I spent a few hours on Monday at an NUS Services Ltd event in Birmingham about local business income generation. Well, it was supposed to be about that but the general idea seemed to be whether NUSSL could move into the student media agency area which is dominated by the likes of BAM, OnCampus, Student Media Group etc.
The overwhelming mood in the room was ‘No, you missed the boat about 5 years ago’. But, there is a huge area where NUSSL could provide something very useful to Students’ Union’s. Business solutions and in particular web based ones.
If I was in NUSSL and looking for ways to diversify I’d be considering:
- Taking an open source CRM solution and modifying it for Students’ Union’s
- Providing membership solutions in terms of clubs and societies
- Working on data solutions for Union’s to offer loyalty products such as swipe cards etc
- Offering training to Union’s on how to use social media, web technologies and how to generate income from the web
- Working on ideas for how to generate new revenue streams from mature, international, part-time and postgraduate students, because the student movement is not getting any younger
Unfortunately the event didn’t allow for much exploration of these ideas because it was dominated by lots of ‘no, no, no’ rather than ‘what about, maybe, could we’. NUSSL needs a culture change and to figure out what Students’ Union’s need in the 21st century to connect with their memberships and remains as the gatekeepers of getting messages to the student body.
