Grind the fall.
Earn the spring.

Last year proved the MSA could exist. This year it has to become something people remember. The plan is simple: fundraise hard from October through January, run real programming through Ramadan, and spend the last stretch of the year on the thing nobody at this school expects a club like ours to pull off.

What's actually different this year

This year's leadership

The non-negotiables

The Year Map

Ten months, three phases. Phase 1 sets up. Phase 2 is the grind that pays for everything. Phase 3 is what everyone remembers.

Phase 1 · Set Up September

Phase 2 · The Grind October – March

Phase 3 · The Payoff April – June

Fundraising Engine

Two products, two very different jobs. One makes the money. One makes us visible. Confusing which is which is how clubs end up busy and broke.

Sequencing — this part matters more than the products

Trip funding calculator

Change the numbers to match real quotes as they come in. This is the live version of "can we actually do this."

Rules that keep us legitimate

Other fundraisers worth running if we need more

The Trip

An end-of-year day trip that the club pays for itself. Not a reward for leadership — a reward for everyone who showed up all year. It only happens if the money is there, and everybody knows that from day one.

Destination options on the table

Draft itinerary — NYC day trip

Administration will require an hour-by-hour plan before they say yes to anything. This is the shape of it. Times are a template, not a commitment.

What each side pays for

The proposal we hand administration

The whole approval hinges on walking in with the work already done. A club asking permission to figure it out later gets a no. A club presenting a finished plan gets negotiated with. The proposal contains, in this order:

1. The purpose — what members get out of it, in educational and community terms, not "it would be fun"
2. Proof of member demand — the vote results and sign-up numbers from the club itself
3. The full hour-by-hour itinerary, including prayer blocks and meal stops
4. Supervision plan — chaperone-to-student ratio, buddy system, headcount protocol, phone tree
5. The complete budget — three written bus quotes, every line item, where each dollar came from
6. The funding record — month-by-month proof we earned it ourselves and are not asking the school for money
7. Parent permission and medical forms, ready to distribute
8. The contingency clause — stated plainly: if we do not hit the funding target by the deadline, the trip does not happen and money is returned. Saying this first is what makes the rest of it credible.

Meetings

Last year's floor was one meeting a month. This year's floor is two, and the target is three. A club people forget about between meetings is a club that dies in February.

Meeting 1 — Kickoff agenda

The single most important meeting of the year. Everything downstream depends on how many people walk out of this room actually wanting to be here.

Standard meeting format

Announcement format

Same format every time, so members recognize an official MSA announcement at a glance and actually read it.

Why this works: date stamp at the top so people know it's current · bold headline that survives a busy chat · a hook line that gives a reason to keep reading · the three things people always forget in their own block · a closing push that's warm rather than nagging.

Bringing People In

Every year this club is one bad recruiting season away from not existing. And the mechanism that actually works is not a poster.

The rule

How the first month runs

The recruiting angle we are underusing

What we are actually building

The measure of this year is not the fundraising total and it is not the trip. It is whether a freshman who walked in nervous in September is still here in June, and whether they would walk up to someone else next year and do what was done for them.

Everyone graduates. What we build now decides whether this club exists in five years or goes back to being a name on a list with nothing behind it.

Ramadan & Eid

The month the club matters most, and the month our normal fundraising model stops working. Both facts need planning in December, not February.

What changes during Ramadan

Week-by-week plan

The Roles

Every responsibility in this club has a name attached to it. That is the entire reason things stop falling through the cracks. Open your role, read all of it, and know what the others own too.

President

You make the plans. You get them approved. You run the meetings. You hold everyone accountable, including yourself. If something happens in this club it's because you made it happen, and if something fails it's because you didn't catch it in time.

Core responsibilities

• Plan the entire year — meetings, fundraisers, programming, the trip.
• Run every leadership and general meeting. Focused, on time, and worth attending.
• Get written approval from the Advisor and administration before anything starts. Two weeks minimum.
• Approve every public-facing post, poster and announcement before it goes live.
• Own recruitment. The freshman intake is the President's responsibility and cannot be delegated away.
• Hold the running money total and publish it to the club after every sale.
• Build and protect the relationship with the Advisor. He is the reason this club is allowed to exist.
• Train the President in Training all year. Not at the end — all year.
• Make sure every single member gets talked to, not just the people you already know.

