A chapter recruitment story.
 

Hi, everyone! I am a long-time lurker and have chosen to come out of "hiding" to post my chapters' story. I have recently seen an influx (or what I feel is an influx) of young ladies saying things like "they're the smallest chapter, they'll take anyone" and I want to tell the story from our side, hopefully to make some women understand that this just isn't true (without digging into membership selection, of course!). I hope that by telling our story, PNMs who may encounter a chapter like this will learn to give them a second look and not immediately dismiss it, as well as gain some helpful advice from all of the wonderful and intelligent women (and men!) on GC. This will be an ongoing story, so while there may not be daily (or even weekly, sometimes) updates, I hope it will be entertaining for at least somebody to read - plus it'll be nice to get it all out and potentially receive (outside) feedback from far more experienced individuals.

First, a little background on my chapter. My campus has 5 or less Panhellenic sororities and is located in a small college town somewhere in the US. We have between 100-200 women go through formal every year, with quota generally somewhere between 15 and 30. Approximately 20% of my campus is greek, and the sororities are a very small percentage of this. My organization has been on campus a little over 30 years, and as far as I know, has never actually reached total. We have been close, but never fully achieved it. Currently, we are at approximately half of total, which is significantly less than the other organizations on our campus. I have been a member for two years, and for at least the five years before I joined, we would rarely have half of quota show up on bid day. We have been open recruiting since my campus instituted total, and it is becoming very discouraging to our alums and collegians alike.

This thread will chronicle my chapter's journey through formal recruitment, open recruitment, all the struggles that our chapter faces by being a weak recruiting chapter, etc. Please let me know if this is the wrong place to post this, and if you're highly interested in chapter specifics feel free to PM me. :)

Can't wait!

Oh, this is so interesting! Thanks!

Update: work week is underway! We have all moved into our chapter house and are having a lot of fun with our visiting officer from Nationals who has come to help us perfect our recruitment strategies! She has already changed at least 1 major aspect of each day, we are a little stressed, but have faith that she knows what she's doing and it will all benefit us in the end!

Our campus has 3 days of recruitment, with bid day being Sunday afternoon. Day 1 is philanthropy/skit day, and each woman attends a party at each chapter on campus. Day 2 is sisterhood/housetour day, and each woman may be invited back to a maximum of every chapter. Day 3 is preference, and each woman may attend a maximum of 3 parties.

I wish you all the best for a successful recruitment, and I'm looking forward to your story!

This is wonderful, thank you lilabelle!

Enjoy work week, it was always my favorite week of the year! =)

This sounds interesting! Carry on! Good luck to you and your hardworking sisters.

I think this is a great idea! Good luck with recruitment and all of the prep!

Never give up! The chapter I advise colonized with seven....fast forward 9 years.... after LOTS of hard work (and LOTS tears and laughter), targeted PR, many COB's, and very strategic planning.... we were one away from total in spring, which is 35. Had 3 not graduated in fall (how dare they! LOL!) we would have been at total. We returned with 26 this year and I'm 100% confident they will reach total in recruitment...and not have to COB for the first time in their history (and you'll hear me screaming with joy across the country!)!

They key is to work smart! I'm happy to share things that worked for us if you are interested. Good Luck!

Congratulations! Good luck this fall as well!

lilabelle, good luck with your chapters recruitment.
I know it is hard, but always think positive and keep strong.

Just curious, given that your campus has a small number of chapters, have they considered moving to a max 2 party Preference? Also, for context does your campus use RFM?

Great idea for a thread. Best of luck with Recruitment!

With only one previous day of invite back a max 2 party pref probably would do more harm than good. This is a small system. They only have to do the pref party once.

That is awesome! Would you mind sharing tips? I know there are WRCs everywhere that would love any ideas you can pass along.

Good Luck this year!

I fully agree with Delta-adpi, any tips anyone has would be wonderful to share! I know my chapter is always looking for new ideas to change things up and keep us from getting burnt out on the same COB event ideas, etc.

To answer a question from upthread, yes our campus does use RFM.

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.

My chapter did this as well. Obviously, the week or two after FR, we picked up friends/roommates of our new PNM's, where we could, but then there was a second wave a couple of weeks later.

Newest update:

We have our big sister reveal next Monday, and we are so excited for our new members to find out who they are! Unfortunately we have had more women drop, so our NM class is about 2/3 the size it was at bid day. Very disappointing, but since bids are good for a calendar year, we are working to re-recruit the women we have lost so far, as well as meeting new women to recruit. Campus total has again been raised, so we are now further from reaching it, which is also sort of disheartening. We are doing our best to meet snd recruit new women, though everyone does seem less enthusiastic anout jt than in the past. It's very difficult when we continuously recruit awesome women, who then drop because of finances and there's simply no way around it - we do present finances initially, but many women feel they can make it work, then find out later they simply cannot, which is why they choose to resign.

