Informal Recruitment
 

Hey All,

I'm the membership recruitment chair of my chapter, and in the fall, we'll be hosting informal recruitment as we do every year. Our campus is Panhellenic fully structured recruitment in the Spring; however, our chapter is under total and will be recruiting unaffiliated sophomore and junior women in the fall. I believe next year we will be the only chapter on our campus conducting informal recruitment in the fall.

In the past, we have held a week or two of themed open parties; however, we've had problems with encouraging girls to come out to our events (most unaffiliated women who are interested in joining a sorority prefer to wait and go through formal recruitment; I think girls are also wary of the process because we're the only chapter recruiting at this time) and also problems with retention between events (encouraging them to come back once they come to one).

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has experience with informal/continuous recruitment and can share what your chapter has done that might help these issues. I'm also interested in hearing themes for informal recruitment events as ours are getting a little old!

Thanks so much! :)

Jo

If you're the only chapter that does this and you do it as a weeklong effort, it WILL make you stand out, and not in a good way. A better way might be to have several events after formal and every month or so after, and then choose a pledge class in the fall.

Are you open bidding to quota/total after formal rush?

Are you receiving a list of women who went through formal the semester before and either were cut from the other chapters or dropped out?

Are the parties open to anyone who is eligible? If so - and you are the only chapter having to COB - I would discontinue this practice and make the parties invitation only. You need to find girls who want to be in YOUR sorority, not A sorority.

Oh, and you can have a slight theme (like XYZ Picnic or something) but don't go overboard with skits and costumes - informal rush is supposed to be just that - INFORMAL. Take advantage of the openness to get to know the girls better and talk with them more.

Not to tread into membership selection stuff, but do you want them to come back because they need to go to x number of events before getting a bid, or just because you want to get to know them better? Try asking different groups of girls to different events. That way you can spend more time with each of them.

The whole idea is to make the rushees feel that they are special and chosen - not that you just want them there to get your numbers up.

Last semester after formal recruitment, I divided up rush drop-outs and girls who did not receive bids and had the girls in the chapter who had spoken to them during formal recruitment contact them and invite them to events. This didn't work well at all, partly because a lot of the girls simply weren't interested after their various rush experiences, and partly because our sisters felt very awkward about contacting girls they had only met during rush. I planned events but they were simply not attended.

I agree that doing invitations for fall recruitment events is a great idea, my problem is getting names of girls to invite. Our chapter keeps a running wish list of girls we are interested in; however, getting our current members to contribute to it is difficult. Maybe what I need are suggestions on how to improve upon that. Off the top of my head, I can think of 5 girls who I would LOVE to invite to events next semester and see join our chapter, but for some reason, other girls in our chapter seem to have trouble doing the same. When I set requirements that people must provide x number of names, I still don't get a response. When I just ask at a chapter meeting, I really don't get a response there either.

Thanks for the help. :) I'm open to any ideas you might have!

Incentives - people like incentives.

If you invite X number of people to the next COB, you get a candle with letters/paddle/snickers bar, etc.

I'm extrapolating a lot here, but it sounds like a lot of your members do sorority, and nothing else. All their friends are sorority friends. You might want to encourage them to get involved in extracurricular activities where they can meet more people. Lots of sororities have a bylaw or national policy that every member has to be involved in at least one activity outside the sorority and I think that's a great idea.

With the girls who went through rush - I don't know that I would have individual girls contact them if they only knew them through rush. A form invite from the rush chair might be better. This is kind of a crap shoot, but sometimes it works out. At least you know the women are interested in being Greek. Although, if there are women you cut or that you knew at your formal rush parties couldn't wait to get out of there, skip them.

You might want to consider a welcome back to school event -- like a BBQ or something. Explain to your sisters that the goal is that they have to bring at least one non-greek woman to the event to hang out and get to know. Just because a person didn't go through recruitment, they may still be interested just shy or socially anxious, but still be a great potential new member.

I was recruitment chair for my chapter a few years ago and now i'm a graduate advisor for a panhellenic community. Many of the groups have to do COBs in the fall and most of them struggle with this. I just bought the new book I Heart Recruitment, and honestly the information in it really seemed like it would help. I downloaded it to my computer so i had it right away but you can order a hardcopy too. The PhiredUp.com website has a link. It was mostly common sense but it gave a lot of activities to do with your chapter to help you actually do the right things to bring women in. It talked a lot about small activities with a few sisters and really getting to know girl before asking them to join. It did mention getting out there and being involved in other groups on campus as a way to meet new women. Just thought this might help. Our Panhellenic is going to do a workshop on it in the fall to help them with COBing.

