National but...
 

I have a question that I hope someone can help me with. My sorority is a national sorority but it is not recognized by panhel or someone. Does anyone know what this means?

It'd help if we knew which org you were a member of. You could be a "Special Interest" social sorority such as Sigma Alpha Iota, which is national and geared towards women musicians. Or you could be Ceres-- that's the female version of Farmhouse, more or less. You can be national but not governed by NPC.

Usually the measure of whether an org is national is which type of governing structure it uses. Grand Council governance denotes a national organization and indicates that there's a national council of alumnae and a headquarters somewhere. Grand Chapter governance means that everything is run from your organization's Alpha Chapter (or some other chapter, but it's usually the one that's been around the longest). Until you have a national governing structure like Grand Council, NPC won't consider you for membership.

Hope this helps.

There are various sororities that have a plethora of chapters, that are not recognized by Panhel. Most of these are special intrest sororities, such as engineering or agricultural sororities. The reason why they cannot obtain national panhellenic status is due to the fact that they discriminate on the basis of academic intrests (correct me if I'm wrong); a poli sci major could not join Ceres because although it is social, it is mainly for agricultural students. That does not mean that it isn't nationally known.
Addidtionally, there are smaller "local sororities" that have dozens of chapters, but have not been able to obtain panhell standing. From what I hear, it is very difficult to do so. I hope that this might have cleared up any confusion.

haaha, opps. Simutanious post! Please excuse the repetition!

Like Asian or servise org GSS or something/??????????????

Actually I think the CERES rule is that 70% of the girls must be an ag major...but everybody is supposed to have a "personal or professional interest" in agriculture. All I have to say is that CERES has been kicking some butt on my campus, they went from almost losing their charter due to size to practically tripling their size. :D

I think that's how a lot of the "special interest" orgs work, actually. I know there is a huge misconception that Delta Omicron is only open to music majors or minors, but that is not true. You only are asked to have an interest in the furtherment of music and musicianship. We don't have any percentages, though... I know in my collegiate chapter we only had a handful of actual music M/ms out of 30-40 girls.

I saw that someone mentioned Gamma Sig...

My sorority is turning 50 in about 4 days :D and we have quite a few chapters Nationally. However, we are not recognized by PHC because not only are we a service sorority, but because our sorority has a "non-selectivity" policy. This would make it impossible to participate in PHC Rush activities.

At some schools though, GSS chapters have to affiliate with a Greek Council in order to function on that campus at all. In those cases, it's okay. However, that chapter knows that anyone is welcome to join the chapter without the chapter being selective.

I believe Kappa Beta Gamma was once recognized by NPC, but then left NPC. Someone who has an older Bairds Manual or a more knowledgable person like PnguinTrax may be about to give more info.

Thanks, all of your answers were really informative. Newsun's hit it on the head cause that is my organization. I just never knew that they left NPC.

Yes, the numbers of associated chapters dropped a lot and it was decided to leave the NPC. According to your national site, however, they hope to rejoin the NPC at the time when they meet the requirements (13 chapters, at least 2 years old, each).