The biggest thing is work smart, not hard. Get your best girls working on COB and try to minimize the hammer hammer hammer of parties, trying to find girls to invite, etc. It's so draining! 2 or 3 additional girls who are real fireballs can really get the ball rolling in the right direction. Target those girls (with incentive of leadership, legacy, impact, etc.) and they'll be able to expand the circle.

^^^Concur completely. The best COB "events" are, like Seinfeld, about nothing. Don't try to think up themes and decorations and all that, the effect is just of having constant formal rush which drains the members and results in a very visible "FML" thought balloon over their heads. Just get to know unaffiliated women in ordinary, everyday settings, like class or extracurriculars or fraternity parties. When you have enough of them, have a party and invite them so the rest of the sisters can meet them.

Also, whatever you do, no matter how much your national might push it, do NOT have COB parties with open invites. No chalking, flyers or facebook/twittter posts. The effect is exactly what everyone is saying - that you will take anyone. No one should be at these parties who doesn't have a prior personal connection to at least one sister.

Well, at some schools, there is middle ground: women contact the GL office, and their info is forwarded along to chapters.

The other caveat to that would be having one (1) publicly advertised event in the spring. Formal in the fall and informal in the spring (or vice versa).

Don't be afraid of package deals. The girls you are going after probably have non greek friends and may be very reluctant to leave them behind to join your chapter. If you have to take a marginal girl to get two good ones don't be afraid to do it.

And lots of "marginal" women turn out not to be, and vice-versa.

WOW...I just wrote this great post and Greekchat ate it. Grrr! You've asked for what we did. I have it, but I guess I need to rewrite it in Word....*sigh*

If that is the case, I honestly think that a sister (perhaps one who has something in common with her like hometown, major, dorm, etc etc) should reach out as an individual to the woman before the party, rather than just having her show up and be a random person who knows no one.

My chapter does this for all COB events -- each invited woman is contacted by a member (someone she knows, if possible, but someone new is fine too) beforehand. We have them walk to the house/event location together, too -- that way the intimidation factor of showing up alone and not knowing what to do or who to talk to isn't an issue.

Update time!

Numbers worked out so that each chapter on campus was able to offer the exact number of bids to obtain quota (ie, no additions occurred). Every chapter made quota except one chapter that missed it by one woman, and us. We offered the right amount of bids, but ended up having four women decline for whatever reason. But still, four under quota is AMAZING progress for us, so I was really proud!

Well, we had formal pledging last night, and ended up pledging eight less than we had on bid day - putting us at 12 under quota at the moment. This is still very very good for us, as we have already formally pledged more women this semester than all of last Fall semester. (My campus counts quota as having that number of NMs go through the chapters' respective formal pledging ceremony, which is why I'm putting so much emphasis on it). We begin our cob efforts this week, so hopefully we will be successful and I will have happy news to update everyone with later in the semester!

Good for you! I know having the girls 1-not show up and 2-bail between bid day and pledging completely sucks but as you know, it is THEIR loss. You are going to be in great shape in no time flat and they will wish they'd held out for 5 minutes.

COB smart, not hard, stay positive, put your best girls on the project (there's no point in making the girls who hate it do COB; they won't succeed and will drag down the process), and focus on quality not quantity. A few really quality girls can make a world of difference.
Think about a 1st and 2nd fall pledge class, not continually adding girls as you find them. I think it builds a stronger sense of rapport among the pledges AND gives the chapter a fixed time frame in which to work. And KROP (keep rushing our pledges)! They are definitely your best avenue to new members.

And KROM! Keep Rushing Our Members, they need to be loved especially when the unicorns have left the building and their personal rainbows have become dull and dusty. Retention over the long haul is key.

Congratulations! To help make COB a little easier, you should ask your new members if they have any friends from their classes or dorms that might like to come to events. If you're doing fun, normal things like getting together to watch a TV show that many in the chapter watch like PLL or Catfish, invite the new member class over. This would the type of event where friends (potential PNMS) could attend and feel comfortable. Work COB into what you already do. Work smarter, not harder. :-)

I've been a lurker here for the past few months, and have been compelled by your post to come out of hiding because your chapter seems almost exactly like my chapter (I graduated in May), right down to campus size, percentage of Greeks, and status as a lower-recruiting chapter, including women not accepting their bids through formal recruitment/dropping right after formal recruitment. The only differing details are that my campus now has six sororities and their formal recruitment is still a few weeks away. Be warned, this will be a long post.

