My sorority is about to be non-existant! Help!
 

I am the president of the oldest sorority at Lousiana College. It is not a nationally recognized sorority. My college is a baptist institution, so we have to meet certain stipulations concerning our activities, i.e. no drinking, no smoking, no dances, etc. 5 years ago our sorority had at least twenty members active. Now we are down to four actives. In the past 5 years, our sorority developed a reputation as the "party sorority", and therefore, began attracting girls who were more interested in getting drunk than performing the required pledging activities. Therefore, this year, I made it a requirement that activities which were not allowed on campus should not be discussed during the meetings. ((Last year, my sorority threw a huge halloween party... Did us a whole lot of good, huh?)) What can we do to attract more girls? The Rush night at my college attracted only -10- girls!! We got four of them, but it is rare that all of the initial pledges remain until the end.

Help! I do not want my sisterhood to die out as a joke!

Sounds like you need to address your concerns with your sisters and any alumnae you may still have. The problem is that you can't save the chapter by yourself. If your sisters are not willing to change, you'll never be able to rebuild with the one person sisterhood. They may not realize that their lack of respect for your college's rules is hurting your chapter. Why are they at a religious school in the first place if they want to party?

I agree w/ what AOIIAngel said. - you can't save the chapter by yourself.

What were pledge classes like for the other groups? 4/10 is pretty good.

What sort of things is your sorority currently doing to attract new members?

Two of the sisters who are currently active are not big party girls. One is pregnant, and the other just isn't that sociable. The college is big on parties, because it ends up being a lot of Baptist kids who were never able to get out from under the strict thumbs of their parents. Now they are "free" and go wild.

The sad part is that I don't think that the pregnant girl and the party girl really care that much about the sorority.

How can I get the help of the alumni??

Do you have a database call them?

Also, whats changed? Are you saying you used to NOT party at all and had a lot of members? And then when you started partying you lost them all?

Or are you saying you were bigger when you were more party oriented?

I am trying to begin decorating the locker rooms before the football games again. I also am restarting the pizza parties we threw for the athletes every semester. I am restarting the Yearly Luau, and beginning a clothing drive. The things I am restarting are the things that happened in previous years, but were allowed to die out by the former presidents

Smaller when party oriented

Don't have a database. :(

Try recruiting, and wave the normal pledge period. Just make sure you stay active with events.

When I say recruit . . you have friends right? If each of you got one friend to join who got one friend . . . you are much bigger.

Use your scheduled chapter events to judge participation, not artificial pledge events.

Get the contact information for your alumnae from your school . . . alumni affairs office or some such animal . . you have names of them don't you?

Also -- invite unaffiliated women from your classes to informal rush events :)

What do you mean by informal rush events?? We have 3 mandatory rush events: candlelight, informal, and formal. candlelight is going out to eat followed by a secret ceremony, informal is completely secret, and formal is dressing up and going out to eat followed by another secret ceremony.

What can the alumni do to help???

What do you mean by waive the traditional rush period?? Don't make them fulfil all of the pledging requirements?? I don't think so. That's how you get members who don't really care.

I think, with numbers as low as you have, you need to start thinking in terms of reorganizing, restarting versus just saving.

So bringing ina group of girls that like you, and like what you do, and give them fairly equal footing pretty quickly.

You are about a semester away from death. You need to stop thinking about what you have always done, and start thinking about what you need to do.

No one said anything about going away from your pledge process.

Modifying the time it usually takes for you guys to rush does not = not fulfilling your pledge requirements.

Sorry I am unfamiliar with your terms since I'm speaking in NPC lingo.

Alumnae can be very helpful. They can work behind the scenes during your rush events/initation stuff, they can donate their time to help get your house in order, donate money to help the chapter financially (for your dinners out during recruitment).... the possibilities really are limitless.

I don't think time = members who care. There are plenty of members who go through normal new member periods and fulfill all the requirements and end up being deadweight on otherwise good chapters.

I think James might be suggesting expediting the pledge process. If you tell women they can make immediate impacts on your chapter, they may be excited that they can jump right in and start helping out without waiting however long your pledge period is.

If you expedite it, it doesn't necessarily mean they don't fulfill all their requirements, they just fill them really quickly.

I am restarting, James. If I was saving, I'd sell the sorority as the only party sorority on campus. I was understanding your statement to mean that I should completely disregard the pledge process. texas*princess, the girls are allowed to jump right in and help already.

James, I am not looking to begin changing things that are written in our constitution. I am looking to take what was a great sorority only a few years back, but was ruined by alcoholics and loose women, and return it to it's glory.

Are you restricted by your administration as to the number of recruitment events you can hold? Since you are not an NPC member, your recruitment may be different than ours, and we may not understand. If you can have recruitment whenever you want, hold it as often as possible, and look for women in you classes, dorms, etc. Let them know what your goals for the chapter are and interview them to determine their reasons for joining. If all you find are women who want to party, don't ask them to join. Just realize that you are basically starting from scratch though you plan to keep or reinstate your chapters old traditions.

