Trying to rebuild my fraternity - techzbt @ Georgia Tech
 

Well, here's the story. I was a founding father of my colony of Zeta Beta Tau when I was a freshman. We were installed with 13 men but haven't had more than that since. My fraternity alumni corporation has a house on campus, but it is in poor condition, we lived in it my sophomore year but they decided to kick us out to put another fraternity in who they thought could pay the bills better. Since being off campus we've had a really tough time. There are 32 fraternities on my campus and only 2 off-campus. We are recognized by both our IFC and our national fraternity. The average fraternity size on campus is around 60, with the largest around 100. We are the smallest currently with 9 brothers. This fall rush we got 0 new members even though our alumni spent several thousand dollars on food, events, and publicity. We had less than 10 people by our house the entire night of rush (we were allowed to use our on-campus house for that week). We are hoping to return to our on campus house next year but we need about 15 people to live in the house to make it work (they don't have to be brothers). We are having an "info session"/rush event in the student center tonight. We ran giant ads in the newspaper the last 2 weeks and put up as many fliers on campus as we could without getting aux services mad at us.

I'll update you with how it goes.

If I can may I offer some advice... coming from a very difficult recruiting enivroment.

I know some are going to give you some pretty empty advice like "think positive"... pretty useless when it comes to the recruitment process. Now here in Toronto we've gotten away from the term Rush - because with such small recruitment returns you don't have the PNM come to you, you go after them - ie. Recruiting... once you've settled on some potentials thats when the Rush or weeding-out process begins.

Now as for advice on actual techniques:
- postes, flyers, advertising is fine... but it doesn't really take advantage of your strengths - think of it like an commerical advertising campaign: blanket advertising is so-so, but trageted marketing has a much higher pay-off. So if you have Actives, Alumni, or friends involved in anything on campus figure out a way to exploit that in -whether it means getting involved yourselves in the same groups, or holding tie-in events with sympathetic groups around campus.
- honesty is the best approach; people can pretty much tell when you are blowing sunshine up their ass... so talk about the rebuilding, talk about the oppurtunity to build something great, talk about the chance to be something more than just another Brother.
- like I mentioned at in the beginning, traget your recruitment; pursue the best that you can get. Have your recruiters act as talent scouts not advertisers - identify those people you would like to have as part of your GLO and recruit them. You need to build a star team or strong foundation to ensure future growth... so plan your recruiting accordingly...

Remember sitting back and hoping they come to you hasn't produced satisfactory results - so change it up a little and be more pro-active in the recruitment process.

certainly the same feelings we've had. We're doing this basically because we've run out of contacts and don't know anybody anymore who we think is a good potential, everyone has either already joined (not many) or doesn't pick up the phone when we call anymore. We're trying to locate the people on campus who are interested in this sort of thing.

We definitely know "build it and they will NOT come"

Can you/have set up an information table at the union during busy times?

Have you worked with dorm assistants to meet with unaffiliated men in the dorms?

Have you asked to speak at a meeting for another organization/club on campus? For example, journalism club, a business fraternity, etc. Likely joiners rarely join just one organization.

Have you worked with your campus Hillel, area synagogues, etc. to meet potiential members and introduce them to ZBT?

The old adage of "Make a new friend, introduce him to your fraternity, invite him to be a brother" does still work.

RACooper and PenguinTrax have excellent advice.

Definitely have some brainstormig sessions:

Why did the existing brothers chose ZBT? Why do men chose to go elsewhere? What do you have to offer that other groups can't? What are other groups offering that you're not? If your chapter focuses on ZBT's Jewish history, is that helping you or hurting in attracting new members? Do you effectively use Hillel connections?

What kind of members do you want? I mentioned in another thread that a chapter should write an image statement defining what the chapter is and what the chapter wants to be. If you want a chapter that can dominate in sports, your image statement should reflect that. If you want a chapter that is filled with campus leaders, say so. Then use the statement to remind yourself of your target audience and go after those men!

