Unity in diversity
Entreclubs exist in many forms, and engage in a diverse range of activities on campuses throughout the US. There are however, some common themes.

• Most entreclubs involve some collaboration of student, faculty, administration and alumni.
• Most are designed to educate students about entrepreneurship, provide them with networking opportunities, and aid them in preparing a business plan to enter in a competition.

The diversity of entrepreneurship clubs is a tribute to the entrepreneurial spirit that inspires their creation. To be true to this entrepreneurial spirit, we won't dictate the best way to start and run an entreclub. Instead, we will present best practices drawn from a survey of well-know entrepreneurship clubs and from our own experience starting the UMass Five Colleges Entreclub and Business Plan Competition.

The UMass Five Colleges group uses Entreclub as our organizational name. In this manual we’ll use "entreclub" as a generic name for the kind of organization we’re talking about. We hope that our ideas and experiences, and those of our sister organizations around the country, will lead you to define entreclub in a way that best fits the needs of your campus community.

Four entreclub functions
In this manual, we’ll describe an entreclub according to four distinct functions. An entreclub operates as an organization, a network, an educational program, and a sponsoring body for business plan competitions.

First and foremost, an entreclub is an organization of students motivated to practice and promote entrepreneurship. An entreclub is also a network of people and resources from that community who can aid students in their entrepreneurial goals.

An entreclub is a program of co-curricular educational events and activities that help promote entrepreneurship in the community.

Finally, an entreclub sponsors business plan competitions that provide incentive for students to launch their entrepreneurial ventures into the business community.

We’ll explain each of these four functions in further detail in the corresponding sections of the guide.

A work in progress
Keep good records as you form your new entreclub, or revitalize one already started. Let us know how it goes, and how this guide has helped you, as well as what resources would help you further. Your experiences are the real-life substance that will keep this resource vital and useful.