I’ve spent nine months wrapping up Student Hubs and I’ve learnt a lot about what it means to successfully close activities.
The financial position of universities and students’ unions means some activities will close. Students’ unions are reflecting on what works and what activities may need to be scaled back or closed altogether.
Student Hubs was a social action charity which supported university students to tackle local social and environmental issues through volunteering, placements and in-curricular activities. We announced our closure in June 2024 due to insufficient funding and concerns about the instability of the higher education sector.
As I look at Student Hubs’ closure there are lessons which stand out as being useful for students’ unions and universities to explore as they reimagine their activities.
Be joined up in your closure
Closing an activity can bring up lots of emotions, particularly if it has been long-standing or has involved large financial or resource investment. It may feel like choosing to end anything means it failed.
But in my experience when closure is done well it can be empowering, even if it is sad to acknowledge that the opportunity didn’t work out or didn’t last as long as you would have hoped for.
Equally, if you’re scaling down an offer, it’s not always a bad thing. Doing less enables staff teams to provide higher levels of support to the activities which continue to run.
It can provide a more joined up experience for students participating in activities. In closing Student Hubs, we used the opportunity of scaling down to handover activities to other student societies who were already doing similar work so they could grow.
We spoke to our university partners to map where activities could continue in a different format, so their legacy remained for students to participate in.
Inevitably, closing our activity created gaps which couldn’t be filled. To address this, we provided information about activities across the university and local community which were similar for our former volunteers and partners. This meant people impacted by our closure could try and find another activity to do, even if it wasn’t a like-for-like opportunity.
If there isn’t an alternative for the activity, it’s good to acknowledge this too for the future.
Closing and feedback
Regardless of how quickly an activity needs to close it is essential to communicate change as soon as possible. People will discover this information at different times and the news could come as a shock to some; the aim is to communicate as much as possible so everyone is clear on what change is happening and the next steps.
For example, when closing our local branches, we shared different communications with our student committees, our community partners and volunteers to help them understand the impact of the news. This gave students and partners the time to create feedback to share with the university, which led to discussions taking place to plan for this change.
Students are often the most impacted by a change in activity and can be frustrated by the news. Ensuring that students have an outlet through this process supports them to share their feelings and have their views represented.
Consider the legacy
If there is a limited timeframe to close an activity, thinking about your legacy is key to winding down activities successfully.
This may involve creating a webpage following the closure of the opportunity to collate photos, quotes or impact which students and staff can submit to. It could be a shared document which captures the learning and lessons with case studies publicised by the students’ union or university.
By making our decision to close early at Student Hubs, we were able to dedicate our time to collating our work into toolkits, case studies and reports which would be available for the public. We celebrated what Student Hubs had achieved over 16 years and this gave our team their own sense of closure.
Closure doesn’t mean failure
Several factors make the difference in a closure feeling well-managed, including time, wellbeing support and knowing the minimum markers of success.
Making a closure decision in a timely manner means there will be enough space for how long things may take to shut down. Closing Student Hubs over the course of several months enabled the team to do justice to the students, universities and partners we worked with, and cement our legacy appropriately.
Recognising that this process might be hard for the people involved allows the team to prioritise wellbeing throughout the closure. This could involve running a drop-in session for students to share their thoughts on the decision; supporting staff to work more flexibly during this process; or simply acknowledging that this work will be hard and recognising what everyone is doing to support it.
Finally, it’s important to capture what success looks like for the team. Closures can be messy, complicated, and issues could emerge which hadn’t originally been considered.
Outline what a successful closure looks like at a minimum and make sure these remain central whilst navigating other challenges. The team can feel satisfied if they know these minimum markers of success have been met.
Closing activities is hard, but it’s not the end. Knowing your activity made a difference is powerful, and closing an activity well serves students far better in the long-term, freeing your team to focus on what really matters.