Is this normal on your campus? Either for alumni to be paying for recruitment, or for it to be several thousand dollars?

Like PenguinTrax suggested, if you can set up an information table staffed by brothers at the union during busy times you should do it. Nothing's better than having a brother asking a man to attend an event. You need a "call to action". Avoid passive advertising.

Finally, I'm going to be honest and tell you that men, especially young college men, respond to pretty girls. :D Every attractive woman you know should be selling every man she meets on ZBT. When she's got him hanging on her every word, she sends him to you to close the deal. I know it's sexist but I will always understand why fraternity men use women during rush. Besides, we usually have more practice on our recruitment skills. ;)

Can you use housing as an incentive? If you have a nice house and can offer a better deal than a dorm or apartment, maybe you could get some people to live there and then work on getting them to join.

men choose other fraternities because they are established and offer them a more traditional fraternity experience, at this point, we do not. Those who have chosen us have done so because of the challenge and because they liked the brothers we have.

We currently have no Jewish brothers, so its difficult to play on any Jewish heritage.

Tables at our student center are heavily ignored and a good way to stigmatize your group as the only organizations who put tables in the student center are evangelical religious groups or people trying to sell junk. We've tried tables before, they were a colossal failure and waste of time. When our national advisor asks us "what hasn't worked?", "a table" is our first answer.

There are few pretty young girls on our campus (75% men) and with only 8 sororities to 32 fraternities, they aren't overly anxious to help us out.

The average rush budget on our campus is $10000, we spent $3000. Usually alumni don't pay for recruitment, but with our current brotherhood size, we'd have trouble scraping together $500 for recruitment.

Also, I'd like to update you on how it went tonight

Nobody came because of our advertisements, so that was a waste of $450 of our alumni's money. But 4 guys that we already knew came and one brought a friend, 3 of them already have bids and haven't accepted because they can't afford it yet and 1 has a bid and hasn't accepted because he's worried about his grades (we've gone over how the fraternity can only help his grades but he doesn't buy it). The one who doesn't have a bid yet also brought a friend. We invited all of them to dinner on Thursday and will bid the two who don't have bids yet (we liked them) and reaffirm the bids of those who already have them and try to address their concerns.

We were expecting a better turnout considering how much effort we put into this, but this is a different campus than most, and hey, 5 is better than 0.

seriously get your brothers to bring non-affiliated friends out with yall sometime...hang out with them...get to know them...then invite them to join...talk to people in class...dont rely soley on rush...as one of my brothers said at a recent meeting "rush is a 365 day a year job"...maybe try and do some philanthropy projects on campus in visible areas to get your name out there some more as well.

I agree that rush is 365 days and thats what we've been trying to do, thus the rushing in November/December (our formal rush is in August). The problem with the classes is that our youngest guy is currently a 3rd year, so we don't have classes with many guys who would be really excited about joining a fledgling fraternity.

with all of yall being older that could be a problem...if yall have a pretty good relationship with any sorority on campus yall could ask some of their younger members for recomendations of guys you should contact. If any of your members have younger brothers or younger friends from high school that would just be entering college then that might work...but Im sure yall have probably thought of and tried all these. Good luck in getting your chapter back on track

Have you ever thought about offering a scholarship to incoming freshmen? Our chapter has done it for the past three years and it has worked wonders for recruitment. The first year we got 35 applications, the second and third year we got 75. Out of the 75 applicants 60 came out to the house to be interviewed. That gave us an instant 60 guys to recruit. Setting up a single day and inviting graduates to the event is great. The gentlemen applying for the scholarship are usually pretty impressed to hear what the fraternity has done for the graduates. Since you have a smaller chapter you may want to consider breaking the interview process into a few days with only 2 or 3 of you interviewing. From there we usually get 15 accepted bids, plus we still have the "Rush" period. Though we're moving to recruit 365.

