Getting members to be more active
 

I want to get people more motivated to participate in sports, philanthropies, etc. but without enforcing fines to get them to do so. How do you get people to want to participate.

It seems inconvient for them to wake up early for a philanthropy or to do IMs at night, when they could be sleeping or going to the bars.

Stop giving bids to such a bunch of lazy asses, for starters.

Why must philanthropies entail waking up early? I don't get that.

Are intramurals big on your campus? If so, I'd think they'd want to participate rather than having the fraternity look bad.

About half our members participate in events, and then theres the few that will participate in everything. The others don't want to do anything.
While pledging, they participate in everything, but once they get in, I guess they think they don't have to anymore.

Start making rules about participation and using a points system (you can do a search on GC for how that works). If people don't achieve the minimum number of points, they're out of the fraternity. Period.

Getting people to participate in intramurals might be a little difficult, but with philanthropies, everyone should probably be involved. Are your members required to show up to all events voted on by the chapter? If not, something is definitely wrong.

For example, my chapter has determined that if a member does not show up to an event which has been voted on by the chapter, without a legitimate excuse (to be approved by the advisor no less than 24 hours in advance), it counts as an unexcused absense, and the member is placed on "poor standing". This can also happen if a member shows up more than 10 minutes late to an event on two different occasions. When in poor standing, that member can't vote, hold a position or attend social functions for 3 weeks. If this happens twice within a fairly short period of time, they must meet with Tau Honor Council (standards board), and if it happens a third time, their membership can be voted on by the chapter.

Sometimes it sucks to have to call people out when they're not doing their part, but it's all about what's best for the chapter. And if half of your chapter is made of up people who don't want to do ANYTHING, then it's time to clean house.

This is a common problem with any group, not just GLO's. Everybody wants the perks of membership, but not the work. First off over programming is one of the most common traps a chapter can fall into because they (especially Exec officers) think they need to do everything imaginable. Doing some things well is far better than doing everything half heartedly. Even the most committed and active members can get burned out if there is too much to do -- especially if it interferes with schoolwork/studying. Even fun activities can be seen as an obligation if there are too many and it will suck the fun right out of it.

Too often exec officers dictate the functions a chapter will do rather than finding out what the members actually want. For example, is there enough interest to field a specific intramural team, both players and supporters to attend games? Chapter votes and polls can be useful. Yet you can't rely solely on that because there must be leaders in a chapter and there are things that must be accomplished. Meaning it's probably not a good idea to take a chapter vote on whether they should do a philanthropy event because they may say no. Instead, take a vote on whether to do this philanthropy event or that one, on this date or that.

Pick only the most important/critical events to make attendance mandatory. Voluntary activities then need to be fun and/or rewarding so that members will want to come and have more. Sometimes this means accepting that only a few core folks will show up at first. Then those core folks need to talk up how great the event was and encourage others to attend the next one.

Don't forget that the more lead time members have knowing when events (especially mandatory) are scheduled, the easier it is to plan to attend. Provide each member with a calendar of scheduled events each semester/term. This means planning ahead by Exec. Regularly update it too, but try not to make too many changes.

A system of rewards/consequences for attending events can be helpful. This could be a point system like 33girl mentioned, a fine system, a combination of both, or something else entirely that would work for your chapter. Keep in mind any sort of system requires tracking. Attendance needs to be taken at events, reviewing legit excuses for missed mandatory events, point/fine/whatever totals maintained, informing members of their totals, enforcing any consequences (like no socials), etc. The whole thing will fall apart if someone gets credit for attending something when s/he didn't or attends a social function when s/he shouldn't have. Word spreads fast and those who did what was expected will resent it.

Another thing about intramurals... while you probably can't make them mandatory, you might want to have the system more organized. Do you have an intramurals chairperson? This might help in managing what sports to get involved in, and being more aware of who will be willing and able to participate.

We do have an IM and philanthropy chair. We ask who wants to participate in which events, but its always the same people who participate.

We ask which members want to do events, and those who sign up are required to go. However, we do not make the whole chapter go, and we do not enforce that people actively participate in most events. This is something I am going to change.

I completely agree! We are fairly new on campus, so we are still trying to find solutions to problems. I really like your suggestion about putting members at poor standing if they are not doing their part.

Zillini, everything you said helps as well. I think I have an idea for a system that should work. We do try to participate in everything, and maybe we should take a step back. I feel we could do better in events if we did not try to do everything. Also, we do have a calendar system, but I think we could improve on that as well.

I really like this...

There's a lot of things I have not thought about, that yall posted. Thanks for the suggestions!

This is my 1st time using quotes, so hopefully i did it right?

Something that we try to do (especially for things like brotherhood events where we don't fine) is to make sure the people who were at the event talk it up at the next chapter meeting and make sure everyone who wasn't there knows how much fun it was. It gets people excited about events and gets to the point where mandatory events don't feel mandatory anymore. Also as Zillini mentioned make sure your calendar is set far in advance it takes away lame excuses. Ideally your calendar for the Fall should be set before you go away for summer vacation.

Just an idea...

For my sorority, DZ, this past year we made involvement groups. All sisters were divided up into 8 groups (sisters with 1 EXEC member like me per group) and then activities on campus were split up. Like, if there was an intramural softball game going on Team Pearl would be responsible for going to that, and then if there was a fellow sorority's philanthropy event later in the week the next involvement group would go to that one. Therefore, each sister isn't be required to go to all of the events going on around campus, but it is divided up. Sisters get out on campus, get our names out there, and our active sisters don't get worn out or lazy because they only have to go to one of these events every few weeks. They go to one, then get to have a little break.

Does that make sense? It's helped a lot in our chapter!

Try making a system where the consequence matches the crime

If you miss a recruitment event, then you are no longer allowed to vote on anyone that showed up to that event

Plan a really fun brotherhood event for the guys that are participating in IM, if they don't play, then they can't come

Make it a tradition to go out and eat or party after your philanthropy events. The brothers that miss the event will also miss hanging out

If we didn't participate in required philanthropy events we were not allowed to attend the next social event(s).