This Week

Free Student Memberships - Group Edition

Want sign your entire group to have free student membership benefits? We now offer a seamless process for you to sign your members up just for that! As always, free student memberships provide members with these benefits:

• Membership in the nation's largest network of secular students
• Membership card and awesome SSA swag
• Discounts to our annual conference
• Eligibility for Leadership Travel Aid funding
• Access to our Affiliate and Member Store

If your group uses the affiliate free student membership, it will also receive extra swag on top of all the other benefits!

Use Blind Carbon Copy!

E-mail is the most popular way to communicate across the inter-webs, but just like any other form of communication, there are some courtesies you should follow.  Today, we're talking about BCC - the Blind Carbon Copy!

You probably wouldn't hand out sheets of all your members' email addresses while tabling, would you?  So why would you hand them out when emailing your entire list?  But every time you send an email with 142 addresses in the "To:" field, that's exactly what you're doing - every single recipient now has contact information for all your members.  Not cool, buddy.

Fortunately, there's an easy and universal tool to solve this problem.  It's called the BCC: field, which stands for "Blind Carbon Copy" - from the dark ages when everyone used typewriters.  It usually appears beneath the CC: field, and might appear as a link in your normal display.  Dump your 142 email addresses in that field, and presto!  Now your recipients don't have to scroll through 142 email addresses to access the message, and everyone's contact information is protected.  Everybody wins (except Nigerian spammers, and we're ok with that).

James Randi Scholarship

The James Randi Educational Foundation has released information for their Critical Thinking Educational Scholarship Awards for the 2012-2013 school year. There are two scholarships available for $1,000 each: one for graduate students and the other for undergraduate. To apply you must fill out their application (pdf, doc), type a 500-word essay and include your college transcripts. All required materials must be received by January 10, 2013. Winners will be announced February of that year. Click here for more info.

For more information on secular student scholarships please visit our scholarship page.

Group Photo of the Week

Members from USAFA Freethinkers at a tabling event spreading the good news.

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 Help SSA Get $50,000!

Interfaith Leadership Institute

The Interfaith Youth Core, one of our partners, is hosting their 10th annual Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California Oct. 28th-31st. This should be of interest to the students in that area as atheists are an important part of interfaith dialogue. If you need financial assistance, you may appy for a project grant to help with the expenses of travel. Registration is $50 off until Sept 12th. Register here for the institute!

Interfaith Leadership Institutes (ILIs) are four-day intensives that equip students and their campus allies, inclusive of staff, faculty, and administrators, to be movement builders for interfaith action.

Click here for more info.

We Raised Six Figures with LTN!

The Foundation Beyond Belief team has raised more than $125,000 toward the million dollar goal by the end of the year towards Light the Night. Secular students like you and others all over the country are helping us in this effort!

In celebration of the great work that has been done and in order to encourage even more: Foundation Beyond Belief, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Stiefel Freethought Foundation are doing something special for the walks through September 9th to the 15th (Light the Night Walk Kickoff Week). More free stuff! Help the FBB team raise money and you'll have the opportunity to win prizes courtesy of the LLS!

• Starting on September 9th and ending the 15th, the first 50 people to email their fundraising webpage to 20 or more people and cc: Breanna Baer will receive a $5 Starbucks gift card!
• The top 10 individual online fundraisers during Walk Kickoff Week, raising a minimum of $250 each, will receive a $25 Amazon gift card!
• The top overall fundraiser between September 9th and October 9th will receive a free iPad 2 if they raise $5,000 or more!

In addition to all this great swag, don't forget Stiefel Freethought Foundation's ongoing incentives for all of our teams: The top fundraising teams overall will have the opportunity to direct up to $5,000 in grants!

Click here to register a walk team, a virtual team or join or donate directly to an existing team by clicking on the team. The walks start now, find a walk in your area.

Group Photo of the Week

Members from East Carolina University Secular Student Alliance tabling at ECU's organization fair "Get a Clue".