My chapter is one of the few that participates in COB at my school (we have August rush), and when i was COB chairperson last year, my co-chair and I found it most effective to do "coke dates" -- one on one situations (ie, a sister takes a PNM out to Starbucks). However, we ALWAYS told the PNM that they should bring a friend along if they wanted (and 90% of the time they did, for comfort reasons) and BOOM! another PNM. We did have events, but only 2-3 a semester, and it was a one-time thing, and that was mostly to get girls interested in greek life/Phi Mu, and then we took them on a coke date if we saw fit and perhaps offered them a bid. The idea of a week of parties for informal recruiting does seem a little off-putting to me, so maybe change it up.

We also had a "bring a friend" event -- like a movie night or something, for our newest pledge class after recruitment -- the only requirment was that the friend had to be unaffliated and looking to join a house...that got us a lot of selection for coke dates.

We are the only chapter on my campus that makes a big informal recruitment effort every year. A couple of the others discretely take a couple girls during COR, but we are the only chapter that consistently does not make quota every year.

What our membership director did was to solicit names from every member of the most recent pledge class She hounded the newer members until she got what she was after from enough of them. Our events were invite-only, but we ended up extending a few hundred invitations - all to women who had been personally referred to us by sisters or had expressed interest in our sorority at some point during the prior semester.

As you can imagine, we did not receive interest from the majority of the women to whom we extended invitations, but we probably got about 40 to come out. We ended with a special "pref-esque" evening where we did a more low-key version of our pref ceremony - of course, we didn't call it that, but we wanted to give the evening a slightly more serious atmosphere. We then had a membership selection and offered bids to most of the women who came to the event (I believe only one declined). We did lose a couple from that pledge class during the pledge period, which is normal, but we ended up initiating an uncharacteristically large group of enthusiastic, dedicated, and overall high-quality women that semester. Though we still didn't manage to hit total, we were as close as we'd been since I pledged, and the success of our informal recruitment gave our chapter a much-needed morale boost going into formal recruitment.

Anyway, that was really long winded, but I just wanted to share my chapter's experience/success story with informal recruitment and hopefully offer some ideas to other chapters in similar situations. I'd encourage considering it if you think that your chapter can support a "semi-formal" type informal recruitment effort and that it won't hinder you on your campus (really, it's possible that the other sororities won't even necessarily know about it, since you never publicly advertise - informal recruitment is very stigmatized on our campus, but we never experienced any backlash).

Wow, that sounds like an AMAZING plan, thanks so much for taking the time to share it with me! It actually sounds like a really nice integration of a lot of different things we've tried in the past, and I'm really interested to try it. We don't have a chef, which is unfortuante, but maybe I can find someone in the area who can cater for cheap. Also, how did you do your invitations? I've done some preliminary pricing of professionally made invites in the past, and they've seemed really pricey...how did you go about that?
Again, thanks so much!

I'm honestly not really sure how she did the invites, since I will admit to being one of the slacker upperclassmen who didn't know anyone to recommend. However, I had to print up invitations for a different event when I was an officer, and I just designed them on a publishing program on my laptop, took them to Kinko's, and had them printed on cardstock. If you have or can get access to a paper cutter, you can make them look fairly professional this way. Really, I think it's the personal effort of delivering an invitation to the pnm's door that has the real impact, so as long as it's not something that a sister Magic Markered and ran through the house copier, I'd anticipate it delivering the desired effect.

I would definitely look into the catering, but don't get something super-formal. You want it to look like you're making an effort to have a special dinner for these women, but you don't want it to be something so formal that they feel uncomfortable. I can't really offer much advice on the subject, since our sorority houses provide meal plans to their members. If you live in a barbecue-crazy region, that might be an option to consider, or, since it's probably going to be nice weather, a cook-out or picnic theme might be fun and festive without being intimidating.

When I was an adviser, the chapter planned a Picnic in the Park that included food, field games and awards-- it was basically a sisterhood event for the chapter members, but we invited PNMs to join us. It was away from the house, but still on campus.

It was a great way to get to know some new ladies and a chance for them to get to meet sisters in a normal environment. They followed up with some smaller events and inviting them to dinner at the house, and ended up extending bids to about 5 women, I believe, who all accepted.

