Starting a College Irish Dance team from scratch is a challenging but rewarding experience, with life skills and lessons that will transcend beyond your Irish Dance career. Every school is different, and therefore starting a team will be different for each school. However, we’re here to help as best we can to point you in the right direction, empowering you to be a leader at your school. Here are some frequently asked questions to help get you started.

Where should I register within my school?

There are several departments that we would recommend looking into for your club registration, based upon what we have seen with existing teams. Some teams are classified as club sports, some performing arts groups, and some just a student organization. Again, each school is different, so yours might be different all together. If you are able to have options in registration, it is important to weight the pros and cons of each department. Which department will give the most financial support to travel to events? Which department will have the most involved advisor who can help fundraise and plan events, possibly being more valuable than just an initial budget? Which department can give you practice space? Explore your campus, and see where it makes sense to register your Irish Dance Team.

How do I find more dancers?

Part of the beauty of College Irish Dance is you find out more people on campus share the passion for Irish Dance than you realized. Between colleges having students from all over the world, not just your home region of Irish Dance, and having a wide range of abilities from dancers still competing to those who stopped in their younger years, there tend to be more Irish Dancers on your campus than you realize. Find out if there is an activity fair for clubs where you can set up a table, it is a great way to get face to face exposure. Utilize your school newspaper, or email wire, or other internal resources to spread the word as wide as possible on campus. And don’t forget, you always have us here at CIDA to post on our instagram for you, just reach out to us with a post that we can share.

In addition to finding other students with an Irish Dance background, you may also find many students interested in learning Irish Dance for the first time. The College Irish Dance community loves welcoming in new beginners, and it starts on your campus. You may surprise yourself to see how quickly you can teach a new dancer their 3’s and 7’s, and be able to put them in a soft shoe choreography number with just that base knowledge!

How do I write a constitution?

It is common for the colleges to have a preferred template for their clubs to use when starting a new organization. This usually has a structured outline where you state the club mission, the board (president, secretary, treasurer, etc.), and member responsibilities. It is important to have this to provide the club structure, and also show the school you are serious. There are also lots of examples online with a quick search - but writing a constitution is a great life skill to have and one you may talk about in an interview down the road!

How do I register with CIDA?

Once you are officially recognized as a club by your school, let us know and we can add you to our membership. As we have on our membership tab, new schools to CIDA are granted their first year of membership for free at our “At The Comp” level! This is to allow you to get settled into the organization as a whole, as well as your own on campus community. We will add you to our website, using your preferred club contact information, so that high school students can easily find you as they begin their college journey.

How do I fundraise?

Fundraising is another life skill that will transcend beyond Irish Dance. From our own experiences running teams, and talking with our member teams, utilizing your Irish affiliation can help set you apart from other fundraising efforts. St. Patrick’s Day T-Shirts are a great place to start, and you can sell them in September on 1/2 Way to St. Patrick’s Day as well. You can find out if any local restaurants have fundraisers where a portion of profits go to a club during an allocated time, and eventually you can start asking alumni to allocate any donations to the school directly to the Irish Dance team. There is no limit to the creativity, and when you can submit that check for your travel to the College Irish Dance Nationals, the efforts will be rewarded!