Weekly rhythm

What you do not do

• Commit the club to anything without the Advisor's approval.
• Let a public post go out unreviewed, including a story.
• Handle club cash alone. Two people count, always.
• Let a month pass without a meeting.
• Discuss personnel decisions in the group chat. Ever.

Removal & authority

The President can be removed only by the Advisor, and only for consistent failure to meet expectations, loss of trust, or a Code of Conduct violation. No member, no VP, no coalition can remove the President. The trade is that the Advisor is a real check — stay in honest communication with him, follow the approval process, and there is never cause.

Succession — the Shadow Program

There is no election for President. The role holds the most authority, makes every major decision, and is the only position that reports to the Advisor — it does not go to whoever is most popular, it goes to whoever has been trained. The current President and the Advisor select the President in Training together, before senior year begins.

By June that person must be able to run a meeting, get an approval, lead a fundraiser, handle a conflict and talk to the Advisor without help. If they can't, the pick was wrong and it has to be addressed before handoff rather than discovered after it. See President in Training.

Vice President

One rank below the President and the club's second decision-maker. When the President isn't there, you don't hold things together — you run them, fully. This year the VP also owns two things the President genuinely cannot do alone.

What this VP owns outright

Core responsibilities

• Run meetings when the President is absent — fully, not partially.
• Lead all masjid-based events end to end: booking, plan, setup, concessions, close-out.
• Lead the administration approval conversations, with the President present.
• Be the trusted contact for members who have a question or a problem, and escalate what you can't resolve.
• Hold authority in the group chat — enforce the rules and back the President publicly.
• Create Google Forms for sign-ups and feedback.
• Make posters and slides when you have the time and want to; hand them to the President when you don't.
• Help capture content at events so the record doesn't depend on one person.

Schedule reality — written down so it stops being a problem

The working agreement between President and VP

Removal & authority

The VP serves at the President's discretion and can be removed for consistent failure to meet expectations — missed meetings, slow communication, no follow-through. The decision is the President's, with the Advisor informed. It's written plainly rather than left implied: show up, communicate, do the job, and the role is yours.

Social Media Manager

You are the only public face this club has, and this year you are also something bigger than that: you are the reason next year's MSA will be able to see what this year looked like.

The two jobs

Core responsibilities

• Post before every meeting — a reminder story or post the day before and the morning of.
• Post during every meeting — live stories from the room. This is what makes people who skipped it show up next time.
• Post after every meeting — a recap with photos of actual people, same day.
• Film and photograph everything. Meetings, fundraisers, movie nights, setup, the boring parts. You cannot edit footage you didn't shoot.
• Take photos of people, not just rooms and posters. Faces are what makes an account feel like a community instead of a bulletin board.
• Edit — reels, recap videos, and yes, the funny ones. Humor is what actually gets people to a meeting; a formal announcement graphic does not.
• Design posters for every event, or hand it to the President who can turn one around in ten minutes with AI. Either is fine. A late poster is not.
• Answer DMs and comments within 24 hours, professionally.
• File the raw footage in the shared folder, dated, after every event.
• Protect the account credentials. Shared with the President only.

Content system — so it's never a blank page

Anything political, sensitive, or about world events

Goes to the President before it is designed, not after. The answer is often yes with a rewrite. The answer is never "post it and see." If you are unsure whether something counts, it counts — ask.

Equipment & tools

• Proper recording and editing equipment is being provided by the President — ask for what you actually need rather than working around a phone.
• Canva or Canva AI for posters. The President can generate design work on request in about ten minutes if you're short on time.
• A shared drive folder for raw footage, organized by date.
• Instagram credentials, shared with the President only.

Success and failure

General Manager

The operator. If the VP is the President's right hand for leadership, the General Manager is the President's right hand for everything actually getting done. This is the least glamorous role in the club and the one that decides whether a year works.