The nice thing about this event was that it was away from the house-- "the house" can be somewhat intimidating to someone who is unsure of what a sorority is all about. The open field and picnic games were just simple and fun, and the "PNMs" were invited to bring a friend along. It seemed like a no strings-attached chance to have fun and it gave the chapter members a chance to kick loose and have fun with their sisters for a sisterhood event and some new friends.

I do think, no matter what you do for COR, you need to have a plan and a goal in mind, and several tactics and/or events and a goal from each of these, as well. It helps you to see what works for you and what doesn't when you can plan, have a goal and measure effectiveness.

One event that we did, that COULD have been sucessful (I don't think we advertised for it enough) was a pajama party in the freshman dorm. They had conference type rooms in the basement, and we decorated it like a bedroom, and brought pillows and stuffed animals.

You don't have to do the pajama party, but I think the idea of bringing the party TO the PNMs could work out well. I know I went to a couple COB events, and it was intimidating walking up to a huge, beautiful house where I didn't know anyone...it helped a little that you could call for a ride, but then you had to get into a car with someone you didn't know.

I also wanted to suggest that COR is only as good as the members can make it. If you include the members in the planning, ideas and execution, they may be more open to participation because it was "their" idea, too.

Appoint a COR member at large from each pledge class to rally their pledge sisters to get names for you to create a master invite list.

Form a COR committee. Maybe you can break the chapter up into COR "Teams" and incentivize them to bring in new members... maybe a contest to see which team can hold the most small events (ie: going out for ice cream with PNM's, tv night participation, participation at all-chapter COR events), etc.

This is a good idea, BUT....

make sure all the teams are working together toward a cohesive goal. Sometimes the different teams have very different ideas of what and who they want, to the point that the people team A is attracting are those that team B doesn't want to talk to, let alone bid.

That brings up another point. If you have a member who keeps asking back their roommate who no one else can stand, take her aside and have a talk with her. There are people who need time to warm up to a group and vice versa...and then there are people who no matter how much you bring them around, will never fit in.

From a COB's perspective...
 

When I COB'd this is what the three houses I visited did... (setting: mid-western state U. in the 90s.) I ate dinner at the houses at least once, usually with a house tour following. (Don't be afraid to NOT put this first. Doing something out-of-house with a couple of actives is a great first 'event' to warm up to. But it's ok if that's how it works out.) One house invited me to basketball games to hang out (they bought the tickets). With every house, I was always with the same active at each event, and usually one of their friends. With XYZ house, my pairing would have become my Big. At a second house, it actually turned out to be the informal rush chairman (who LOVED her position). :)

The house I joined had a game of "Clue" with a small group of PNMs, with each PNM paired up with an active (that familiar face!) so she wouldn't get lost in the house and I remember there being a lot of actives hanging out in their rooms. I got to meet a lot of girls that way, and got more familiar with the house, although it could be intimidating (or in the eyes of the paranoid, hazing, so be sure to dot all i's before doing this). I would recommend having a couple of events with each PNM before playing a game in a group like this, it makes it more comfortable and less overwhelming if there's a familiar face or three to "anchor" to.

Be cautious of dropping girls over semester break. My timing for COB wasn't probably the best, but picking things "back up" after 5 weeks of classes doesn't look good. I'm assuming what happened in my particular case is rare, but I thought I'd throw that out there.

It's all about keeping it low key and making the PNM feel comfortable yet special. As a COB, I wanted to see behind all the polish and frill of Formal. I wanted to see what the chapters were REALLY like on a day-to-day basis, and to see if I connected. I visited one house during dead week (see above note about not-so-great timing) and that let me see a lot. (Looking back, I'm surprised they had me...)

On the other side of COB, I remember going along with a rush group (sorry, 90s term...), and playing chess at a coffee shop with my now-bff. It just so happened we clicked, and her pairing assignment not as much. Again, stating the obvious, but if that happens, let it.

Good luck!

I was always taught that you will only be able to convince about 10-20% of the total people in any recruiting pool to join during any COB period (formal is different since those women sign up with intentions to join) so the larger pool of women you have, the more women you can carry to the end of COB if you keep working at it. (and bonus!.. the better selection you have so you can recruit the quality women.)

This is a little bit more of a long term plan, but is pretty similar to CrimsonBlue's COB list...