If I may ask…why is your campus Panhellenic raising total if not every group is meeting the old number? (I'm not in a panhellenic so most of what I know about quota and total, I learned here on GC. :D)

Also, regarding finances, is there anything you guys can do to help them, like maybe fundraising or payment plans?

It's based on chapter average, and it's what should be done. It sucks for the smallest chapter who is having trouble keeping up but it keeps total fluid, which it should be.
A better solution would be getting panhellenic and the other chapters fully supporting that little chapter that could. But that's easier said than done!

Keep at it! I have high hopes for you.

Funk dat. If they want to flounce, let 'em flounce. You will not do your campus reputation or your chapter's self-esteem any good by begging these girls to come back. Any time we "begged" a girl to pledge, she ended up being a POS sister.

Living well is the best revenge. Go after new pledges, set your sights HIGH and make those girls sorry that they were so stupid as to drop.

And are you guys the only sorority with the finance problem? If so, is it because your dues are appreciably higher than the other groups? If that's the case, re-evaluate and see where they can be cut. If it's national dues, knock your local dues down as far as you possibly can. But if every group's dues are around the same amount and you're the only group having women drop because "it's too expensive" - then you need to 1) start giving them an experience that's worth the $$ 2) stop bidding wishy-washy women. Don't mess with money issues. If they can't afford it, DON'T BID THEM. Trust me, it is not worth it.

Thank you so much for making this thread. Gamma Phi at BG has been under total for a very long time and we are working hard to recruit more quality women. I'm rooting for your chapter and I wish you the very best!!! :)

Update time! Not much to update, but thats OK.

We initiated right under 3/4 of our formal recruitment NM class this past weekend. We are still under total by double digits, but We are a lot closer to being at total than We have been in a very long time and everyone is very excited about that.

We have yet to bid a woman through open recruitment this semester, but our cor committee has been discussing and we've (finally) decided that we need to reduce our goals down from the huge number required to get to total, to a more reasonable goal (like 8 women), then create a new goal once we reach that goal. We have a very good shot at reaching total next semester, or at least being like single digits under total, which i think is where most of our motivation is coming from right now. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will be able to begin a new (big!) NM class and I'll have fun things to post later on! We have a lot of cor events coming up in the next few weeks, hopefully they will help push "maybe" girls over the edge...

That sounds like a strong plan to me. Sometimes when there's this *NUMBER* looming overhead, it can be overwhelming. Breaking it down into reasonable steps and readjusting after each one can be key to achieving your goals in growing your sisterhood. Because that's what it's all about, it's not about numbers, it's about your sisterhood. Good luck!

Congratulations on the progress. I think it's important, when you've started to have success to take a deep breath and not get too enamored with the number over the quality of the girls who are suddenly showing up at your doorstep. It sounds like you have a solid plan. If you've been under total for forever, then waiting 1 more year to get there the right way isn't gonna kill anyone. And if you get a great group this fall, who knows? Maybe you can get another great group in the spring. I've seen it happen!

Beginning of semester update:

As a chapter we are very optimistic for the coming semester. With permission from our nationals, we have extended bids to several women already, and are looking forward to the fun recruitment events our COR committee has planned in the coming weeks to help build up our NM class even more. So far, this is the largest informal NM class we have had since I have joined, which is very very promising as their NM classes haven't even begun yet! We have an officer from our Nationals coming to visit this week to help kick off the semester's recruiting efforts in a really positive light, and I think it will be very effective for the rest of the chapter. A lot of us are still very burnt out on open recruiting, myself included, but the recruitment committee and alum advisors have finally realized that pressuring us to recruit 35 women in 6 weeks is extraordinarily unlikely for our campus, and that smaller goals are the way to go, which I am thrilled about. It helps that we have some new women on our advisory board who are more recent graduates from other schools, so they have lots of fresh ideas that we are hoping will be successful on our campus as well.

My school's Panhellenic does not hold any kind of a formalized spring recruitment like some other schools do, as there is simply not enough need; all open recruitment is up to the chapters. Because of this, the sororities significantly under total (ie more than 2 or 3 women, though this number depends on the sorority of course) have taken it up on ourselves the past few years to implement our own "formalized" informal recruitment weekend event, where we work together to hold house tours, mixers, etc on the same weekend and encourage women to attend events at all the houses that are open recruiting, and this is coming up soon. It has been very successful for us in the past, plus it's great practice for the newest initiates for formal recruitment, so we're very excited for this year's event and hoping it goes well.

As far as numbers go, we are beginning the semester about 20 under total, which is AMAZING. We have the potential to make total through formal recruitment next fall, which would be the first time we hit total maybe ever. I am not sure when my campus implemented a campus total, but I can almost guarantee we have never consistently been at total - maybe reach it one semester, then have a bunch of women graduate + drop and not be able to recoup the numbers, that sort of situation.

I know this isn't an overly exciting update, but I know how much you all love success stories, and as things are beginning to finally look up for my chapter, so I wanted to share anyway.