Impact Report 2016/17

WE ARE DSU AN EXCEPTIONAL STUDENT EXPERIENCE

Impact Report 2016/17

Your Union “Wow! Looking back on what we – together with our students – have been able to achieve in the last 12 months, it’s clear that we’ve had a fantastic year, enjoying our biggest Freshers celebrations to date, appointing a new CEO and creating #YourNewDSU; with £3million invested in our newly refurbished home and a swish new brand that students told us they wanted.

“In this Impact Report you’ll be able to see all of the changes we’ve been able to make for students, at the university, and beyond to ensure your student life is the best it possibly can be and that every student at DMU is academically represented.

“But the union’s work doesn’t stop here; we’re looking forward to your newly-elected Officer Team leading an even bigger and better year in 2017/18, and we hope that you can be part of what promises to be our biggest year yet!”

Ahtesham, Augustus, Dan, Keira & Mike

Executive Officer Team 2016/17

James Gardner

DMU Pro Vice-Chancellor (Strategic and International Partnerships) and member of DSU Trustee Board

“De Montfort University (DMU) is committed to working in partnership with De Montfort Students’ Union (DSU) to help deliver an exceptional student experience, and it is extremely pleasing to see this Impact Report filled with stories of activities, opportunities and services that have benefited students over the past year.

“I look forward to our continued relationship and am excited to see more great work from the union in 2017/18.”

Who we are Our Values and Mission

De Montfort Students’ Union (DSU) is an independent student-run and student-led organisation. We’re here to involve, represent and inspire you to make the most of your time at De Montfort University (DMU).

We know that your time at university isn’t just about education, but also about developing and shaping your future through the experiences and memories you create; and we’re here to help you achieve this through our mission to create an exceptional student experience.

For 2016/17, we delivered this through our mission and core values to;

…and we made sure that this was at the heart of everything we did in 2016/17.

Officer Team 2016/17

Our Officer Team for this academic year was made up of five full-time officers and six part-time liberation representatives;

full time

Part time

Staff Team

They were democratically elected by their fellow DMU students in our then record-breaking Elections in March 2016.

The staff team was headed by our Senior Leadership Team...

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Head of Commercial

Head of Finance

Head of Membership Services

Head of People

The rest of the staff team comprised of departments split into; SUpplies Milly Lane’s and Venue Marketing and Communications

Finance

Student Voice

Activities Advice

Human Resources

Financial Statements

E

very penny of profit we make from our commercial services, including Milly Lane’s and SUpplies, is reinvested into the students’ union to help us deliver a great quality service and opportunities for all at DMU.

reinvested back into

In 2016/17, we were also supported by a block grant of £1,044,793 from the university.

Here is where that money was spent.

Our Outgoings 2016/17 Reception £46,744

People and Organisational Development £65,561

Venue Refurbishment £50,000

Building £19,214 Central Services £315,917

SUpplies £99,858 Marketing & Communications £102,815

Advice £229,989

Voice £124,371

Activities £156,610 Governance £164,993 Central Services

Insurance, legal and professional fees plus CEO and Finance department.

Advice

Advice centre, campaigns, visa application processing and academic board representation.

Milly Lane’s and Venue Day-to-day running of Milly Lane’s and our new multi-purpose venue.

Governance

Officer Team, campaigns and annual affiliation to the National Union of Students.

Milly Lane’s and Venue £208,599

Marketing & Communications

Shouting about all of the great things that your students’ union does.

Activities

SUpplies

Voice

People and Organisational

Societies, volunteering groups, Demon Media and support for sports clubs.

Elections, campaigns, representation including training of Course Reps, School Reps and Trustees plus Student Councils.

Day-to-day running of SUpplies.

Human resources and investment in staff development.

Venue Refurbishment

Refurbishment of the new students’ union venue within #YourNewDSU, designed to hold day and night events.

Reception

Staff for reception desk and other associated costs.

Building

Maintenance and cleaning of the Campus Centre, home to De Montfort Students’ Union.

More than 5,000 students rec eived welcome packs from us on – or near to – A-level Results Day in August 2016 explaining what we do, the support we offer through our MyUniPal project, and what #FreshFest16 was all about.

D

uring #FreshFest16, we sold more student group memberships than ever before (1,500 society memberships, 400 sports memberships and 60 Demon Media memberships) at our biggest Activities Fair yet, raised almost £1,200 for the university’s Square Mile India project with our vibrant ColourFest event on Bede Park, and helped save more than 4,000 students money at our Freshers Fair in the Queen Elizabeth II Leisure Centre.

We helped students do good, too, with 101 DMU students signing up to the NHS Organ Donation Register on just one day, and our MyUniPal scheme – which pairs first-years up with volunteer mentors who have done it all before – directly helping 60 students and families during #FreshFest16.