1. Get the chapter together (possibly during or after chapter) and have each woman make a list of all the unaffiliated women she can think of. The most important piece of this activity is to reserve judgement on whether or not she would want to join, what year she is, if you actually think she's a good fit, etc. Basically, you are having a brainstorming session with your chapter (and if any of you have ever been involved in a serious brainstorming session, you know that you are absolutely not allowed to discount any idea before you finish the session)

Everyone should have been able to make a list in like 2 minutes of at least 20 women she knew that are unaffiliated even if you are listing half 4th years. Think about girls you sit by in class (even if you dont really know them.. yet), girls in clubs or sports with you, well-known non-Greeks on campus, that girl you always see walking to class, etc etc. Unless you can say that 90% of your campus is Greek, members have no excuse for not being able to contribute a long list of unaffiliated names. Considering that you'll have a lot of repeated names, you could end up with around 200 or more names out of this activity (if you had 20 unique names for each woman in a 40 person chapter, that would be 800, but thats unlikely to happen).

2. Now that you've got your list, you can pare it down a bit.. take out seniors and any serious potential problems (like the girl that slept with all your sisters boyfriends or something). you should still have a pretty long list and all it takes is some motivation and pushing to get women to start inviting them to events. Keep in mind that some of these women may not be close with any of the chapter so you will need someone to break the ice.. chances are someone vaguely knows them (or they wouldn't be on the list).

3. The list should actually be the easy part.. you now need to keep on members to talk to the PNM's and invite them to events (and if someone knew an effective method for that I think we would all be forever in debt). Making it easy on them and making and addressing invitations for them to personally hand out is a really good idea since it has the personal touch and also will be a physical reminder of what they have to do. Go over exactly how to hand out the invites with members so no one is just shoving it in a PNM's hand and running away.

Unless they've only got 6 weeks to go, keep the seniors on. You never know - some women contribute more in two semesters than others do in 4 years.

Also keep in mind that not everyone is on the 4-year plan... depending on their major(s)/minor(s) they can be academically sound and be around for 5. YMMV.

(edit for misspelling...)

I really like the idea of the "familiar face", I don't think that that's something that our chapter has specifically done before, and I feel like we've kind of "lost PNMs along the way" because of it.

We're definitely open to taking fourth years, we took two last year and they both had a great year with us.

I'm definitely forming a COR program based on all the suggestions I've gotten here, I'm really excited! You ladies have been SO helpful!

[quote=adrie435;1488775]
3. The list should actually be the easy part.. you now need to keep on members to talk to the PNM's and invite them to events (and if someone knew an effective method for that I think we would all be forever in debt). [quote]

Thanks for that by the way; glad to know it's not just me that has this problem! :p

In my chapter, we often have friends or at least good aquaintances of actives, who attend COB events and to make it less awkward for them to just show up at our chapter house, we have an active who's friends with a pnm meet her before and walk over to the house with her to make things less intimidating. (All our chapters COB in the fall.) It's little, but it really raises our number of accepted invitations when the pnms know they can show up with a friend who already is involved in the house.

I am the recruitment head for a chapter that is basically in the same situation. We are at about half total, and generally draw a larger number from informal than formal, much to our detriment. Personal invites seem to really be the way to go with pnms, and offering free food on my campus is guaranteed to draw attention. As far as invitation quality something nicer is going to spark more interest, I'm lucky to have very crafty sisters who volunteer to hand-make personal invites. I think it might even do better than a stock invitation from a store, or a printout. I also found that when you deliver bids, brings snacks. We give bids in the morning before class (too early for my liking but some sacrifices must be made), and its easy to be grumpy at someone who just woke you up, but no one can be upset with a donut. Another one of my chapters strategies is an overall PR boost, our formal recruitment occurs in the fall, so getting to know freshman early through PR activities and my "bring a freshman" games (invite freshman to our open activities and win points toward some prize). And don't forget freshman boys, they know freshman girls.
I've found sister morale is my main concern, since recruitment is an ongoing problem and the sense of campus-wide competition leaves us a little demoralized. I agree with what was said above about using incentives and keeping on top of your chapter, but keep the incentives appropriate to your chapter, candy bars wouldn't get me anywhere, but I'm going to try laundry doing, room cleaning and meal cooking which hopefully will get me somewhere. Try reaching out to local alumns and your national for ideas , locations for parties, and donations for any sort of recruitment supplies.

I'd love to hear how things work out for you. Best of luck!