Recruitment Help!!!!
 

Hi guys! So I was just elected recruitment chair of my chapter of and I am at a lost on a couple of things. First, we are a small chapter on my campus and we have been struggling to get girls the past couple of years. We have only been on this campus for 10 years so we are pretty new. People see us and tend to think there is something wrong with us because we are so small. Our girls are all sweet, talkative, and really down to earth. Has anyone been a small chapter and have any ideas as to how to get a lot of girls to join?

For formal recruitment we always do really great and have a lot of girls come back to each night but then Bid Day comes and we only get a few girls. As recruitment chair I have to come up with a skit and theme for Formal recruitment and I am at a complete loss. We did a Project Runway skit last year and the year before but my adviser won't let us do it again. I would like to do a tv show based one again but I don't know which would work. Does anyone have an idea of a skit that might work (once again we are a small chapter)?

Thanks for all your help guys!!!!!

i know that you asked for advice for a skit, but if your return rates are good but on bid day only a few of the girls you bid are accepting your bids, you might want to focus on the reason that is happening. during formal recruitment are the pnms allowed to drop chapters even if they would not have a full schedule and not go back to them, or are they forced to attend all parties that they are invited to? this might explain why you have lots of girls attend your parties, but not accept your bids.

do you do cob? smaller chapters often can make up the difference in the size of their new member class by hitting the ground running a few days after formal recruitment. there are numerous threads on gc with wonderful cob ideas.

Fall or spring recruitment? If it's spring the most important thing you can do is pre-recruit. You need to have girls wanting to join your sorority before recruitment even begins.

^^^YES. This doesn't mean just going after girls for them to be numbers, but making friends with them and finding out if they'd be a good fit with your chapter.

Ask the best resource you have - your most recent pledge class. Tell them no matter what they say, don't worry, you won't be mad - it's all done to improve. Ask what they heard the other girls saying during rush, and ask what they thought of the pref party. If they tell you they joined in spite of pref, then change it ASAP.

COB and take a new member class in the "off" semester, whether that is spring or fall. Maybe no other groups do it, but the fact of the matter is, you aren't going to make up the difference totally in formal rush.

Rush is 24/7/365. You have to be at the same level as all the other groups going into formal rush, not hope that a miracle will occur and everyone will put you down first.

We do Formal Recruitment in the Fall and then COBs after that. We do COBs every month in the Spring with a couple more in the beginning. I am just afraid we won't get many girls this Spring. We had COBs all Fall and had hardly any girls come out to them and I think this is why I am afraid for Spring.

Here comes the commercial! Get "I Heart Recruitment". Maybe throwing a COB party isn't enough for your chapter. Going out and finding members means more than just advertising that you have spots open. The people at your campus who know that they want to join a sorority also know that there are spots open in your group and know that they don't want to join. That means that your sisters need to focus on finding the people who might not know that sorority membership is for them. Recruitment sometimes involves a little more footwork than people expect, but the results can be dramatic and very rewarding!

Do you actually have a spring pledge class, or do you just bid and hold over the girls you get until they can pledge with the next fall's class? Or do you (eek) wait till the next fall to bid them?

For the COB events, do you have parties that are pretty much exactly like your formal rush parties, or do you have non-events - like inviting girls over to watch Grey's Anatomy, inviting them to come to a campus theater production, having lunch with them? You should be doing the latter, not the former. If you are essentially "formal rushing" all year it's going to drain you and the PNMs will wonder why on earth they should join a bunch of girls who look stressed out all the time.

Don't open your COB parties to completely random women via chalking, flyering, facebook/myspace. Everyone at these parties should be someone a sister personally knows and has personally invited. This may be the complete opposite of what you've been told - but the truth is - women join because of the one to one connections they make. If a sister has personally invited them, you've already got one of those connections taken care of. You need to get more "bang for your buck" where COBing is concerned.

We do take a pledge class in the Spring and for the most part we have been our COBs exactly like formal recruitment nights; just picking a theme and getting a room in our student union building. I am trying to get away from that because obviously it hasn't been working for us so far:(

In addition to what all of these knowledgeable ladies have said, I would also suggest that your sisters GET INVOLVED ON CAMPUS. Recruiting through other activities/organizations/sports teams can be very easy, as you've already made connections with other members, and you share similar interests. This cuts out on the one part of recruitment that can sometimes prove to be the most difficult... meeting new people.

