Need help establishing total
 

My campus is considering implementing total when we have never used it before. We are a commuter school with 3 national chapters ranging in size from 11-18 and 3 additional local sorority chapters who don't participate in panhellenic recruitment who also range in size from from about 10-20. Our numbers in recruitment range from year to year with fall classes ranging from 3-7 and spring cob classes of 0-4. Retention has often been an issue do to pledging upperclassman, transfers and drop outs and it this has been reflected in two chapters who have very similar recruitment numbers over a 2-3 year period but having different chapter sizes.

so if anyone here is on a campus with any similar attributes could you please share with me your campus's total/quota/chapter sizes. any other pertinant advice would also be appreciated.

also note that whatever total number is established by the national sorority chapters would not be observed by locals who are competitive on my campus and are 2 of the 3 largest chapters. all the locals preformed better that the nationals in recruitment last year but we feel we have instituted some reforms that should help the nationals a bit.

thanks for the advice!!

The NPC total here is 65. We are also a commuter school, but not as small. I can throw in my 2 cents.

There was a "recruitment" advice page on the local sororities site that I thought gave some good advice for any sorority in general. http://www.geocities.com/localsororities

Do you all have formal recruitment there? I imagine it may be difficult with small numbers. So if you do COB type events in the fall, what about doing something really "different." Like bowling or some other off the wall activity. (Laser tag comes to mind... I don't know why.) Doing something fun and advertising the be-jezus out of it seems to get a lot of girls.

Is their a reasonable number that all three chapters can agree upon as a goal? For example, if all three chapters want to grow to at least 30, then that could be a good total to set.

Also, don't forget to talk with your NPC area advisor and the NPC delegates for each of your 3 NPC groups. They can gve you good advice about how and at what level to set total.

our locals don't do any recruitment activities with us or each other. they have their own on campus rush events (light refreshments with ice breakers and/or something crafty) which are similar to the ones the nationals have. then they also have mixers and parties (with guys and alcohol) that the nationals do not have. basically our fall recruitment structure currently is fully structured formal recruitment where you visit all three sororities at a couple of on-campus rush events and they you can get invited back to pref night. we use to have moratorium but we have agreed to get rid of that this year b/c it really hurt us vs. the locals.

I don't think it would hurt for the NPCs to get together and "sell" the good things about being in a national vs. a local. (nationwide network of sisters, etc.)


(Note: I'm not trying to bash locals, just try to offer some advise, so please don't turn this into a nationals vs. local thread.. k thanks :) )

Something else you might want to consider are one of the four new "types" of recruitment offered by NPC. There might be something that works better for your campus environment.

What about local alumnae? Are there any around that could participate in formal recruitment to make your house look "bigger?" (Is that allowed? I know very little about the quirks of formal recruitment.)

Or maybe if they just came around in general?

I'm certainly no expert, but that won't keep me from putting in my 2 cents :p

AS mentioned before - good idea to call your NPC area adviser - she can help you with all this.


In my opinion, I think total should be a number that the chapters can reach reasonably plus a little room to grow. (considering where your at i'd say around 30 - that's just a huge guess tho)

You don't want it to be too low to prevent from competing with the local chapters.

Definitely play up the national advantage!
National is great because:
we have regional/division conferences
we have an extended alumnae support system
we have chapters all across the US
we have scholarship opportunities
etc etc (but never never ever bash another sorority!)

have you gotten the information about the new styles of recruitment yet? your campus sounds like it will be eligible for one of the other styles of recruitment.

your npc officers can certainly be of great help. i suggest that you look at why you haven't had total to this point...and whether you actually want to implement it now.

You must get in touch with your CPH Advisor,Lynn Marano. She's a SDT. I've met her and she's great. You can find her e-mail addy on the NPC web site.

http://www.npcwomen.org/college/c_advisors.php

Each NPC on campus should also alert their own NPC delegate:

http://www.npcwomen.org/about/an_execdirectory.php (scroll down)