Core responsibilities

• Announcements. Post every official announcement in the group chat, in the standard format, on time. At least one a week during active fundraiser and event windows.
• Talk to members. Answer questions, gauge interest, collect opinions, and tell the President what people are actually saying — not what they say in a meeting.
• Setup and teardown. Food, drinks, tables, chairs. Done before anyone arrives, cleared after everyone leaves.
• Sign-ups. Chase people until the Google Form is actually filled. A form with 8 responses when 40 said they were coming is a General Manager problem.
• Attendance. A real headcount at every meeting and event, written down. This number is how we prove the club is growing.
• Supplies. Bulk runs, inventory of boxes, decorations and banners, and never letting stock run out mid-sale.
• The money log. Count every sale with one other person present. Both initial it. Hand the total to the President the same day.
• The volunteer hour log. Track and sign off service hours for every member who works an event. See below — this one matters more than it sounds.
• Capture footage. Record meetings and events and hand the raw files to the Social Media Manager.
• Be the second set of hands wherever the President or VP needs one.

Weekly rhythm

• At least one announcement in the group chat during active weeks.
• Check in with the President about what the week needs.
• Reply to the President within 24 hours.
• Attend every leadership meeting.

How this role gets filled

What we're actually looking for

• Organized. Genuinely, provably — the kind of person whose work gets handed in on time without being chased.
• Responsible with money and with other people's time.
• Available during the school day, particularly in the mornings, since that's when sales and setup happen.
• Comfortable talking to people they don't already know.
• Not already overcommitted to three other clubs. This role needs real hours.

What applicants are told

"This is the role that makes everything else work. If you want to be part of what this club becomes this year, and you're willing to do real work that mostly happens behind the scenes, apply. If you want a title for a college application, don't."

Success and failure

President in Training

You are not an assistant and you are not an intern. You are next year's President, learning the job in real time for a full year before you inherit it, so that you start from where this year ended instead of from zero.

What the year looks like

• Sit in on every leadership meeting from September.
• Be in the room for Advisor and administration conversations where it's appropriate.
• Help plan meetings, fundraisers and events — not just attend them.
• Get handed real things to run, on purpose, while there's still someone to catch it.
• Watch how conflict and approvals actually get handled, including the parts that go badly.
• Take over pieces of meetings so that running one stops being intimidating before it's your job.

The bar by June

You should be able to do all of these without help: run a full meeting, get an event approved through the Advisor and administration, lead a fundraiser end to end, handle a conflict between members, talk to the Advisor as an equal, and represent the club to people outside it.

If you can't do all of that by graduation, the pick was wrong — and that gets addressed before the handoff, honestly, rather than discovered in October when it's your problem alone.

The handoff, in writing

Before the outgoing President leaves, all of this transfers on paper: every login, the Advisor and administration contacts, vendor and masjid contacts, the money records, the archive folder, the approval history, and this playbook updated to the next version with the year's learnings written into it.

Members

Leadership exists to serve the membership, not the other way around. Every event, every fundraiser and every program exists because members show up.

Who can join

Any student at Whitehall who joins, follows the rules and participates. You do not have to be Muslim to be here. You have to respect the community.

What's expected

• Show up to what you commit to, or say in advance that you can't. Either is fine. Silence isn't.
• Respect every other member, full stop.
• Follow the group chat rules.
• Support fundraisers where you can — sell, buy, or share.
• Bring ideas. Good ones get used, and the people who bring them get asked to help run them.
• Represent the club decently outside of meetings.

What you're owed

• A voice. Any idea or concern goes to the VP, or straight to the President if it involves the VP.
• A real answer when you raise something. Not a brush-off.
• Full transparency on money. The running total is published to the whole club.
• Documented volunteer hours for every event you work.
• A fair shot at leadership if you show up and contribute.
• The freedom to leave whenever you want, no questions and no hard feelings.
• A place where being Muslim at school isn't something you have to explain or downplay.

Getting into leadership

Roles aren't handed out, they're earned, and the path is not a secret: show up consistently, volunteer for the unglamorous tasks, build trust with the people currently doing the job, and say out loud that you're interested. That's it. That's the whole path.

Chain of Command

Every responsibility has a name attached to it, and every decision has a path. This isn't hierarchy for its own sake — it's what stops things from falling through the cracks and stops disagreements from becoming factions.

The President in Training sits alongside the President all year, observing and practicing, outside the reporting line.