Also, one recruitment event that got us a couple of great guys was holding an event at a successful local graduate's house. We had an event at a graduate brother's house that is a lawyer and again invited all the graduates. We even got the President of the University to come for an hour. The graduate brother hosting the event also made some calls to successful graduates in the area that do not come around often. This really impressed not only the potential members but the President to see that kind of graduate support.

Get involved in everything. When you enter a philanthropic event or IM, enter to win. Our Alpha class won a lot of things while still a colony, even though they didn't have the most athleticly talented guys. They did so well even other fraternities would come up and tell them how well they were doing for a new fraternity.

One last thing to consider, make shirts that are clean and anyone would feel comfortable wearing in front of there grandmother. List your values and display a recognition symbol. Also choose one color for all your shirts so when someone sees, in my case, a purple shirt they think "FIJI."

The women don't have to be sorority women. Any woman on campus that is familiar with your chapter can help recruit.

USCTKE has a good idea. I remember fraternities coming to our meeting and openly asking us to send them a list of men that would be open to learning more about their chapter.

Why stop there? Do SERVICE for your campus and community. By that I mean, co-sponsor events with other orgs (Greeks and non-Greeks) to show presence on campus.

Service to the community. Go out there and make a name for yourself. You can tell all the recruits that you are doing something positive for your surrounding community, not just for yourselves.


Our colony is fairly new to campus. We had to start from scratch. We do alot of co-sponsorship with Student Council committees and other fraternities/sororities while we are getting on our feet. We don't have a name yet, so we have to do alot of these co-sponsorships to unite with other orgs to gain their support as well get our NAME out there. Eventually, that will start affecting your our numbers in a positive way.


Another way of getting your name out there that has worked for another fraternity this year is, PUBLICITY. Create an image that you are the BEST fraternity on campus through your flyers, banners, etc Get a brother who is good at graphics to do this.

I hope this helps..

we've made about 6 shirts for our brothers. We wear them a lot but they haven't seemed to do much, considering every other fraternity has nice shirts too.

We offered a scholarship to incoming freshmen this year, we got 1 applicant.

Have you asked your nationals to send out a consultant who will help you develop a marketing plan and stay with you to help execute it?

As you go into finals and the holidays, no one is thinking about recruitment at this point or if they want to join a GLO.

Have a meeting and jot down some ideas. Over the holidays, organize your ideas with a few others and set up a plan. Identify dates, goals and what you want to achieve with each effort.

1) Don't listen to sorority girls offer you rush advice. Different ballgame.

2) You don't need to spend more than 10 bucks to get pledges. Stop wasting money. That's not your problem.

I want you to convince me why ZBT should be on your campus. There are 32 fraternities and ZBT is not Jewish (nationally or locally on your campus) so you can't go that route. Why should someone join your fraternity given it's relative youth, lack of alumni, big pretty house, large membership, etc. When you can figure out an answer to that, then you can figure out how to rush for guys.

-Rudey

my fraternity was founded on our campus in 1916 and were kicked off in 1998, as I said, our alumni association owns a large on-campus house, however, we don't currently live in it. We do have lots of alumni and alumni support, but none of them have any experience doing what we're doing.

I know the girls mean well, but seriously, if it was that easy don't you think we would've done it by now? we're not stupid.

Tables in the union, great. Shirts, nice idea. Philanthropy, yeah, thats alright too. What it comes down to, is you need to rush your balls off. Make it your everyday job to get pledges. That guy that sits next to you in Lit. class, rush him. Go dorm storming when you go to parties. Get your friends little brother and his group of friends to go to the cafeteria for dinner. Speaking of cafeteria and dinner, go over to that table of 'kids' and get them to come to your party on Sat. And be sure to get that one kid who is sitting alone. When you're walking to class and you're two steps behind another guy, pick it up a notch and start talking to him. Tell him how ZBT will change his life and you want him to be YOUR brother. You cannot stop rushing, ever.

You have alumni, you have alumni with money, you potentially have a house. Now, you need the men. Go get them. They won't come to you.

You must have confidence. You must believe that ZBT is the shit, before trying to sell it. 9 brothers could be 29 in one semester, easily.

