Meeting boredom
 

Does anyone do anything cool to spice up meetings? I just declared Monday "Ugly T-shirt Night." We are looking for anything to boost morale, because everyone hates chapter.

When we took roll we all had to say how many classes we missed and the secretary also tacked a silly question on. Like who is the best kisser on campus or what is your favorite food.

Plus we had "sunshine jar" where everyone can put in little notes of hello or encouragment. Since we had our meetings on Sunday and the various weekend debaucheries ;) were still fresh in everyone's mind these got hilarious! If you have a large chapter though, you might want to limit it to only one message per person or a set # of messages or you will be there even longer!

I don't know if any of these would work for your chapter but here's some things we did:
Dinner-we always had dinner beforehand as a chapter (paid for with our dues) so at least everyone wasn't hungry!
Joke basket-passed around during meeting, at the end the pres would read them, kept them clean though
You Rock award- given to a sister who had done a wonderful job at something
support bra- for a sister who was working on something hard that week or going through a tough time
friendship journal-written in every week given to a "special" sister, it was read to the chapter
Happy Hoots- the mailbox was passed around during meeting, sisters could put messages in it for other sisters
games-we usually played some sort of game at least once a month
Posters- sisters would make them pertaining to whatever they were talking about. at least it gave us something to look at
email- we set up an email account where it was easy to email all the members, helped keep the little announcements to a minimum and a great way to remind people of stuff they may have missed during meeting.
informal meeting-almost all of our meetings were formal, we usually had at least one a semester that was informal

None of these are big or elaborate but they helped to break up the monotony of everyone giving their weekly reports and gave us a little something to look foward to. Good luck with ugly t-shirt night!!

We had a pumpkin carving contest at our last meeting!

My chapter takes breaks sometimes or in a non serious moments we may joke around some.

How long is your chapter meeting if everyone is getting bored? Instead of prolonging it with jokes and stuff, try to get an agenda, stick to it, and get it over with more efficiently. Our chapter meetings were so long sometimes, I thought I'd nod off. After we implemented our new teams fashion of leadership, our meetings went from an hour and a half (average) to forty five minutes (average). And we do the fun stuff...(the support bra, the sunshine sister, birthdays, and the like).

We limit discussion and stick to a set agenda. Our meetings really were never too long-- and we have 120 members--unless there was just a ton of stuff to cover---and then it's not fair to short change it b/c some times of year are just busier than others. At the end of meeting we always do "5 minutes of positives" so sisters can share happy/positive things in their life. And we keep it to 5 minutes!!! We did "dress down" chapter a couple times each semester too. Sisters had the opportunity to dress casually on those nights by paying a couple of dollars...and then the $$ we raised would go to our philanthropy. We also had the "A" box and sisters who A's on tests or papers since the last chapter could put their name in the box and we would draw 3 names during chapter and give out little prizes (gift certificates to TCBY, something cute with letters on it, etc.) Chapter was never fun but the little things did help break the monotony :)

One thing we did to get everyone relaxed before the meeting was when we had roll call we had to answer with something different each meeting. For instance, instead of saying present or here, we'd say the color of panties we had on (which ended up getting quite hilarious, since some people actually had no idea), what our favorite food was, color, etc...just something cute.

Our meetings could go on forever and ever if we weren't careful to keep things non-business related out of chapter meeting!
To liven it up we'd have the A-quarium...a fishbowl where we'd write on these cute fishies what classes we'd gotten A's in that week and then the VP would draw a winner.
We'd also pass the "Giving Book" from one sister to another. Hootie (our stuffed owl) was also passed at the end of the night from one sister to another ~ usually at the end of the year the Seniors keep a hold of him by passing it to only other Seniors until they've all had him for a week.
Another fun thing we did was play Chi Omega Survivor with the New Member Educator. That was generally at the end though! So I suppose a few things like these helped meeting go by, but all in all they could get pretty long!

Hootie:p

Our chapter meetings are actually something we look forward to, partly because we do many of the above that I have taken from Heather's post (sorry). I deleted everything in her post that we don't do and left in everything that we do. It has made chapter a great chance to bond, actually!

We also give out gift certificates every 2 weeks to a sister that had done something extraordinary, in our eyes. For example, last time we gave it out to a sister who had labored for so long over a huge paper....well, she got an A on it! Writing is definitely not her specialty, so we were so proud of her. Also the time before that we gave it out to a sister who has done a lot for a local elementary school.

We had a Sister of the Week Award at each chapter meeting. Each semester we had a Secret Sister where every week sisters exchanged gifts sometimes at chapter meetings. At the end of the semester, we revealed our secrets.