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SSA Affiliate Store

We’re excited to announce our new store!  In addition to the cool gel bracelets, SSA stamps, and extra tabling supplies, we’re now selling our classy lapel pins and some brand new SSA t-shirts!  We understand that students are short on cash, so we’re selling our swag at the price we get them in bulk--no markup, just savings to help you show your secular pride.  Did you know that, before shipping, you can get 90 stickers, 10 gel bracelets, 10 buttons, and a t-shirt for just $20? That’s a crazy good deal! Check out everything else we’re offering!

To access the store, sign in our site with your free student membership information.

Light the Night Virtual Teams

Want to make a Light the Night team but are too far away from a walk in your area? Create a virtual team! It is still perfectly possible to be a part of the Light the Night fundraising. Walks are starting soon. Check out this page to find out if and when there are walks in your area. Register a team (make sure to put FBB and SSA in your team name) and hold a fundraiser. The fundraising can be done completely online through Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media. Find out more about LTN.

The Stiefel Freethought Foundation is providing incentives for student teams fundraising for Light the Night. First place student team for instance gets $1,000 and an award plaque. There are many other prizes to go for too. Take a look at the other incentives provided by The Stiefel Freethought Foundation.

We are also going to send a basket of goodies to all of our affiliates who create teams and raise $100 or more by next Wednesday. If your existing group or new group raised $100 or more by 9/10 we'll send you a surprise gift full of goodies. Let us know if your Light the Night team is not shown here.

Secular Coalition for America State Chapters

The Secular Coalition for America, one of our partnering organizations, is expanding to the state level. In an effort to combat violations of church & state at the non-federal level, (and since there are so many) the SCA launched state chapters. The mission of the Secular Coalition for America is to increase the visibility of and respect for non-theistic viewpoints in the United States, and to protect and strengthen the secular character of our government as the best guarantee of freedom for all.

For more information on state chapters and when there will be a state conference call for your state, check here. Also sign up for their custom emails.

Group Photo of the Week

Members from the Secular Law Student Alliance visiting a fellow college of law at The Ohio State University.

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Dedicated Day of Service

Since many of our groups express an interest in volunteering, we thought we would bring this to everyone's attention. Now, we already know there is a national day of service coming up (Sept. 11th) but if you would rather do community service a little later, Redditgifts has a growing list of meet ups you can find (around Sept. 22nd). You can join a separate meet up or host your own service idea. Our affiliates who are also a part of Volunteers Beyond Belief should seriously consider being a part of this.

Of course one way to get involved is to start a Light the Night group. There are simple instructions here and a more in depth activity packet here.

N.O.S.S. Volunteer Positions

The National Organization of Secular Scholarships (N.O.S.S.) is a scholarship fund set up to assist atheist, agnostic, secular humanists, freethinkers, and skeptics alike find the funding they need for their education. The award will be given to multiple individuals based on community involvement, and atheist activism in their community. The scholarship requires an essay, and the subject varies from time to time.

N.O.S.S. is a start-up organization which is looking for volunteer positions in web developing and Facebook organizing. Multiple positions in each category may be hired. These positions could later turn into full time hires in the future.

Check out our jobs page to for more information on these positions.

Check out their Facebook page.

Buy SSA Stuffs

See anyone wearing our lapel pin during the 2012 annual conference? Now you can buy one on our buy supplies page! The lapel pins are $5 each and look fantastic fastened to just about anything. Other items for sale are our SSA stamps which cost $10 bucks each (available for a limited amount of time). Use them to stamp forms, hands or other objects with relatively flat surfaces. We also have baby blue gel wristbands which you can buy. Every $3 gets you 10 fashionable bands. You can wear them anywhere and show off your SSA pride!

Buy them today! By the way, Don't forget - you can get still standard tabling supplies for free (if you are affiliated) at www.secularstudents.org/tablingsupplies.

Group Photo of the Week

Members from Secular Student Alliance @ San Jose State University with speaker Ted Cox.

Send us your photos!