Since I joined my GLO (almost 6 years ago), my chapter has always had a few active sisters who were involved with Lion Ambassadors (http://www.clubs.psu.edu/up/lionambassadors/). The sisters continue to consistently recruit at least a few people each year through this organization alone.

Being active on campus is key. And this doesn't necessarily mean involved in every club you can find- but visible. If sisters are wearing letters frequently- to class, to the cafeteria, to sporting events, to the gym- others will take notice. At one point we were half the size of the other chapters (15 of us, 30 of the rest) but we had several PNMs tell us they thought we were the biggest because they always saw us around campus. It may seem like a small thing, but it really does make a difference. It also opens the door when you're making small talk before class- someone may say "oh, I didn't know you are an XYZ". And if they don't? Oh well, they still see you and the more of those letters that they see, the more present XYZ is on campus. If you don't already, institute a letters day for your chapter- once (or more) per week where sisters wear letter shirts, sweatshirts, anything XYZ. If you have a point system, reward sisters for wearing letters. Oh- if sisters live throughout the dorms, you can also help accomplish this by decorating sisters' doors. Be creative. Our chapter put newsletters in the women's bathroom stalls (dorms and academic buildings) with trivia, campus events, and comics. Sure it sounds kind of silly, but we got a lot of positive feedback from that and it carried over into the next year, and the next. You don't have to be saying "Go XYZ!", more that "XYZ is here".

Also, as someone who saw a chapter go from 5 to 15 to 30 over the course of 4 years, focus on quality- not quantity. If you get a large pledge class but they don't fit in or they bring potential standards/judicial board issues? They probably will do more damage than by having less members.

Especially for COB/spring recruitment, consider that one girl may bring her friends. One year we got a group of 4 close-knit friends- we knew they'd more than likely all go together, so we were thrilled when they chose us (and we chose them).

And ditto to what others have said about personal invitations. I would be very unlikely to go to an event I saw on a flier... but if someone asked me personally? I would be much more likely to go.

in addition to personal invitations, have a sister meet the pnm at her dorm room/apartment and bring her to the event and take her home after. it often is difficult for someone to attend a party by themselves, and they will chicken out and not come.

Nope. Bag this.

Try to take the parties out of the student union - have them at the house or at a sister's house or apartment if you don't have a house. There aren't regulations like there are in formal rush (except for no men/no alcohol) so you can do whatever you want. Girls right away feel more positive toward you if you're welcoming them into your home.

You can have a slight theme - like St Patrick's or Valentine's day - but just as a conversation starter. Skip the skits and elaborate decorations and go easy on the games, maybe just something as an icebreaker. I was going to say make it so the rushees don't know they're being rushed, but that's a little over the top - make it so they don't FEEL they are being rushed, more like they're just at a friendly evening.

LadyLion4Life I pm'd you.

Thanks for all your advice guys! I am going to try and take a lot of it to my chapter, but they are a stubborn group, so we will see how it goes! If anyone else has any other suggestions or tips that would be great as well!

A good read:

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ghlight=chosen

Recruitment story from the viewpoint of a smaller chapter: http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...d.php?t=102416

Be really aggressive with meeting people. Of course, I do not mean this in a mean way. Rather, I mean have every girl in your chapter go out and make new friends. Set a quantitative goal, like 5 new friends. They can be in class, at the gym, in their dorm rooms, at Starbucks, etc. Make sure the goal is not to gain COB women, but to make new friends. This is good because (1) you get your Sorority's name out on campus (Girls will say "Oh, I have a friend in XYZ") and (2) you will get to know women to see--prior to inviting them--if they are a good fit.

Plus, as everyone has said, personal invitations mean the most. COB is a whole different beast of an animal and needs to be treated differently. Good luck!

Ok, so here is an update as to what I have going on now. I still need some help lol. I met with my exec. and advisers today just to go over stuff for next semester and this is what they came up with and will not budge from:
We are having three COB nights the second week back from class as a kind of informal formal recruitment. Don't know if I like this but, like I said they are stuck on that. I need to come up with themes for each of these three nights and I am at a complete loss as to what to do for this.
After these three nights the exec wants to do one COB a month. My adviser wants to keep up with us just going out and getting our name out there and befriending the girls on campus in hopes that they might want to join as well. I feel like at this point my adviser and I are just very scared about getting women to come out to these events. My chapter is very stuck in its ways about advertising via flyers for our COBs and I don't know what else to do. It's turning out to be a very frustrating position.

