Plan each semester in advance. Choose your topic and work out a schedule as early as possible, and contact ARI to request the necessary materials and arrange your campus talks for the semester.

Advertise your club. Poster your campus, and hand out flyers promoting your club and announcing your schedule. Make sure to advertise campus talks and your meetings well ahead of time. Take advantage of any free online announcements or calendars your university may have available.

Remember that campus talks are possible at any point throughout the semester but the planning of an event should begin at least 2 months in advance. In addition to the talk at the start of a semester, also consider ending the semester with one. For instance, if the theme of your next semester is “Selfishness as a Virtue,” you can organize one of the talks on selfishness before the summer. This is an effective means of advertising throughout next semester’s activities and drawing more people into your club.

If arranging a campus talk is not possible, you may want to use some of the videotaped talks available from ARI instead.

Hold regular meetings at scheduled times. You want members to be able to plan their time and avoid conflict with other activities.

Follow through. Once you have announced a schedule, stick to it. Don’t cancel meetings without announcing it well in advance.

Choose a single topic running through the whole semester, and study the same topic using a variety of materials. See the sample schedules listed below for suggestions on how to do this.

Incorporate books, articles and taped lectures into your club’s meetings. Let everyone read an article or a chapter, then meet and discuss it. Or listen to a taped lecture together and discuss its contents. ARI has a large selection of taped lectures and other study resources for use by clubs.

Look for concrete examples to illustrate the main points of an article or lecture. Ask your club members to come up with examples from their own experience, or look for examples in the news and media. (E.g., if you are discussing the phenomenon of the secondhander in The Fountainhead, don’t just illustrate this by means of characters from the novel. Try to come up with people you know or choices you made in the past that you would now do differently or find some blatant appeals to the opinions of others in the media.) Have this exercise as a regular feature of every meeting; it will clarify and solidify everyone’s understanding of how Objectivism applies to real life.

Avoid lengthy discussions about very complicated, mixed or borderline cases. Such cases can be impossible to resolve before you have a firm grasp of the relevant principles. First you need to study the clear-cut cases to grasp the principles, then later you can apply the principles to resolve the complex cases.

Avoid spending your meetings on discussing controversial, current-events-type issues. Most members will be attracted to your club because they are excited about the novels and the philosophy of Ayn Rand. The focus of your meetings should be to study the philosophy, not the newspapers. Also keep in mind that often Objectivism does not even have any position on a concrete issue (e.g., gun control, or what political candidate to vote for).

At the end of the semester, get feedback from the members. Find out how they think the meetings went, and solicit suggestions for improvement.

And, most important, let us know how ARI can help you run a successful club. Contact us at any time during the semester with your questions, comments and suggestions at clubs@aynrand.org