Start with intent, separate reach from beneficiaries, look for change across four types, back it up with both numbers and stories, check which levels it touched, and always close the loop by reflecting and sharing.

Impact is not “what we did” - it's what changed because of what we did, for whom, and why it mattered.

• Rewrite your last event's headline stat. Take “X people attended” and add one clause about what actually changed for them. Notice the difference.

• Add one open-text question to your next feedback form: “What's one thing you'll do differently because of this?” - instant qualitative evidence.

• Run a 10-minute reflection round at your very next board meeting on your most recent project, using the five questions in Step 6. Document it somewhere you'll actually find it again.

• Pick one project from this semester and try to fill in the worked-example template above - intent, reach, beneficiaries, what changed, collaborators, cross-level impact, one-sentence statement.

Introduction

Your alumni are not simply former members. They can become mentors, advisors, speakers, partners, employers, supporters, institutional memory, and lifelong ambassadors - but only if someone keeps the door open.

The whole thing fits into three actions: FIND → ENGAGE → RETAIN.

🧭 Here's What You'll Walk Away With

• A minimum setup you can build this week without any budget

• The list of fields worth tracking - and when to start collecting them

• The create value before asking principle, and what it looks like in practice

• A engagement journey that moves people from graduate to ambassador in realistic steps

Both directions. Value from alumni - mentorship, expertise, networks, opportunities, occasionally funding. And value to alumni - a community they still belong to, people worth knowing, and a way to stay connected to something they cared about. If only the first exists, the relationship dies quickly.

Because a chapter loses its most experienced people every single year, by design. Alumni are the only group who can hold institutional memory across decades - they remember which partnership worked in 2019 and why the conference format changed. No handover document covers that range.

They're also the most credible proof of what oikos does. A sponsor hearing that former members now work in sustainability roles across a dozen organisations is a far stronger argument than any number of event photos.

This is the single highest-leverage habit in this guide. Collect details while someone is still an active member and still cares. Chasing a stranger's new email address eighteen months later almost never works.

A three-field exit form does most of the work:

At minimum, track:

Assign one person responsibility for keeping it current, and hand that role over explicitly at transition - it's the kind of task that silently evaporates between boards.

Create value before asking for support.

Invite alumni into things that use what they know:

• Mentor students, or join a career panel

• Speak at an event or a sustainability discussion

• Share professional experience with members exploring that path

• Offer internships or flag career opportunities

And keep the relationship alive between asks: alumni meetups, quarterly updates, alumni spotlights, informal catch-ups, news of chapter achievements, invitations to things they'd actually enjoy.

The trap is that “stay in touch” has no owner and no date, so it never happens. Put it on a calendar instead:

Long-term roles worth naming: mentor, advisory board member, guest speaker, strategic advisor, partnership connector, local ambassador. A named role is far stickier than a vague invitation to “stay in touch.”

People stay involved when their contribution feels meaningful.

A database with 400 entries and no activity is not an alumni network. Measure what's actually happening:

Collect details before graduation, keep one shared database with one owner, give alumni value before asking for any, offer named roles rather than vague contact, and measure participation instead of contact counts.

An alumni list is a spreadsheet. An alumni network is a set of relationships someone has deliberately kept warm.

• Create the Google Sheet today and add every former member anyone on the board can name from memory. Imperfect and existing beats perfect and hypothetical.

• Add an exit form to your graduation routine - personal email, LinkedIn, and “would you be open to mentoring or speaking?” Three fields, collected while they still care.

• Send one update email with no ask in it. Just what the chapter has been doing. It resets the relationship from “they only contact me when they want something.”

• Invite one alum to speak at something this semester. It's the easiest first rung on the journey.

Recruitment is not about filling seats on a board. For oikos chapters it's about bringing in people who connect with the mission, want to learn, and are willing to do something about it, and then making sure they stay long enough to grow.

• A way to balance skills, motivation, diversity, and cultural fit instead of guessing

• A shift from one-shot recruitment rounds to a year-round habit

• A short, humane selection process that tells you what a CV can't

Fundraising is one of the biggest challenges for student-led organisations - chapters often depend on a handful of sponsors, raise funds reactively, or struggle to sustain activities year over year. This guide reframes fundraising as resource mobilisation: building an ecosystem of support, not chasing one-off transactions.

• A mindset shift: fundraising isn't just asking for money

• A model for diversifying your funding so one lost sponsor doesn't sink your semester

• A copy-paste formula for writing a fundraising pitch that actually lands