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Our Vision - KIVI Aerospace

The KIVI AEROSPACE ENGINEERING department represents students and professionals active within the Dutch Aerospace industry. Through an established network and activities, the goal is to connect, to inspire and to challenge professionals.

 

 

 

GOALS

  1. To connect
  2. Ensure continuity of an active department
  3. Exchange of high quality subject matter expertise
  4. To inspire and entertain
  5. Be professionally relevant
  6. Embody a representation of the (upcoming) Dutch aerospace engineering community

 

Board formation and continuity

The goal of the Aerospace board is to organise events that facilitate the exchange of high quality knowledge and expertise, while connecting students and professionals within the industry. Within the following years the Aerospace board aims to establish a sustainable body of active members within the AE department, to ensure continuity.

The composition of the board shall be a representation of the Dutch aerospace industry; consisting of 5-7 board members, all from different companies, with different expertise. The following four roles are mandatory to be fulfilled:

  • Chairman - Attendance at KIVI assemblies (such as Members’ Council) and meetings, general continuity of the board and their efforts
  • Secretary - Back-up of chairman at KIVI assemblies and point of contact for internal KIVI communication
  • Treasurer - Presentation of annual budget and balances, communication with financial administration of KIVI
  • Chief Communication - Maintain website, LinkedIn, announcements, event publications
  • General board member

Examples of other responsibilities include: maintain network, other societies, external meetings, event calendar, promotion and event organisation

The running period of the board is 4 years, with the possibility to extend once with another 4 years through reelection. AE board will strive to rotate at most two board members in one calendar year to ensure continuity and stability.

The AE board holds the responsibility to present the financial state of the department towards its’ members, during a General Members Assembly (GMA) which will be hosted at least once a year. An evaluation of the previous year and the department policy for the following year will be presented during the GMA, which will be held between March and June.

Acquisition: The current board will personally approach candidates to fulfill a position within the board. Open applications are welcome, but the board will not promote a public recruitment process.

 

Activities

The AE board will organise high quality events. The objectives and values will be mirrored in the yearly activities organised by the AE board. All of the objectives and values are evaluated on an annual basis. The AE board will strive to organise a minimum of 5 events per year. The AE board will facilitate activities in an appropriate, representative location in order to fulfill the activities goals related to our community objectives. The KIVI Building in The Hague is considered representative for our AE community from a geographical point of view and therefore has a (non-mandatory) preference for activity hosting. If reasonable and possible, all activities will be organized in an actual, physical location in order to stimulate networking and interpersonal relations bonding between our members as part of the defined goals. The activities shall fulfill at least two of the following three requirements: fun, professional content and networking. The AE board will strive to organise activities that can expect the interest of the target audience. In order to achieve the goals set, it is important that the members participate in the events. To this end the department aims to increase the participation of the AE members in events to:

  • Have at least 10% of the total members per event (average per year)
  • Have at least 25% of the members visit at least 1 event per year

Additional to the events organized by the KIVI AE board, the following event can be offered to our members:

  • Events which are organized in a collaboration between KIVI AE and other societies or other KIVI departments
  • An external party that offers an event to our AE community, considered relevant by the AE board to offer, promote and publish to our AE members

 

Membership

As defined in our mission and goal statement, the KIVI AE department membership is open to all aerospace engineers active in The Netherlands:

  • Pre-working aerospace engineers (students)
  • Working aerospace engineers (professionals)
  • Post-working aerospace engineers (pensioners)

Of the above categories, the first two are the main focus of the department, as stated in the the mission statement. For continuity reasons, the growth of the department should be primarily aimed at students and ‘young professionals’. The department aims at reducing the average member age by 1 year per year.

Looking at the goals, it is important for the AE department to grow in terms of absolute number of members, since this contributes to almost all of the goals. The department aims for a steady (net) growth of 10 members per year for the coming years.

In order to facilitate people becoming a member, the department wants to give potential members the ability to visit 2 events free of charge.

 

Cooperation

As one of the goals is to gain more members and to get a representative reflection of the Dutch Aerospace society it is important to establish cooperation with other associations.

It is especially important to engage the student societies (VSV, Sipke Wynia and SVAAA) more with KIVI by either inviting them to our events or helping them with their events. This should help to make students more aware of the existence of KIVI and get more student members as members of the KIVI aerospace community. Goal is to meet on a yearly basis with the board of each student society and to have KIVI aerospace introduced to all students on a yearly basis.

From an industry point of view contact shall be made with the different young professional organizations of the most important aerospace companies. This is to make them aware of the existence of KIVI, look for opportunities to organize events together and by that, creating a larger young professional community within the KIVI aerospace group. 

There are other societies which could target the same audience as KIVI AE, this can be for example the Dutch society for aeronautical engineering (NVvL) and the Dutch space society (NVR). The goal is to establish and maintain a good relationship with the above mentioned other associations, which can be achieved by jointly organized events or by having a yearly meeting to discuss certain topics, however this is not one of the main focus points. Within KIVI cooperation can be sought with other departments when opportunities arise, however this is not one of the primary goals.

 

Finance

The KIVI department of Aerospace Engineering is, like KIVI itself, a non-profit department. Our yearly income is based on the yearly contributions of each of our members. The department must be financially healthy to be able to provide interesting events to our members. Keeping the cash reserve in mind, our aim is to have a maximum loss of 10-15% of the total cash at hand on our yearly balance, while providing interesting events to our members. The minimum cash reserve of the department shall however be taken into account.

Per event additional individual contributions are foreseen based on the expenses of the event:

  • Non-KIVI members => higher contribution;
  • KIVI members => to be avoided.

Occasionally, the board shall meet-up to discuss the departments ambitions and plans. It is the board's policy not to invoice expenses made during these meetings, like food and beverages, unless under exceptional circumstances (like board installment and relief). All tasks conducted by the board are on a voluntary basis, it is therefore fair that travel reimbursements are available for board face-to-face meetings. Furthermore, event related expenditure shall be reviewed on a case by case basis.

To realise our aforementioned goals, a fix funding is reserved, the maximum shall not exceed 10% of the allocated yearly budget.

To keep our members updated, we aim at providing once a year, during the annual assembly, our current financial status and forecast. 

 

Communication

In order to facilitate the invitations to events, normal and social media platforms will be used. The main communication platforms will be direct mailing and the KIVI-AE website. Members will in general only be contacted in case of events (maximum of 2 emails per event)  via the ae@kivi.nl email account.

Since AE is an international field and since there is an increasing number of foreign people working in the Netherlands, the department has chosen to switch all its communication (including events) to English.

The KIVI LinkedIn page, where announcements and event publications can be shared to increase the visibility of KIVI-AE, will be the only social media platform used. 

Being visible on social media, we aim to promote ourselves and the organized events:

  • Encourage members and non-members to follow our official account and as such expand our audience
  • Share information on events
  • Empower our members to engage
  • Boost the reputation of KIVI-AE on social media
  • Build relationships with members

The following goals are set:

  • Minimum of 20% growth in LinkedIn followers per year
  • Every event is promoted via LinkedIn before and after the event

To reach the above mentioned goals, the KIVI department of Aerospace Engineering will apply the following social media guidelines:

  • Sharing compelling visuals whenever possible
  • Focus on quality over quantity
  • Use SMART structuring to format the content
  • Track performance / likes / shares
  • Apply search engine optimized posts to increase KIVI-AE’s exposure