COBs How to get girls
 

How do ya'll go about getting girls to come to ya'lls cobs? I mean we have all talked to girls in our classes but our school is big time commuter. What are some strategies ya'll have used? We have handed out flyers, posted posters etc etc. Any input would be appreciated.

What type of events do you do for COB? If your schools a big commuter school and you typically do events at night (and you have a facility) maybe you could invite women to do things during the day, ie. lunch at your facility, or take them out to lunch.

Remember that COB doesn't always have to be a big event. If a girl can't come to scheduled COB event but still is interested, have her come to the house for dinner, or get a group together to eat lunch with her in the cafeteria. Take her along to a Greek event, or anything that a group of sisters were planning to go to (except perhaps not to the bar ;))
For targeting girls that are probably already interested, check with your Panhellenic. Do they keep records of girls who rushed and dropped out? Or lists of girls interested in COB? That gives you a pool of girls who are already at least somewhat interested in joining a sorority. Call them up, invite them to things, make a flyer especially for them and mail it to all of them, etc.
Good luck!

At our last COB each member was required to bring one person. I don't know what happened if you didn't, but we got 7 out of that and then we are possibly extending 3 more bids so we are like 1 away from our goal. :) You may try that. Good luck!

A great thing I find is to give out invitations. It makes the women feel special and feel there is a reason to go. I know there are even websites online that you can do it with so you don't have to deliver them if it is a commuter campus... The idea just makes the women feel like they stand out in a crowd, but you can actually send them to the masses of the school.

Have a sister - best if someone she knows or has contact with - meet the PNM on or near campus to escort her to lunch or the event. This way she doesn't feel awkward approaching a group where she might not know that many - or any - of the women.

Perhaps you can offer to pick up/take home these women who truly are interested. i.e. Set up car pool with sisters doing the driving.

the biggest problem we are having is actually findign intrested girls.

finding interested commuters
 

Are any of your sisters commuters?

When a friend of mine ran for student government president we put flyers on every car in the commuter parking lots that said to vote for dirk, because he's a commuter too! It gives you something in common to begin with, and you can build from there.

Commuter students can have restraints that differ from resident students, such as times they can be on campus, but with planning, you can make it work.

Good luck!

deb

Remember that recruitment is a 365-day a year process! This doesn't mean that you need to have constant COR events (continuous open recruitment), but you should constantly be promoting your sorority! This will increase your chapter's visibility on campus, and your image, and make people want to get to know you. This also means putting your sisters into situations where they meet other students on campus.

Ways to increase visibility on campus:
1) Make a committment with the chapter that EVERY member will become involved with at least 1-2 clubs/organizations outside of Greek Life. This will give you a chance to interact with non-members and interest them in the sorority.

2) Have Special Letter Days. Once a week, make a committment that the entire chapter will wear letters to school. This promotes your sorority's name and establishes your presence.

3) Have mixers with non-Greeks. Are there service clubs on campus? Arrange to have a service project together! What about inviting the members of an honor society to your chapter for an ice cream social? How about a women's athletic team?

4) Get involved with campus activities. Is the school giving a lecture? Having a pep rally? Midnight basketball? Get your sisters to go-- wearing letters!

5) Get the school paper to write an article about your sorority when you do something noteworthy-- like raise a lot of money for your philanthropy, a member has done something extraordinary, etc. Make sure the article mentions a contact for more information about joining the sorority.

6) When you are holding an event, place fliers all over campus and in the mailboxes of the residence halls and off-campus groups. Chalk up the sidewalks and make banners, too. Set up a booth by the student union. Have members wear buttons their backpacks like "Ask me about XYZ sorority." You can also make banners for sporting events like "XYZ loves SCHOOL" and hanging them at the stadium!

7) Get a list of non-affiliated women from your Panhellenic office. These could be women who dropped out of recruitment, etc.

8) Talk to your Panhellenic Council about having Panhellenic representatives go to Freshman Orientations and Transfer Orientations to promote Greek Life. Get access to the addresses of these new students and send them a postcard or an email inviting them to check you out and come to an event.

9) Set up a chapter website. Make a t-shirt or banner that promotes it.

10) Get the fraternities to support your events by having them make banners and hang them outside their houses. Give a prize to the fraternity with the best banner. "IE: Good luck ABC Sorority with Recruitment. Love the brothers of XYZ."

11) Sometimes the most successful events aren't high-end, super-planned recruitment parties. Often the successes are low-key, come to this campus event with us style events. They're low pressure on the PNM and the sisters, and the sisters can expect to have fun, too.

12) You can get great ideas by visiting your sororoity's inter/national web site and talking to other members of your sorority, too! Also, you can attend your sorority's yearly volunteer leadership trainings. Or bring your alumnae back for a night of sisterhood fun and brainstorming! They're sure to have great ideas, too!

Good luck!

I agree with everyone who says to keep things low-key and not look at COB as events, but as a part of lifestyle. Incorporate girls you want as members into things you are doing anyway, like going to speakers or other campus events. If you are having tons and tons of planned parties and not a lot of return, it's like having formal rush all the time and it can be a real drain on chapter morale (not to mention chapter funds).

Also, since you're in Nawlins, I know what school you go to (and some of the people), so you might want to put off sort of a "funky fresh" vibe. The students I know from your school are like that.

Have fine guys pass out the brochures :D

Fill me in.

The way I see it rush starts early in the semester. Rush lasts a few weeks and at the end of rush there is bid matching. The largest sororities usually make quota and total. The small sororities that are under total or quota that still want more members start to COB. The problem is that most of the girls that want to pledge already did and it is slim pickens when COB starts.

If COB is continuous up until the sorority reaches total then why do the sororities wait until after the standard rush period to start COB?

Couldn't they basically start COB before the standard rush period? That way they could beat the larger houses to the punch. The larger sororities won't be able to rush because they were already at total from the previous semester.

I think what adpiucf meant, is that part of recruitment is having good PR, which helps make it a more desireable chapter to join when rush comes around. By increasing visibility on campus and such, people will have heard of the chapter, either good things or bad things, and during rush they will remember that. Particularly if there are many upperclassmen rushing: they will already know the reputations of the different groups and probably share them with their fellow rushees.

As for the other things you mentioned about starting COB earlier than formal rush, it looks to me like rush starts pretty early in the school year at azdtaxi's university, perhaps even before classes start? They can't really start rush before that!

With my investigation in finding this out, I checked out your webpage. A webpage can be a great PR tool for PNMs! I especially liked the quotes at the top of each page, they're cute! You should probably submit the page to nationals to be linked off of the national page, though! If you need to know how to do that, PM me!

This varies from school to school.

At Valparaiso, formal recruitment isn't until January, and they can't recruit freshmen until them, but the sororities will usually have the second or third week in September as a mass COB event-- every sorority has a week full of parties and hang-outs and events in order to replace their graduated seniors. But it's easy to target upperclasswomen before recruitment begins in January.

At other schools, formal recruitment starts in mid-August, before classes start and before there is any chance to meet any women! So you can't COB until after formal recruitment anyway.

Even with upperclasswomen, sometimes they'd prefer to go through formal recruitment to get a shot at becoming an ABC, if ABC always makes quota and doesn't have to COB. Only if they don't match ABC will they consider other sororities. This can happen whether or not they went through recruitment as freshmen.

Oh, and we can't do COB during formal recruitment.