Again - Go get them. They won't come to you.

You're getting great advice. If you want to buy brothers, just hand out the money, it will be quicker. If you are looking for dedicated members you need to work for it.

Recruitment is essentially about making friends. Just like others said, talk to new people in your classes and set up a time to study together at the library. Oh and what if a brother needs to be there too, they now know 2 brothers. I personally wouldn't start off with 'hey my name is tommy, want to join my fraternity?' it will take a while, but slowly introduce them to your brothers, invite them to help out a philanthropy event or take them to a party, whatever is social on your campus. After knowing them and having them meet brothers THEN intro ZBT, but by that point they'll see what the org is.

Everyone brother should be in another club, and hold a position in that club. Older students who are leaders can have a lot of influence on first and second year students (your target age).

Sit at a table where you don't know people (don't be creepy about it) but introduce yourself and be charming.

You can't go after the 'always joiners' they've probably already joined. You need to break new ground and focus on men who are leaders, good students, good moral character and whatever else you may feel is key.

Wear letters always. everyone should have a bunch of shirts with letters and you need to wear them, a lot.

Make your group stand out from the other groups. Maybe you are all very smart and your house GPA is 3.8, or maybe you do more philanthropy, give yourself an identity. Keep posters consistant in their look and general presentation (not identical) Brand your chapter's image so that if someone sees it, they think ZBT.

Good Luck.

For OPA, we sent postcards to all the female incoming freshmen and stuffed mailboxes like crazy and had our biggest Rush ever - is that allowed for IFC?

ETA: Sorry, need to make this more clear - the big thing that this did was make sure that even if the girls didn't know the name of many other groups when they got to campus, they did know ours, and (hopefully) will remember it and have some clue who we are even though we're not a huge NPC sorority.

ETA: I also want to agree with that it's all about making an identity for yourself and making everyone see what makes you different - it seems like every semester I find out about a new fraternity on campus that I didn't know existed because they really haven't distinguished themselves in any way, lol.

The girls won't understand, ever.

The house means nothing if you don't live in it. It's not an asset to you. Forget about it.

Once you figure out exactly what it is you are selling, it's a lot easier to sell it. Shirts, alums, and all that jazz won't help much. ZZ Kai covered pretty much everything you have to do once you figure out why people should join your house.

It's all about the grunt work now.

-Rudey

I wouldn't know. I'm in a Non-NPC sorority :-)

This is the gold quote - like Rudey said once you have an answer to the objections or skeptics... well then you've got the ideal recruitment answer/angle...

Rudey is spot on. What do you have to offer that the other fraternities does not. Why should they choose you over the other fraternities. Don't say brotherhood, all those other fraternities offer that and more. You need to establish a value added service. Distinguish yourself from the other fraternities on campus. This might be an unpopular thing to say, you're selling a product. the other fraternities are also selling a product. Figure out what exactly you're trying to sell and go from there.

Of course we don't think you're stupid. We're all trying to help.


HIJACK:

Rudey, I think it's harsh to say girls won't understand. If anything I think we're in the perfect position to understand. Men don't have to deal with the constant pressure of quota/total. I was a collegiate member for a total of seven quarters. How many rushes did we hold? SEVEN. Every quarter like clockwork. Even after formal recruitment we had another week of COB. I know how hard and draining it is, especially when your working to keep a chapter open. Also, I don't think COB and fraternity recruitment are all that different. Though I do agree that formal recruitment is an insanity that men would never allow.

Could you tell me why you feel the way that you do? Thanks!

/HIJACK

Who said it was easy?

See below, a true success story from Case Western Reserve Beta Theta Pi (posted at www.betathetapi.org earlier this year):

"Five Case Western Reserve University Betas, William Freed-Pastor, '06, David Bartholomew, '06, David Svilar, '06, Paul Serrin, '06 and Caleb Krouse, '05, recruited sixteen new pledges this fall more than tripling the size of the chapter. The hard work of these five men, coupled with the assistance of involved volunteers, will leave a lasting mark on the Lambda Kappa Beta chapter."

