Either. Personally, I'd get your own recs and letters of support to be sent directly to the chapters.

The Local Alum Panhellenic (AP) will NOT get the recommendation for you. They will simply help you out by explaining how to find recommenders (the same advice you've been getting on GC-- asking everyone you know, church bulletins, family friends, etc.). The AP will provide you with an address that your recommenders can forward the recs to. This address is an AP member who will bundle all the recs and support letters of all the girls in the area and sends them out to their respective schools.

Let me be very clear:YOU DON'T HAVE TO SEND ANYTHING THROUGH THE AP. The AP is simply a middle man (and in my opinion, one that is unnecessary -- but nice for us alums to stay involved). Sending recs directly to the sorority chapter at the school where the PNM will be rushing is fine. It won't harm the PNM that an AP didn't mail the recs. The sorority is not concerned wth the postmark.

Alumnae Panellenics do NOT secure recommendations for PNMs! They simply help you figure out what you need to do so you can go about finding recommenders!

/Former AP recruitment committee member

This may be the case of your alumnae panhellenic, but this clearly varies from AP to AP. I know quite a few Alumnae Panhellenics who will secure a rec for a PNM provided that the PNM has provided them with a resume, pics, etc. In fact, for some areas that I have lived in this is the standard way of getting recs.

Recommendations
 

This is exactly true for our local panhellenic in Texas. They will secure the recs as long as they are provided with all the necessary information. At their meeting, they encouraged the girls to go this route even if they have their own contacts. I just having a difficult time trying to figure out the best route for obtaining the rec - perhaps I will have my daughter turn in her packets to the local panehellenic with a list of people they could contact to have the rec prepared. I know letters of support come from close friends - have many alums from many LSU sororities that can provide these. Some sororities require the rec come from an alum in the girl's hometown and this is why we may have to go the local panhellenic route as most of our close friends are still in Louisiana. Ugh!!!!

Alumnae Panhellenics and recs
 

SOME APs may not get you a rec - ours does, but I know many do not. The best course of action is to do everything you can - register with the AP, work your mom's rolodex, network like crazy - to get recommendations.

That's really stupid. Are you sure that's the case?

Ours does as well. To get a rec through our AP, you have to register with us and then we have designated people that will write a rec for someone who needs it.

Yes. I know of at least one group that requires this.

It seems kind of odd that you'd pass this kind of judgment.

What would be wrong with wanting a rec from the girl's hometown where people would actually know her?

I would have to say I agree here^^

I would place much more weight on a rec coming from someone who truly knows the girl from her hometown. It has always seemed so generic to have a rec written by someone that may not know you or from a person out of the area in which you are distantly connected. Sure you may have a rec from every house on your behalf, but how solid is it and what is it really worth?

Because there could be Greeks who DO know her well who do NOT live in her hometown, like aunts, cousins, family friends, etc. in this exact situation.

Hometown does not guarantee that the recommender knows the PNM. I don't understand why chapters would require a rec from the hometown. Obviously your hometown would be the best place to start...you wouldn't live in Philly and solicit a rec from a random Seattle alum. But if you have a family friend in Seattle, then that rec should carry more weight than one from an alum you don't know (or just met for coffee) in your hometown.

Bottom line is that a rec should ideally be from someone you know, but a "hometown only" rule seems like it would exclude any out-of-towners who do know a PNM.

I don't know. I think an ideal system allows for recs from anyone who knows the PNM, but for accuracy of information about what someone is really like, a person who actually knows her from her hometown is probably going to have a lot more info about what she's really like these days than an out-of-town friend of her mom's. Will a little old lady from her hometown church know more than the family friend? Maybe not, but I bet a high school teacher would.

But more than anything, I trust individual GLOs to choose their own best system to select membership, and although I've found some GLOs' policies outrageous (chapters that don't allow affiliates freak me out, for example), I think we probably generally should avoid calling other groups policy's stupid. If it works for them; it works for them.

ETA: I know I seem like I'm on my high-horse. Violetpretty, I can see that when you said that you didn't even know it WAS a group's policy, so my intention isn't to preach to you. You're welcome to have any opinion you want; it's just kind of hard to stress how panhellenic everyone else ought to be if we're calling each others' policies stupid.

So let's suppose this PNM goes through APH to find a recommender from her hometown for XYZ because she can't find any hometown XYZs she knows personally. If her mom's out of state XYZ friend sends another rec/letter of support, is it disregarded because it's out of state? Maybe that question can't be answered because it treads toward membership selection. If it is disregarded, THAT would be stupid.

My guess, and of course I don't really know about other groups' policies, is that groups that have policies that heavily tip towards hometowns work hard to develop hometown-based systems and networks. So it's quite possible that mom's out of state XYZ friend would be able to find out whom to contact in the PNM's hometown to offer information.

Honestly, though how accurate and informative will a rec from a mother's friend from out of town be? Sometimes, if the PNM is actually a good kid, it will be great. But mom's out of town friend isn't really going to know anything that makes a PNM a less than desirable candidate, and sometimes groups need to know.

Again, I'm willing to bet that groups have policies that work for them. When chapters realize they are missing out on great PNMS, they can work within the GLO to make the changes they need.

The group that I am aware of utilizes - how to say this - alum designees for the area and she can - shall we say - ratify - the out of town alum's rec. I'm not a member of this group so I am just trying to put it how it was described to me. I think we all probably have rec chairmen in most big towns...and these are people who know a lot of people and can find out about someone. The original poster just doesn't understand how deep our contacts can go.