Printing flyers costs money. Unless the use of them is tangibly increasing the amount of money that comes into the chapter (i.e. unless the total amount of members you have is shown to be increasing as a result of the flyers) it is not a cost effective best practice. Therefore it should be trashed.

I guess my next question is to why the exec board has so much say as to what the recruitment chair can do? I mean, I was on exec and the only thing that I can remember us voting on relative to rush is the budget and maybe dates so they didn't conflict. We didn't vote on this will be the theme, we will do this, wear that, we have this many open bid parties. That's the rush chair's JOB. If we weren't going to let her do it, we wouldn't have voted her into the office, or have the office.

Anyway, have the theme for the week be "holidays." Valentine's Day, St Patrick's Day, 4th of July. Wear red the first day, green the second day, red white & blue the third day. One (very very short) game each night. And no skits. CONVERSATION is your focus. Also, each sister should be required to invite at least one rushee to the parties.

I agree!!! NO SKITS! Unless it's right on target, a bad skit (or even a mediocre one) makes everyone uncomfortable. It also wastes precious time that should be used in conversation.

Our previous exec decided things last semester for a few things regarding recruitment. Our COB nights are almost all conversation with a few ice breakers thrown in. A lot of you are saying each sister should bring a girl to the nights and we have tried to enforce that in the past. Our problem is that we only have one freshman in our chapter and a few sophomores. Do you guys have any advice as to how we could enforce the every women bring a PNM with this being the case?

Positive reinforcement. Maybe have a prize (like a gift card or something) for the two sisters who bring the most pnms to cob events or something. Make sure sisters are also meeting/getting together with pnms on their own. It could be as easy as asking a pnm to grab lunch or coffee after they have class together.

with some chapters i have advised, it worked out better for the chapter to be divided into small groups of about 5 or 6 girls each, and each group had to invite 2-3 girls to something that the small group decided to do, after clearing it with the recruitment chair. for instance, group a invited their pnms to go with them for a coffee at starbucks, group b took their pnms out for frozen yogurt, group c took their pnms bowling, group d invited their pnms over to one of the groups apartments for a chick flick and pizza, etc. they are not hard core rushing these girls at the first meeting-it is more a get to know each other thing. hopefully, the pnms like the girls they meet and want to get to know more of your sisters at an upcoming event.

the recruitment chair shared a list of interested pnms(from a list provided by panhellenic) with the chapter to see if any members knew any of the girls. if anyone knew a pnm, that group had first dibs on inviting her to their event. the group also had the option of asking someone they knew from their classes, work or organizations that they belonged to. the recruitment chair approved the events and decided which week the events would take place. the groups notified the recruitment chair which pnms were meeting with. the events had to all take place during the same week, but the group could decide what day worked better for them. after the event had taken place, the leader of the group would contact the rec. chair, let her know how it went .

the next event would be an all chapter event when all the chapter and all interested pnms met together. someone from the group would pick up the pnm, escort her to the event and take her home. the group would take turns(rotations) showing her around and introducing her to the other members. this worked well because this allowed for the maximum number of members to meet the pnms and vice versa.

i agree with 33, i don't understand why the recruitment chair is not making her own decisions about recruitment events and why your ec is making all the recruitment decisions.

It has nothing to do with what year people are. Unless people are student teaching or have other off campus jobs, they should still be meeting new people of all ages!! I mean don't people purposely save easy peasy gen ed classes for senior year anymore?

Are any upperclassmen tutors in the chapter? RAs? People on sports teams? These people all have lots of access to possible rushees.

Also, when I say it has nothing to do with what year people are, that applies to PNMs too. Invite sophomores and juniors and not just freshmen.

"I don't know any freshmen because I'm a senior" is not an acceptable excuse to slack on helping the chapter to rush. If seniors have that attitude, they should just terminate themselves.