Simply because you were not in a fraternity, but a sorority. Being in a sorority involves more rules, organization, and a communist style system that deals with other sororities. Fraternities are not like that. COB is also different. It was all pretty evident in your advice. The advice from sororities probably wouldn't jive for NPHC recruitment either. It's all different - that's all.

-Rudey

The basics of ALL recuritment is the same. Know what you are selling, make relationships, intro them to the product you are selling, close the deal. Put it anyway you like, that is recruitment, the rules only mandate the forms that we do this in. People think recruitment is this huge state secret, it is just not all that complicated, you have to put yourself out there in ways that some people are not comfortable.

Techzbt-

Have you looked into Recruitment Boot Camp? A lot of the good advice on here is the same thing they preach- and they help you set up an individual plan. Check out recruitordie.com. They have sessions every summer but they will come to your campus (for a price, of course!).

Good luck!

Have any of you thought about being a Team Leader for Psych 1000 (or GT 1000 or whatever they're calling it now)? If nothing else, you befriend a few of the guys in your class, and they may join later on (if not immediately). If you got four or five of your guys to do so, it could help. GT 1000's probably your best place to meet a variety of younger men. Just a thought. M&M Mentoring's also an option (and isn't a large time commitment).

Oh, and I saw your Technique ad, it looked great and was definitely eye-catching. :)

Best of luck to you guys!

(edited for a typo)

What does this have to do with anything? The basics between champagne and gin are the same: alcohol with the ability to induce drunken behavior. But then again champagne isn't gin.

-Rudey
--Thanks though for letting me know about those basics.

They both get the job done!

Fraternity rush also has to deal with other fraternities, they're the competition.

How is your advice really different than my own:

we had 2 brothers go to recruitment boot camp this summer. They frankly thought it was a giant waste of time and they didn't tell us anything new that our national hadn't already told us. They didn't give us any new strategies and it in general wasn't tailored for small colonies on reverse competetive campuses. They don't recommend it unless your chapter is completely lost as to how to recruit.

GT1000 is a good idea, we may actually have one of our seniors taking it next semester if they let him. I'm also going to be a group leader for a sophomore ECON class next semester as part of my Senior thesis.

We do have good news today. The guy that was brought to our meeting on Tuesday by his friend is really into this idea and is going to convince the friend that brought him to join, so it looks like we'll have at least 2 new brothers in the Spring. He's a great pro-active guy and will be a definite asset to the fraternity.

Also, about the guys you referred to me through PM, what do you think would be the best way to contact them, invite them to our spring rush events at the Student Center or invite them to dinner beforehand?

If you have potential rushees right now, don't wait for rush events in the spring to get them - get them today - call them up, get them to go to dinner. Start from there. You have to be pro-active to get these men.

PS, if you get more pledges, don't do stupid shit to them either. That'll make their ZBT experience much better, and will likely make them rush better guys later on and you won't have to deal with 'well, I had to go through it, so, so is this pledge". You don't have a lot of options, so today's not the time to be losing 1 or 2 guys (well, it's never time I guess).

there is an older recruitment thread, in which the men participated
in the discussion and had some really good ideas on how to quickly build the membership of a chapter. i remember that firehouse was one of the participants, and i think that rudey and james also had some great ideas. rudey, do you remember the thread i am referring to?

meanwhile, i will see if i can locate it.

It was by Stan in Greek Life. I don't remember more. I don't know if it would quite apply here - Stan was more concerned that he was the only brother that cared - but there may be some good ideas in it. I really think zz kai already covered it all though. There are no secrets or gimicks.

-Rudey

thanks rudey.

I think specifically inviting them to the rush events, encouraging them all to bring along any friends they think would be interested (get more!), and then mentioning if they'd like to meet up for a prelim dinner to ask questions would be great. I never did go to OPA rush - I just met all the sisters for dinner at Junior's, and I was sold :)