MUN Director Guide — How to Run a Model UN Conference

Directing a Model UN conference is one of the most complex leadership experiences available to students. You are responsible for every committee running simultaneously, dozens of chair relationships, hundreds of delegates, venue logistics, and the overall quality of the academic and social programme. This guide covers the full arc — from initial planning to post-conference wrap-up.

What Does a MUN Director Do?

The director (sometimes called Secretary-General, Director-General, or simply the conference head depending on your secretariat structure) is responsible for the overall conference programme. Specific responsibilities typically include:

• Selecting committee topics and assigning country allocations
• Recruiting and managing the dais staff (chairs, co-chairs, crisis directors)
• Overseeing background guide production
• Managing delegate registration and school liaison
• Running the awards process and ensuring consistency across committees
• Coordinating venue logistics, scheduling, and technology

Six Months Out: Setting the Foundation

Choose Your Committees

Select a committee roster that balances accessibility (GA committees most delegates can prepare for) with prestige (specialised agencies, Security Council, crisis committees). A typical medium-sized conference might have three to five GA committees, one UNSC, one specialised agency, and one crisis committee.

Choose Your Topics

Good MUN topics are: timely (connected to real current events), debatable (genuine disagreement between country blocs), and actionable (the committee can actually do something about it). Avoid topics that are too resolved (unanimous agreement on causes and solutions) or too intractable (no possible middle ground).

Four Months Out: Building Your Team

Recruit chairs early. Your best chairs are experienced delegates who understand procedure cold, can manage a room, and are genuinely interested in the topic. Brief chairs on:

• Your conference's rules of procedure (distribute the document, do not assume they know)
• The expected committee output (one resolution? multiple? working papers?)
• Awards criteria (what should they look for?)
• Technology they will use to run their committee (software, projector, timer setup)

Three Months Out: Background Guides

Background guides should be published at least six to eight weeks before the conference to give delegates adequate preparation time. Each guide should cover: committee mandate and history, topic background, key country positions, and guiding questions. Aim for ten to fifteen pages per topic — long enough to be substantive, short enough to be read.

Review every background guide before publication. Factual errors in background guides undermine chair credibility and frustrate well-prepared delegates.

One Month Out: Registration and Logistics

• Confirm delegate registrations and assign countries. Try to match country allocations to school or team size — larger delegations should get more committee slots.
• Confirm venue layouts — committee room sizes, projector availability, power access, WiFi.
• Set up committee management software. Gavelling allows directors to create committee sessions in advance, with co-chair access codes, delegate lists, and settings pre-configured before conference day.
• Brief your dais team in full. Run a mock committee session with your chairs if possible.

Conference Day: Director Operations

On conference day, your primary job is problem-solving. Committees will have issues — a chair goes absent, a room has no projector, two committees request the same delegate for a joint crisis session. Keep a live list of all open issues and assign team members to resolve them.

Visit every committee room at least once per session. A brief appearance from the director signals to delegates that the secretariat cares about quality. It also lets you catch problems — a committee that is too quiet, a chair who is struggling, a bloc that has completely stalled — before they become crises.

Awards

Brief chairs on awards criteria well in advance. Decide: will you give Best Delegate, Outstanding Delegate, Honourable Mention, and Verbal Commendation in every committee? Will crisis committees use a different system? Will you give a Best Position Paper award? Consistency matters — delegates and advisors notice when award criteria appear arbitrary.

Collect chair recommendations privately, cross-check for conflicts of interest, and ensure award distribution is reasonably spread across schools rather than concentrated.

Post-Conference

Send a post-conference survey to delegates, chairs, and faculty advisors within one week. The feedback you receive in the days immediately after a conference is far more useful than what you remember months later. Use it to improve your next event.