We've always been a lower-recruiting chapter and have more-or-less constantly recruited women year-round (every time we get close to total, it gets raised), but two years ago, we had a poorer-than-usual year when it came to formal recruitment, COB, and new member retention. Our headquarters offered additional help last year, and I am proud to say that we had a much more successful year last year when it came to COB and new member retention--in spring 2012, we recruited something like 12 girls, and several dropped, while this spring, we recruited 18 girls with none dropping. (We also did slightly better in formal recruitment, but I won't go into the details about that here).

Here are some things we did; maybe you will find them useful for your chapter:
-General COB strategy: I can't stress enough the importance of personal connections when it comes to getting women to come to your events. All of us were asked to take at least one PNM (a classmate, a roommate, etc.) on an informal coffee date where the subject of sorority membership is casually mentioned ("What are your weekend plans? Cool! Me? I'll be going to dinner with my sorority family") at least a couple of weeks before COB events started, and if they went well, to invite said PNMs to come over for lunch/dinner some time to hang out ("I had a great time at our coffee date! Would you be interested in coming over for lunch on Friday? I'd love to introduce you to some of my sisters"). Utilize the women you just recruited through formal recruitment, as they will most likely know the most non-affiliated women. In addition to hanging up posters around campus, we printed up nice-looking calendars of COB events on nice card stock to personally hand out to women. We also made up cute Facebook banner photos/profile pictures for everyone to adopt. Make sure to follow up right before the events with PNMs via text/Facebook message ("Hey, I had a great time at lunch last week! We're having an ice cream party on Monday--you should come!"). This year our COB events were more planned out than in years past--we made sure to have the venue decorated (not over the top, but with colorful tablecloths and flowers) and to wear matching letters/philanthropy shirts. Our final event was an invite-only dinner and had a formal dress code, which helped to give a feeling of exclusivity and make the PNMs feel special.

-Fall COB: As someone mentioned above, it may be a good idea to have two fall pledge classes: one for women pledged through formal recruitment, and one for women who came through COB. When we had the bad formal recruitment two years ago, we rushed to try to find women immediately and just add them into the pledge class. This had a couple of drawbacks. One, many women were exhausted after formal recruitment (not to mention had low morale), and were just not enthusiastic about going out straight away to find new members. Secondly, we did a poor job of making the women who went through COB that semester feel at home in the chapter because we rushed to get them in before initiation--they didn't get to participate in retreat, and their big-little week was subdued compared to the one for women who went through formal recruitment. Of the three women we pledged that semester, two later resigned from membership, and I can't help but wonder if their rushed introduction to the chapter had something to do with it. Last fall, we took a breather from recruiting for a few weeks before diving into COB, and made sure to set a second-big little week and second initiation for COB women. We recruited five women last fall, and all of them have stuck around.

-Retention: It's important to try to start making new members feel at home right away; we invited new members to come over to the house for lunch the day after bid day as well as to a special event later in the week. In the past, there have been times when the first interaction a new member has with the chapter is at their first new member meeting/chapter meeting, which is often a week after bid day--that can be overwhelming and give the new member time to doubt their decision, especially if other chapters on campus are visibly giving their new members swag and having events. We also made sure that each new member had a sister schedule a coffee date with her at least once a week for the first few weeks. Out of the fall and spring pledge classes combined, we only had one member drop.

Best of luck, and sorry for the long post!

This is a great idea, and definitely doable (tm Seinfeld) with the shorter pledge programs that many groups have. If your group isn't one of them, contact your national pledging specialist or whatever she is called to see if you can tweak it. It's all about thinking outside the box.

It's one thing if you have a COB party 3 days after bid day with people the majority of the sorority already know quite well. They usually can fit seamlessly into the pledge class. It's another if the people at the party are women with whom you are not as well acquainted.