The thing is our seniors have been giving us the "I don't have class with underclassmen, I don't know any" excuse consistently since I have joined. I don't know how to tel them that that is not an excuse because we have tried and they just get angry and get the whole "fine well then I just won't do anything" attitude. My sisters are extremely strong minded and stubborn and at times very frustrating to work with lol

It took me a long time to learn this, but informal recruitment IS NOT HARD. It really isn't. What's difficult is getting a chapter who thinks "We didn't get a lot of new girls this semester because we aimed for quality" and "I'm too old to meet new people", to completely change their way of thinking. That's your job. Because the reason you didn't get a lot of new girls is because you didn't MEET a lot of potential members. And you're only too old to meet new people if you're dead. A little extreme, but it's kind of true. :p

Keep in mind, however, that you can't just say to someone, "You're a senior, but you MUST know younger girls." And you can't just say, "We shouldn't have official informal recruitment events." And you can't just say, "Recruitment is easy." I'm no mind-reader, but I can tell you that everyone will come back with the same answers: "No I don't", "Yes we should", and "ARE YOU CRAZY?!"

You have to ask questions, such as, "Is this method producing results?" and, "Have you all been satisfied with our informal recruitment numbers?" and, "What can we do to improve?"

You have to show how your ideas will make the system better. My suggestion, though, would be to start off small. Don't go from having numerous informal recruitment events to having none. The chapter probably won't go for that. Suggest doing some things your way, and some things their way. After recruitment is over, have a serious discussion about what worked, what didn't work, and what will probably work in the future.

And go to Phiredup.com! Actually, their blog entry from 2 days ago ('Let's Leave the Big Top for the Circus') is something you should definitely read. Then... keep reading more! The people on that site know what they're talking about.

This is a great example of why everyone needs to be in at least one other extracurricular activity! What we did was to isolate 8 different organizations, and had at least two sisters in each. Freshmen join, and your sisters are there for the picking - no more excuses! Good organizations are those that have a "teaching" potential, like mentoring, or tour guides, or wherever a savvy senior can take a freshman under her wing! ;)

One of the wisest pieces of advice that I was ever given was, "Cultivate friends of all ages."

Sorry for bumping this but I guess I still need help lol. My chapter had a round of COBs and they went ok, but not great (I blame a lot of it on our PR chair for doing no PR). That aside we had three nights with an average of 5 girls at each night:( We have a group of 6 girls who accepted bids, but our goal is to have 14. Everyone has lost hope now because 1)we did not get 14 the first time through and 2) another sorority had COBs a week after us and had an average of 25 women at each of their three nights. I don't know what else I can do to encourage my girls to get out there and meet PNMs. We are all a little shy, but this is getting bad (My chapter only as 25 women with 7 graduating). I have scheduled another two COBs next week because my president told me to but I don't know if they are going to help us. If anyone has any more suggestions for me as to what I should do in this situation please please help!

Yeah, don't worry about how many girls come to another group's parties. Out of those 25, they may have only bid 2.

Just tell the sisters if they ALL aren't going to go out and meet women and invite them to COB events, you're going to cancel the events, because you all have better things to do with your time, and you'll all have plenty of time to do it once the chapter is closed due to low numbers.

Honestly, it sounds like they need something to wake them up. If no one else is doing their job, why should you?

Has your national org offered you any help on this?

They send consultants and everyone gets all these good ideas from them, but there is never really any follow through. I get to meet with one tomorrow so I am hoping that she can give me a couple pointers. I just feel very lost about this because I am getting no help from the previous recruitment chair.

I do like what you said about people having tons of free time if we get shut down. I feel like people never really think of it that way. I might bring that up to my chapter if things don't start turning around.

Do you have a Recruitment Committee?

A small group of hard-working, dedicated girls will have more success than 25 girls, most of which aren't making an effort.

Tell your chapter that you're starting a committee, and that you want people to join who truly want to see the chapter grow, and who will do almost anything to see that happen. Then brainstorm!

And read these three blog entries from Phiredup.com:

"Big Events: When They Work and When They Don't"
http://www.phiredup.com/index.php?op...p=476&Itemid=2

"The Fun Theory"
http://www.phiredup.com/index.php?op...p=447&Itemid=2

And this last one... I actually put on a recruitment workshop for my chapter not too long ago, and one of the things I did was read this blog entry ("Be Nice to People (at least for a week)": http://www.phiredup.com/index.php?op...p=418&Itemid=2) and then asked the sisters to come up with some of their own "nice" ideas, or to expand on the ones that were mentioned.

Instead of trying to make skits and decorations more exciting, why not trying to make RECRUITMENT more exciting?