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And, of course, there was everything you’d expect from Freshers Week; with more than 1,900 wristbands sold, 324 cinema night attendees and 242 day trip attendees to places like Twycross Zoo and the Harry Potter Studio Tour. Oh, and our Freshers Ball was headlined by X Factor winner Louisa Johnson. And if that’s not enough numbers for you, we also rounded up the celebrations with our hugely popular #FreshFest16 in numbers infographic.

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YOUR

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his academic year saw the climax of our multi-million-pound transformation of our home, the Campus Centre.

After a £3million investment from the university, we turned the building into a fantastic hub for students to relax, socialise and really make your student life exceptional, and we enjoyed a Grand Opening with special guest and Premier League champion Christian Fuchs back in January 2017.

During the period from June to December 2016, we were based in The Art Factory and enjoyed a successful #FreshFest16 and maintained our opportunities and support for students during our time away from the Campus Centre.

During the transformation of the Campus Centre, we took the opportunity to refresh our physical and digital presence, too. More than 1,500 DMU students gave their input on creating our new logo and brand, which was unveiled in July 2016.

The ‘speech bubble’ design represents your students’ union’s biggest job – academically representing students and giving you your voice at DMU. Our main colours are a modern slate and graphite.

We’ve also split our work into four ‘sub-brands’ that help you make the most of your time at DMU, each with their own colour. There’s Activities (red), Voice (purple), Support (gold) and Life (teal); all designed to bring us bang up to date with a distinctive image that is optimised for the digital age.

The new logo and brand

Voice Activities Support

Life

New Home Your £3 million

Y

ou’ll find a completely revamped reception desk on the ground floor, alongside our very own SUpplies shop, a convenience store, Starbucks coffee, an expanded Sulets shop and Subway.

The centrepiece of the ground floor is Milly Lane’s – our fresh new place to eat and drink to cover all tastes.

We also listened to what you wanted from #YourNewDSU, so alongside Milly Lane’s you’ll find a new Heat and Eat station where you can microwave food made at home in the first area of its kind on the DMU campus.

Once you’ve grabbed a bite to eat, head up to the first floor using our huge new centrepiece staircase (or the lift behind reception) and see how we’ve totally transformed the upstairs of the Campus Centre.

Your Officer Team have an increased presence in the new building, and now sit within the new Voice and Activities office on the first floor – pop in anytime to see how you can get more involved in sports clubs, societies, volunteering and Demon Media as well as having your voice heard at DMU. Meanwhile, our Advice team now sit alongside DSU’s Senior Leadership Team and Marketing and Communications department in a brand new open-plan office on the first-floor.

At the top of the new staircase you’ll also find a suite of purpose-built appointment rooms available for our advisers to help you with virtually any welfare- or course-related query.

On top of all that, there’s now more space than ever in our building, too, with the Chat, Relax, Unwind and Play chill out pods (with all important charging points for your phone) running down the centre of the building on the first floor.

An exciting new day and night venue – in place of Level 1 – was also opened in April 2017.

Voice O

ur Officer Team – in 2016/17 was made up of 11 current or former DMU students – once again ensuring that we fulfil our role to academically represent you and make sure your voice is being heard at the university and beyond.

Keira and Augustus kicked off the academic year with The Big Support Survey, which saw more than 1,000 responses telling us both what DMU students want and need.

We held countless awareness campaigns like Take a Stand Week (Keira), our own take on the national This Girl Can campaign (Lauren), and Disability Awareness Day (Louise), as well as our first ever Shape Your Future Conference in November 2016, designed to help students expand their employability opportunities after graduation and led by Ahtesham and Augustus.

Before #FreshFest16 had even begun, we found out that our long-standing campaign for extended opening hours at the university’s Kimberlin Library had been successful – with the facilities now open to students 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Expanding our campaigns for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students was also a big part of our year, with the Officer Team pledging in August 2016 to combat the attainment gap faced by BME students across the higher education (HE) sector.

We did this with our first ever BME in Leadership Conference in January 2017 (in the same week as a similar Women in Leadership Event) and with the nationally-recognised BME Inspired event in April 2017 that saw award-winning rapper and poet Akala come to campus to inspire students – and later won Augustus a national award.

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Oh, and we got free printing for students.

No biggie.

When it comes to representation, we supported our more than 658 Course Reps and more than 30 School Representative Coordinators (SRCs) academically represent their peers at DMU, trained at our record-breaking (225 students) Course Rep Conference in November 2016 and who logged more than 600 hours of volunteering – but we know it was actually a whole lot more.

We also expanded the coverage of our Student Councils this year, allowing more students than ever become a part of our democratic structures and ensure we put students at the heart of everything we do. 16 new policies were submitted to both Activities and Education Councils throughout the year, and we packed out a lecture theatre with over 225 students - well above the sector average - for our biggest Annual General Meeting (AGM) to date in December.