The rules

Approval Protocol

If you only read one section of this playbook, read this one. Every other page describes what we want to do. This page describes the only way any of it is allowed to happen.

Why this is stricter than it needs to be

A student club that represents a religious community operates with less margin for error than most clubs at this school. A single public post that lands wrong — even one that would be unremarkable coming from anyone else — can turn into a meeting where the club's continued existence is genuinely on the table. That has already happened here once, and the President was the one who had to sit in that room, take responsibility, and put in writing how it wouldn't happen again.

The lesson isn't to be quiet or to be afraid. It's this: get approval early, in writing, for everything, so that the answer is already settled before anyone has to ask a question about it. Approval obtained in advance is protection. Approval sought after the fact is damage control.

Who to talk to

The approval chain

1. Bring it to the Advisor first. Talk it all the way through before it goes anywhere else. He should never hear about an MSA plan from somebody other than us.
2. Take it to administration in writing, with the plan already built — not as an idea to be figured out later.
3. Complete any required paper forms at the main office.
4. Submit them and follow up by email so there's a record of the submission.
5. Wait for written confirmation. Verbal is not confirmation. "Sounds good" is not confirmation.
6. Only then announce, post, sell, or book anything.

The rules on top of the chain

Conduct & Group Chat

The group chat is the club's nervous system. It's also where every problem this club has ever had started. Both things are true and the rules below account for both.

Code of conduct — all members

• Be on time to what you commit to.
• Respond within 24 hours when you're tagged.
• Represent the club respectfully on and off school grounds.
• Disagreements stay internal. Public unity, always.
• Respect every member regardless of background, gender or how well you know them.

Group chat rules — pinned

1. Respect every member. No personal attacks, slurs, harassment or targeting.
2. Keep it relevant to the MSA. This isn't a meme dump.
3. No promoting personal businesses, side hustles or unrelated events without approval.
4. No inappropriate content — nothing you wouldn't say in front of the Advisor.
5. Stay civil. Disagreement is fine. Insults and drama aren't.
6. No spam, mass tagging or chain forwards.
7. Everything posted here represents the club. Act accordingly.

Who manages the chat

• President — primary admin, final authority.
• Vice President — admin, enforces rules and backs the President.
• General Manager — admin, posts announcements and adds members.
• Social Media Manager — admin only with President approval.
• Only the President, VP or GM add new members. New members get welcomed and pointed at the pinned rules.

Penalty ladder

Penalties are applied by the President with the VP's input, and briefly documented so future incidents have context. Anything that happens in the chat can be reported at any time — to the VP first, or straight to the President if it involves the VP. Every report is taken seriously.

The Record

We did a whole year of real work and kept almost no proof of it. That ends here. Every meeting and every event leaves a trace, and the traces are what the next president inherits.

What gets logged, every time

Where it lives

• This playbook — the plans, the roles, the rules. Updated as the year goes and versioned at handoff.
• Shared drive folder — raw photos and video by date, posters, forms, approval emails.
• Money log — every sale, two initials, running total.
• Hour log — every member, every event worked, signed.
• Instagram — the public half of the record.

Version history

Every president who inherits this is expected to update it with what they learned, add what's missing, and sign their changes. That's how it stays alive instead of becoming a document nobody opens.

Pass it down. Keep it alive. Leave it stronger.

War Room

The working document between the two people running this club. Everything here came out of the planning conversations. It gets updated as the year moves.

Agreed so far

The working agreement

Immediate to-do

• Post the "what do you want this year" message in the group chat, with a freshman push attached
• Confirm the Meeting 1 date and room with Mr. Freeman
• President + VP sit-down with Mr. Freeman on the full year plan, before Meeting 1
• VP contacts Shireen to hold an October night for Movie Night #1
• Start the approval paperwork for the October movie night
• Build the Meeting 1 slideshow
• Write the General Manager application form
• Confirm the SMM equipment list and order what's missing
• Get three written charter bus quotes so the trip number stops being a guess
• Decide the trip destination shortlist to put to a member vote
• Confirm exact Ramadan dates with the masjid

Open Decisions

Things not yet settled. Each one has an owner and a point by which it has to be answered, so nothing sits in limbo until it becomes urgent.