I remember the time when I was a freshman and wandered aimlessly through all the organization booths on Quad Day. That was also how my RSO story began: I saw clubs for literally everything and felt overwhelmed realizing that if I was not interested in any of them, then my college life would be so boring in the next four years (don’t laugh, I did actually think in this way before but I don’t agree now). Then, feeling unprepared and dehydrated, I gave my email address to many organizations. Immediately, I got their warm welcome emails and their weekly updates emails are like permanent visitors in my inbox (flash forward to my senior year: I will still get their emails).
Personally, I am interested in a medicine track. Similar to many other pre-Med students, I stress about getting involved in extracurricular activities, especially when class gets harder. Finally, I realized that it's better to stay active in just a few organizations than to simply leave my name in the membership name sheets.
Volunteer Illini Projects (VIP), which was a major RSO that I used to commit to, taught me how to get more publicity for my events in college. I was the blood director in VIP and was in charge of monthly blood drives, which were sponsored by American Red Cross and Community Blood Services of Illinois alternately. One tricky thing I found out was that eligible blood donors needed to be residents who had been lived in United States for at least three years. That being said, most international students were ineligible to donate. My first several blood drives therefore pushed me to interact with domestic students, which at first drove me sort of crazy. I felt like I was in sales and got to persuade others that donating blood was needed. It's hard, believe me, partially because U of I is such a huge campus and any successful event known by students and faculties needs strong publicity. Besides, there was also a donor relations consultant in each sponsor, who frequently shot me emails reminding me how far I was from reaching my recruiting goal. I became stressed out, for the first time due to an organization responsibility.
Luckily, after the first few blood drives, I really soon found out that I could enlarge the influence of blood drives by reaching out to other RSOs for help, and it worked so well! I sent an email to a big student-ran organization (e.g., Greek House, pre-med fraternity, etc.) asking for more sponsorship beforehand. In most situations, students in that organization would love to sponsor and help spread my drives. Furthermore, VIP has its advisor and former student directors, who would love to give me advice and help me out. When I almost finished my term after 12 months, I was totally about to cry out loud: I made it! I felt like I was grown-up and knew more about what college event publicity was.
Organization involvement can be a really time-consuming, yet rewarding experience. Several tips I find helpful if you are also planning an event for your RSO: First, you could obtain the required permissions (e.g., space registration) and plan the details well in advance to increase your chance of holding a successful event. Second, you could also look for sponsorship as well as additional support from more experienced people, such as your former student leader and RSO advisor. I know Illini Union has an Event Services team that you could also seek for help.