Chapter contributions to Housing Fund?
 

Is it commonplace for individual fraternity chapters to give a large sum of money to their housing fund semesterly? I'm not talking about rent or fees associated with the maintenance of the property but rather a flat fee to go towards the construction of a new house (essentially a donation?)

To their own housing fund or the housing fund ran by nationals for other chapters?

Their own housing fund

I have heard of some chapters apportioning a part of their dues into the housing fund every semester to help finance construction. The chapters that I have seen do that though generally acknowledge that it is just a token and that the real financing comes from alums. In order for the chapter to finance construction relying on the way you mentioned, either a large percentage of dues would have to go into the fund or the chapter would be saving for 20 years. I see big problems with both ways.

We do as we do not own a house, but the majority of our donation comes from ticket sales revenue to a festival which gives us about 10 000 after costs each year. We usually give 5000, but there are some interesting things you can do with the tax system up here in Canada. Of course we've held alumni donation campaigns in the past as well.

To build anything, you're going to need at least I'd say $125k, maybe half that to buy a small house. 5k a year is nice, but ultimately you're talking about saving for 5-10 years to pay for the furniture.

Alumni (and in some cases investors) is the way these projects get done. I'll tell you something we did though. We did the part of our capital campaign focused on big donors, then when we got down to the asking for a couple hundred range of donors, we made it a matching funds campaign. Chapter would commit to saving through the year and then giving 15-20k at the end. And those lower range alumni donors matched funds. It made chapter save/contribute, and also motivated alumni to give.

A portion of our National dues are put in an account for our chapter house through Nationals.

Which is nice. My org has an independent property group that helps re-fi select houses to keep chapters from losing them, or to help with renovations necessary to make the business model work, or install fire sprinklers & such. It's backed by investment from our national foundation, but independent of both the foundation or the national fraternity. That's specifically so when we get sued they can't touch anyone's property. All our houses are locally owned by a housing corp that's technically not affiliated with the fraternity.

I know lambda chi's national housing corp melted down a few years ago. I know a few others just basically co-sign loans but don't actually give out any money or loans or own percentages of any houses. This is one of those things that varies widely between orgs. A lot of that I think is because housing donations are still not tax deductible.

My chapter has a suite rather than a house, but we are still required by nationals to collect money for house corps from each member. The expenses are much less on a suite than in a house, so it doesn't take long to save for something big- new couches, dining room table, repainting, etc can all be paid for with 2 years with of dues.

I've worked with several chapters that have done this successfully at the local level. With many fraternities (even the largest ones), there is relatively no housing assistance from the national organizations. As a result, the key is have a strong housing corporation administered by alumni at the local level. I've worked with a couple chapters that have been able to raise more than 25k per year by allocating a certain percentage of each member's dues or rent toward the housing fund. This kind of dedication from the student chapter generally results in more support from the alumni toward the cause as well.