recruitment philanthropy ideas
 

hello! i am the new membership chair for theta at my school! We are planning fall recruitment and trying to come up with a cute theme for philanthropy day. this is the second day of our recruitment and typically involves a simple craft for our philanthropy. it has to be clean, quick, and easy, as well as cheap enough to repeat 800 times, or else easily undone between rounds.
we are playing with the idea of word play on our philanthropy- CASA (court appointed special advocates). we have alot of trouble expressing CASA to PNMs. We have ideas such as "welcome to our CASA" or "casa-blanca" but have no idea how we could work them out!
Thanks in advance for any ideas!!!

warning: rant (not directed at OP)
 

And this, my friends, is why the philanthropy round SUCKS.

CASA is a great thing and helps untold numbers of children. Theta made a great choice in their association with it. I've thought that ever since I heard of it. But it's not something that you can make a quick craft for, or easily explain to PNMs whose heads are ready to pop off. It's a cause that needs, pretty much, MONEY - it's not like you can get all the rushees together and ask them all to give you a buck and once they're combined, another volunteer can be brought on. (Although it would be nice if you could.) And it's far from the only national philanthropy that has this issue.

And the thought of having people do the craft, then undoing it...it would be so much better if the round would just be showing a short film on CASA, then talking about it.

Sorry hon, I know this doesn't help you with your immediate problem, but this is so a case of "good on paper, not in practice" and I wish NPC would just own up and bag it already. If they really want to be of help, have the WHOLE Panhellenic community come together on Bid Day and help Habitat for Humanity...or sort & pack clothes for Dress for Success....etc etc etc.

yes, no kidding! we support CASA financially throughout the year, but that is about all they want/need. we do show a video during each round, but are hoping to find a more understandable one this year.
one idea we had was to do a craft that would be useful for one of our fundraisers, such as our annual BBQ, but we are kind of lost on what to do.
I'm glad to hear you agree with our sentiment! the craft is not required by panhellenic, but as it is done by every chapter, we don't want the pnms to label us as "lazy" or not trying to actually help our philanthropy. love the dollar bill idea though ;)

Is there a local group that could use a craft/assist you could do while discussing CASA? Something like putting items together for back to school donations for kids (ruler, paper, folder, pencil, eraser, etc.) to highlight Theta's involvement in local philanthropy while discussing Theta wide CASA?

After reading CASA's website, I must say I am impressed at their philanthropy and their commitment to the welfare of children. It's really amazing.

For a craft (and having never been on either side of formal recruitment, I don't know how feasible this would be, so if it isn't I'm sorry) but I was thinking that you could possibly have the PNM's decorate the covers, or even the actual tops of CD's. On the CD's, you could record maybe your chapter president reading an inspiring poem, then maybe having them read a letter that the chapter wrote to the children, then maybe include a few inspiring songs? These could then be given to the children, because it would be a reminder to them that people do care about them and it would give music to inspire them through this hard time. I read on CASA's website how they are all about giving the children a voice, and this could be a really great way to inspire the children to use their voice.

In terms of cost, the CD's would run you about $150 for 800 (I found a website for wholesale CD sales, for example http://blankcdmedia.com/) then the covers would only be about $30 for 1000. So would about $200 be too much for a recruitment craft? The recorded poems and letters could be done on a computer, and from what I understand you can burn a song as many times as you want onto a CD as long as it is for non-commercial use. Maybe I'm wrong about that, though. It would be mostly time-intensive, but if you had a bunch of sisters bring their computers and gave them each a certain number of CD's that they were responsible to burn and stuff, you could get it done in a few hours, although it would be annoying work.

Just an idea. Such a great cause though. Good luck on finding a philanthropy idea! Another could simply having PNM's writing a letter to a child who is being helped by CASA, and having them decorate that. It would be a lot simpler. =)