I dunno, but I suppose that if I ever came accross one of ours, I would get it to an active chapter, and maybe an undergraduate can use it instead of buying a new one, since ours do not have any chapter info engraved on them.

I personally don't see the point of making a big deal of "rescuing" badges. It seems counterproductive, because I've noticed that often the badges of organizations that place a huge emphasis on this sell for insanely high prices. Isn't that just going to encourage people to find them and sell them?

Adelie wrote:
"We have also been wanting to see if other NPC groups would be interested in an "Exchange" agreement. Basically, if we are at an antique store or estate sale, etc and found a pin from a participating organization, the person would purchase it on behalf of that NPC group, under the ladies agreement that only reimbursement + S/H would be expected from that NPC to retrieve the pin. If we had a ring of contacts between groups, solely for the purpose of communication in this agreement, I think it might be worth a try. Any thoughts?"

I would LOVE this idea!!! YES!!!
I think that there is a big difference between returning a badge of "Joe Smith" to XYZ organization and returning a lost or worse-stolen badge back to it's original living owner or their legecies. If someone wants to be a collector, I would hope that they would make a point to only collect those that were not lost by or stolen from living members.

I'm curious who you are and what organization you are with. This could be astronomicaly expensive for some organizations, especially because there is no way to really budget for it. And in a time with very tight budgets it could be close to impossible. Now some loose agreement with alumnae, not the HQ is another story... I'm curious who the 'we' you talk about it though.

Out of curiosity - how would it be hard to budget for and really expensive for the HQ?

The alumnae volunteers are the ones spending their own money rescuing the pins. (At least that's how it is with Guardians of the Diamond... and I believe Keepers of the Key... not sure how it works with Cresent Catchers)

Unless the HQ is paying the volunteers, I don't think it costs the HQ anything.

I guess I could be missing something though. :confused:

I'm just saying, the poster made it sound like she proposed that HQ would pay for the badges. I would think, especially for smaller organizations, that would be too much of a financial burden. If it was a loose organization of these alumnae groups, that is very different. Sorry if I was unclear, but that is all I was trying to say. I guess my belief is that, if this were AST, I would prefer they spend money to give our chapters EC's, and more programing, not save badges. It is more of a priority thing.

thanks for the clarification... I was totally lost :)

I definitely agree with you though.. I would rather EO use money towards more productive things for the chapters as opposed to a pin that is going to sit in a glass case.

I think the pin-saving programs are great. It's not for everyone (as in members of whichever particular org.) but for members who *do* want to make an effort and have the resources to do so, go for it :)

EXACTLY

That's what I've been curious about is who funds them. It is WONDERFUL if people do it for fun (with their own money), but nat'l resources are so scarce it is hard to justify on that level for me.

Just to clarify, the reason I posted the original question is because I am part of a committee in my sorority that is working on forming a similar group to some of the others. It would be made up of alumnae who are spending their own money on badges they would like to own, since our National Office only purchases "special" badges - one of the founders', a past Grand Council badge, a chapter pres badge, etc. They would also look out for other important historical items in order to gather some more of our history for our centennial in 2012.

I was curious to see how many other of the NPC sororities had these programs in place, what their names were, and how they functioned (does HQ pay or do the alumnae?).

Thanks for all the responses :)

We've found, that even though it's the members of the badge rescue group spending their own money to rescue badges, the women who have had their badges lost or stolen and then rescued and returned to them go on to actively support the Fraternity in other ways: be it volunteering as an adviser, becoming a member of her Alumnae group, donating money to the Foundation or becoming a member of our group. So in our small way, we are strengthening our Fraternity.

ISUKappa - I think that's awesome :)

ThetaPhiAngel - If you don't have several alumnae willing to spend $100's, maybe you can pull together a group of women willing to donate even a little bit here and there... say $10 or $20... every little bit adds up! Some members of the Guardians of the Diamond pull resources together to rescue very unique ADPi pins and I believe they even have an unofficial Paypal account for that cause.

That's actually exactly what we had planned on doing! Glad to know it works for someone else :)

Well I can answer for Guardians of the Diamond.

Right now we are just getting off the ground. We do have Grand Council support and approval though.

As of now we have a group set up for ADPi's where we can discuss pins we see on Ebay.

As for money, we take donations via paypal becuase until we get "final" approval from GC I can't really open up an account for sisters to make direct donations to. And that is what it is DONATIONS FROM THE SISTERS.

Another thing that is important to us is educating the collegians about the importance of their pin. Gamma Phi actually gives thier collegians (or alums I'm not sure) a form they fill out stating where their pin will go when they die. I believe thier HQ/EO gets a copy of it and so does the member. Now, I'm not quite sure on this information because I'm not a Gamma Phi.


As for why people really take this to heart. It just varies sister by sister. I am very passionate about our pins remaining in the hands of a sister, while other sisters will not feel as I do. It just really depends.

Hope some of this helped. If there is any other questions I can answer please feel free to PM me.

Brianna

Out of curiosity, what do most women do with their badge when they die? Is their family allowed to keep it? Bury the person with it (if that is allowed)?

And for my own knowledge, what is the "etiquette" on giving a badge to a collegian as a gift? I 'm talking like a fancy one? I know it has to be engraved with his intiate number and chapter letter and such, but is there any way to do this without him knowing so it is a surprise?

I've been told by a former Network Person from my sorority that we have someone at HQ that buys badges off of ebay. I don't know what the budget is or how they set it. But if it is a historic badge, we resell those to members. So it would be easy to get the money back.

Edited to add: also on our little AOII section of greek chat we have our ebay names so that we don't bid against each other.