It was always going to be difficult to top our previous biggest Elections turnout from 2016 during this year – but you helped us smash all previous records!

A record 55 candidates stood for your votes across ten posts in our main #LeadYourDSU Elections in March 2017, with 5,455 students almost a quarter of all of those at DMU – casting an enormous 25,905 votes for your new Officer Team.

During the Elections period, there were more than 375,000 page views across our entire website, and we enjoyed 20,937 views of #LeadYourDSU-related material across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram that helped us get the word out to as many students as possible.

We helped students have a say on a national stage, too, when our #GenerationVote campaign saw 118 students register to vote directly through our website – plus countless others thanks to our #GenerationVote volunteers – for the all-important General Election in June 2017.

Activities W

e’re all about providing you with lots of opportunities to get involved in; and that’s exactly what we did over the last 12 months (for 6,508 of you, to be exact)!

We kicked off the year with a new-look Activities Fair at #FreshFest16, which saw a record 120 student groups pack out Hawthorn and Magazine Squares to attract almost 2,000 memberships from students new and old.

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Those committee members, plus those involved with student projects and volunteering with outside organisations (enabled by our online volunteering module) logged an incredible total of 21,864 volunteering hours and made a real impact on the community at DMU and around the city of Leicester.

Our hugely successful student media group, Demon Media, also enjoyed another brilliant year – welcoming hundreds of students to the annual Student Radio Association (SRA) Conference for the first time since 2013.

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Some of the biggest names in radio – including Greg James, Mistajam and James O’Brien as well as Stephanie Hirst, Christian O’Connell and Steve Lamacq headed to DMU for the event which saw keynotes, breakouts and other sessions designed to help students make their mark in the radio industry.

The Demon enjoyed a second successful year as a magazine, being nominated for three Student Publication Association awards, while DemonTV picked up four more national awards and were highly commended for Best Broadcaster at the National Student Television Association Awards.

But to top it all off, in February 2017 we became one of only six institutions across Leicestershire to achieve the prestigious Investing in Volunteers Quality Standard, which recognises our commitment towards supporting volunteers – whether that be running a society or sports club, representing your course mates or just helping another student settle into university life – and much more.

Support Being there to help, support and advise students at DMU is a massive part of what we do.

Our free, confidential and independent service of professional DSU advisers (recognised with the Advice Quality Standard for the ninth year in a row) dealt with 6,179 queries and achieved an 86% satisfaction rating on our annual feedback survey.

Within all of that, we’ve managed to save students a

staggering £ 74,343.41 in student finance appeals, housing deposits and other complaints that they would otherwise have paid.

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We’ve taken great steps to expand our work over the last 12 months, by forging new links with the university’s #DMUglobal team, meaning we can equip more students than ever before with all of the information needed to apply for European and US visas – including the huge trips to New York and Berlin.

Plus, we ran proactive awareness campaigns around housing, deferrals and academic offences, and joined up once again with the National Association of Student Money Advisors (NASMA)’s Money Week back in February 2017 where we held a Clothes Swish for DMU students to swap unwanted clothes for fresh threads.

We also brought the NHS-run CHOICES clinic to campus for the first time, with the weekly confidential drop-in service allowing students to pick up condoms and other contraception for free through the C-Card scheme, as well as undertaking routine STI screening, pregnancy testing and pregnancy referrals.

Students continue to run the Student Sexual Health (SSH) Clinic, which is also part of the C-Card scheme, and gives future nurses and sexual health volunteers experience of helping real people.

We unveiled the first public access defibrillator on the DMU campus in April with the help of the Joe Humphries Memorial Trust (JHMT).

The move, which will make the heart of campus a safer place for students, staff and the public alike, is thanks to DSU’s unique partnership with the Trust, set up after the death of 14-year-old Joe from sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS) in 2012.

!

The defibrillator was officially unveiled by Joe’s father and Trust founder Steve Humphries, Joe’s sister Lauren alongside Dan and Ahtesham.

Our MyUniPal scheme saw a number of student volunteers mentoring almost one hundred of their fellow students who could otherwise have dropped out of university.

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Life We’re committed to providing you with everything you need to enjoy your uni life.

We opened up the freshest addition to #YourNewDSU in February 2017.

Our new bar and restaurant opened its doors to DMU students, staff and other Leicester residents in February 2017. The all-new menu, created with feedback from student groups and our Officer Team, is made up of fresh ingredients with locally-sourced fruit, vegetables and meat, and we’ve tried to make sure that there’s something on offer for everyone at affordable prices.

Our students’ union shop – rebranded this year as ‘SUpplies’ – continues to go from strength to strength, offering stationary, art supplies and dissertation binding (plus everything in between) at competitive prices.