Do something different, bold or daring. Do something that people will remember. Do something that you actually ENJOY doing.

And when the rest of the sisters see your committee having so much fun and making a difference, maybe they'll want to join in, too!

Do you get a commission from Phired Up or something? ;)

Haha. I should! But sadly, no.

But come on... they're awesome! And they know what they're talking about. And her entries scream, "I need Phired Up to teach me how to recruit!"

:p

While 6 is great, I see the OP's concern. I came from a chapter that struggled with numbers and eventually closed. (They did recolonize, but the was prearranged with our closing). As much as you want to be excited about the 6, when your charter is up in the air (which when a chapter is struggling and possibly has been struggling for a while that is probably going to be a question from HQ, "should we keep this chapter?"), you can't help but be worried and say things "crap that other chapter got 25". Because you are all competing for the same PNM's.

First, sit down with the PR sister and no holds barred ask her why she didn't advertise the events? PNM's can't come if you don't advertise. Word of mouth will only get you so far. What kind of advertising can you do on campus?

OP-I've pm'd you.

I have a few comments and questions about your PR, as well...

The key is making yourselves look bigger.

Keep in mind that there is probably a HUGE number of female students on your campus that know nothing about Greek life. Absolutely nothing. They've never thought about joining, because they don't even know what it is they would be getting themselves into. And they also don't know that you're the smallest chapter on campus. Meet these girls!

If your sisters are sweet, talkative, and really down to earth, they should have no problem BECOMING FRIENDS with some of these girls.

Don't blame your PR chair! If you leave everything up to your PR chair when it comes to "advertising" for recruitment, you're going to be disappointed. Are the two of you working together to come up with the best ideas for the chapter?

This I will disagree with.

At the workshop I recently put on, I asked the sisters a question: "How many of you joined the sorority because of a poster you saw on the wall, or because you approached a group of girls wearing funny letters on their shirts?" Guess how many people raised their hand... One. And she was only intrigued by a poster which talked about our philanthropy successes.

One girl even said, "I never even noticed any recruitment posters until after I joined."

PR (when it comes to recruitment) shouldn't be about posters and wearing letters, it should be about MEETING NEW PEOPLE. How you go about that is completely up to you. (Refer back to the links in my last post).

I understand being concerned, but what does worrying and being all "OMG XYZ got 25 girls and we only got 6" do for you?

Nothing. It just discourages you and makes you not want to even try.

Same with thinking "OMG we're going to lose our charter" all the time. Just makes you sad and makes you want to give up.

The point I was trying to make was not that you should just be cool with getting 6 girls and stop trying, but you have to think positively and take actions toward improvement.

Think "ok, we have 6, and that is 6 more than zero. If we got 6, we can easily get 6 more. What can we take from this that can help us improve and translate into more effective recruitment?"

I've been in the situation of having less than ideal numbers and having to work hard.

Bemoaning the number of girls you get and counting the number of girls everyone else gets doesn't contribute to that.

This is the only reason I ended up at a recruitment event. A sister (who eventually became my big) said that she'd meet me at my dorm and walk with me to the event. Offer the same to your PNMs!

And expanding on the Recruitment Committee ideas... once the new members get settled, ask them for their help! Everything is new to them and they're excited about everything right now, so offering to them a larger sense of involvement in the chapter early on will probably thrill them. They can definitely help you execute recruitment/PR strategies and activities throughout the semester, and if they're younger, they probably have younger freshmen/sophomore friends who you can start getting to know now for the following semester's recruitment.

Well, in this case, yeah, I WOULD blame the PR chair.

It just sounds like the OP is being given all of the responsibility of rush and getting numbers up, but being continually hamstrung with 1) sisters who insist on doing things the same way they have always done them, even if those methods don't yield jack sqaut 2) sisters who volunteer for things and don't follow through 3) sisters who don't understand rush is THE WHOLE CHAPTER'S job.

I'm sure there are more than a few closed chapters of your org who would happy to tell your chapter sisters in no uncertain terms that if they keep going the way they are, they are headed for EPIC FAIL. While I agree with KSUViolet that thinking "OMG we're going to lose our charter" all the time and always comparing yourself isn't good - it seems like the chapter needs that kind of wakeup call. It's like they think "well, it hasn't happened yet, so it never will."