Try PRing (fliers, announcements) at places where you would find the type of women you would hope to join your chapter. Talk to women you know from your classes, Church, Campus Crusade for Christ, Bible study groups, etc. Ask alumnae of your sorority if they know unaffiliated women who would make greek members. If you're meeting girls at parties and suggesting they join your chapter, you won't get the type of members that you want. Convince dedicated women that this chapter is for leaders, for women who want to make a change. Explain that they can squelch the party image since a new pledge class could potentially be more than half the chapter.

I realize what you're trying to do, but I think James had a very valid point (we don't even agree most of the time! :p)

In NPC land (which I realize you are not NPC, but bear with me) if there is a struggling chapter and they have done everything else they possibly could have done to save it, they have what they call a reorganization.

Some of the same sisters stay, some of them go alum, and they recruit a whole new group of ladies... so it's like starting from the ground up, except the chapter is already established on campus.

I get the feeling like you're only wanting to hear what you want to hear. In a situation like yours - with your chapter down to 4 members - you absolutely have to be open-minded to =EVERYTHING=.

You can post flyers from here to high-heaven, but I have the feeling that's one of the first things a group does when they are trying to recruit new members.

Yes, but once those women are chosen by the national, they still have to complete the new member program, take exams etc...they most certainly don't get a free pass into the sorority. That's why I think James' suggestion to waive the pledge program is absolutely terrible. (and sunshine, I too took it to mean letting them in w/out any sort of pledging/orientation whatsoever) That's called giving your letters away, and that's how groups end up closing 5-7 years after their big "renaissance" and everyone says "but they had such a wonderful comeback! What happened!"

Yes you are going to have women who just pledged in high offices...yes you are going to have sisters with 3 littles at a time (if you're lucky!)...but you don't give your letters away.

I think this depends on the organization and the situation. Of course you're going to educate them about the organization, but you may not do it in the same way as a new member class.

To the OP--flyers are not enough. You have to target the women you want to join your sorority and plan the steps to getting them to join (don't stalk, but motivate!) You have to talk to people on campus, anyone who will listen and ask for advice of faculty and staff. You have to "sell" that you're trying to keep this great campus tradition alive and you're looking for the right women who want to leave a legacy at your school.

It can be done. When I was a freshman, there was a sorority on my campus that had 4 members and by the time I graduated they had 20--which was a good size for my school. Good luck!

Can't agree with this statement more. Do them, but don't waste too much time anguishing about them. Very few women show up because they saw a flyer, so why bother? Ask yourself why you joined. Ask yourself why other members joined. Ask yourself where you see the type of women you want to recruit hanging out and ask yourself how being in a sorority might help those women.

I am in a less drastic situation with an NPC chapter (as an advisor) and I just read a book called I Heart Recruitment. It really changed my outlook on recruitment -- it would have changed so much of what I did as an active with recruitment. The book just came out this spring/summer and it is available on Amazon.com. You might want to check it out.

ok first of all, I've been in a similar but different situation. My local sorority had SERIOUS lack in numbers, a bad rep, our house was closed... it was bad, I/we revamped things by actually having parties and getting the word out. Now, since you dont' want to do that, some other things we did that might be helpful:
FACEBOOK! this is an invaluable resource, create a group, contact girls, get the word out
WEAR LETTERS! have each and every sister wear letters as many days as possible, we had a letter day, where everyone HAD to have letters on.
During recruitment or any event, we had each sister bring at least 1 girl to the house, or event. I would talk to girls in my classes, on campus, on line for food, anywhere, i met some of our best girls that way (I was an unabashed recruiter lol) we put up posters for events, throughout the semester invited girls to things, got to know them and then they would come through recruitment and then bring friends because they knew what we were all about.
Now, I know that there might be different rules for recruiting throughout the semester at other schools or in other orgs, this worked for us and we were allowed to do it, just a side note.
if you'd like to talk more about this, please don't hesitate to PM me

I completely agree with the above posters about human contact! Posters and flyers are great, but our chapter has always had great success with actually TALKING to people. We had a conference this year about recruitment techniques - one of the best things they talked about was talking to the people who you already know/meet. These are people you have something in common with already. (same class, same clubs, etc.) Try introducing them to your other sisters - over coffee, over a meal, movie, etc. THEN after they've had time to click with you and the other members, bring up your sorority. People are much more likely to listen when they know/like/trust several people who are part of something... just my thoughts.

I can understand that, but James seemed to be advocating just making them instant sisters, no education, no nothing. I'm hoping I misinterpreted this because it doesn't seem like something he would say. They don't have a national site they can go to, or national resources - it all has to come from the sisters there.

And flyers, chalking etc - often the amount of effort you put out just doesn't measure up in results. Inviting people that you know to join is much better.

I know that a lot of people are saying use Facebook etc, but if this is that strict of a college, Facebook or Myspace might not be good places to go.

I looked on the college's site. Of the four sororities, two have very detailed profiles, two have almost nothing. If your sorority is one of the latter, I suggest you update it ASAP and talk about your heritage, activities etc because those latter two look really bad!!

I might have misinterpreted James' post. I took it as an expedited pledge period, not a non-existant one.

Like instead of an entire semester (4-5 months?), make it shorter like 4-6 weeks.

You want it to die out as something serious?