Sulets, the lettings charity that we part own with the University of Leicester Students’ Union, also enjoyed another successful year by introducing Sulets Extra, a student experience driven programme of lifestyle activities and events, and a brand-new high street store in #YourNewDSU. We also introduced a new Code of Standards for shared student housing, outlining to property owners the standards that Sulets expect. This means a greater consistency of safety, service and housing to put your mind at rest!

And that’s not all. Saving students money is a massive part of what we’re about, and 2,693 of you made the most of our affiliation to the NUS and purchased an NUS extra card to get even more deals on the high street, online and abroad. Those cards also helped us raise more than £19,000; every penny of which being reinvested into all of the opportunities we offer to students at DMU.

We rounded off the year with an enormous celebration of your achievements with The DSU Awards. More than 400 of you descended on the home of football (the King Power Stadium) as we recognised societies, sports clubs and volunteering groups alongside Course Reps and SRCs at the same event for the first time ever.

Laying the foundations for our future So, after such an amazing year, where do we go

from here? In 2016/17 we’ve also made sure to lay the foundations for a successful future at DSU. President Dan’s extensive search for a new CEO came to an end in April 2017 when we appointed Jo Bradley-Fortune as the leader of our staff team.

Jo will now work with the new Officer Team, Trustee Board and Senior Leadership Team on a new Strategic Plan that will take the students’ union through to 2020, with greater focus on our position as a collaborative yet critical friend of the university.

Jo explained: “It’s essential for moving forward as an organisation that we recognise DMU and the transformation that it has gone through to become a leading university in the HE sector.

“Over the next few years, we aim to become the best in our sector, too, by working closely with the university, local partners and especially you to ensure that, together, we provide and exceptional student experience.”

“As a member of the Officer Team and Trustee Board in 2016/17 it has been a privilege to see the transformation that the students’ union has undertaken over the last 12 months.

“Both our new home – and the students’ union in general – are now a fantastic hub for students at DMU, and it is even better to see that we have been identified as a top ten SU. “Over the coming year, we will continue to strive for excellence by championing the student voice through innovative projects and campaigns, as well as delivering all of the brilliant services students at DMU have come to expect from us.

Ahtesham Mahmood President of DSU 2017/18

“I’m looking forward to another record-breaking year in 2017/18.”

2017/18 Our Officer Team for 2017/18 will be made up of full-time officers;

As well as part-time officers;

They were democratically elected by their fellow DMU students in our record-breaking Elections in March 2017.

Put that all together, and the future’s looking good for us to fulfil our mission of delivering an exceptional student experience. We can’t wait!

Highlights

Click the pictures to find out more!

Meet our DS-DOers!

15/07/16

Library open 24/7 after DSU lobbying 14/09/16

Record sign-ups at #FreshFest16’s biggest Activities Fair EVER 07/10/16

We’ve got you covered (literally) when it comes to safe sex 25/10/16

More than 1,500 of you #ReviewDSU 08/11/16

Officer Team do their bit to help keep you safe 09/11/16

Christian Union help make ScareFest a little less…scary 21/11/16

“Everyone knows that Christmas and cheesy music is a match made in heaven.”

01/12/16

ISOC more than double previous Charity Week total 08/12/16

Volunteers help wrap hundreds of presents for needy children 15/12/16

Officer Team make student life unforgettable 3,395 miles away 20/01/17

Premier League champion cuts ribbon on #YourNewDSU 26/01/17

Students go head-to-head with sporting legends at Goals 02/02/17

CoppaFeel! group top the tables nationally for December 06/02/17

Officer Team show solidarity at #LoveInternational Vigil 09/02/17

Games Development create seven games…in just two days!

10/02/17

Groups net thousands for charity at Netfest 16/02/17

DemonFM on the air from ‘nice and shiny’ new studio 24/02/17

The Great RAG Challenge: ACCEPTED! 07/03/17

DMU students join 250,000 for #OurNHS march 10/03/17

RESULTS: Meet the new team who will #LeadYourDSU 17/03/17

More free days between exams after DSU lobbying 17/03/17

Music Society pack out Firebug for Varsity victory 31/03/17

DemonTV bag FOUR more national awards for Demon Media 03/04/17

DSU unveil first public defib at the heart of campus 04/04/17

Graduate Support Fund launched after DSU lobbying 10/04/17

Industry names flock to DMU for DemonFM’s #SRACon 24/04/17

Officer Team encourage students to Be the Change 04/05/17

Students look back on an incredible year at The DSU Awards 23/05/17

New CEO reinforces pledge to make student life exceptional 25/05/17

Augustus scoops national Black Representation Award 26/05/17

Officer Team help unearth culture on #DMUglobal trip to Berlin 20/06/17

AN EXCEPTIONAL STUDENT EXPERIENCE

/demontfortstudents @demontfortsu demontfortsu demontfortsu LoveDSU

Charity Number: 1138587