Recruitment Question
 

I have just takin over the presidency at my chapter this semester and we are very low on girls. We are at a technical school where the male to female ratio is 4 to 1. This makes recruitment really hard on us. We have tried dorm storms where we give out little gifts (i.e. bag of candy that says "AST is sweet on you!" or hair ties that say "Get tied up with AST!"), invitation dinners, formal recruitments, movie parties, info sessions, ice breakers, etc. Let's just put it this way, we are totally out of ideas. Does anyone else have any other ideas that may be able to help us because in May we are graduating 6 of our 8 members.

HELP!!!

First have you been working with your District President, and is she aware of your situation? I would suggest getting her involved, and getting together with the Greek Life coordinator to see what would work best for your campus. I took a look at the clubs and orgs on your campus. There are many professional societies. What about getting a delegation together, perhaps your Distract Pres or Traveling Counselor, You as the President, and a Senior who has been active the longest. Arrange for this delegation to present to these professional organizations. You could even jsut arrange a meeting location and time, and advertise to those groups. With 6 of 8 members leaving, you need people who are already campus leaders to initiate into the chapter. Contact the Alumnae org in your area fo assistance in activities. Good luck, at this point you really need to enlist some help from nationals. This idea that should be conveyed to any PNMs is that THEY will be guding the direction of the Sorority in the years to come, and there will be numerous opportunities for leadership. In essence it will almost be a reorg, since any new members you take will outnumber the actives. Tau Love!

Have you scheduled your EC visit for this semester? If not make sure you do that ASAP and get national involved. RUAST is totally right, you are essentially going to reorg and you need to have National help you. Make sure you get some women to Pittsburgh this summer. You will learn a ton there.

Enlist your chapter alumnae. Make sure they know what is going on and get them to help you. I saw that DZ was inactive on the website...I don't know if that is true cause I thought there was a story onhere about a woman who was bid by them... Anyhow, get alumnae involved. Perhaps if a chapter is near enough, have them come and help with rush.

Wear letters and remember to have fun. I know that can be hard, but make sure you do have fun. :)

Thanks girls for your suggestions. I have to tell you since the beginning of the school year in August, we have had 5 differnt EC's visit our chapter and not one of them have been able to help us. We have been trying to get help from our DP, but she and the last EC that visited were told by the DCC that it was pointless to help us with recruitment because we didn't care. We were really offended by this comment since the DCC is one of our Alumnae and it has made us more determined to have a great recruitment this semester. As for the organizations that we have on campus, I am also President of another one and the participation is very low. Students on our campus just do not want to take part in anything fun anymore and our Greek Life Office here on Campus fights us tooth and nail everytime we have an idea to do something. We feel like we are fighting a losing battle. The other sorority on campus was forced to go inactive last spring when they could not recruit any new members, and they are also trying to start their chapter back. The DZ's now have one member on campus and are trying really hard to recruit also. We are all just bumpuzzled as to what to do.

Get together with the 1 DZ and work together. I seriously doubt that anyone would say y'all don't care about recruitment without good reason. Some collegiate chapters are very resisant to change even when it means the life or death of the org. Are y'all willing to make the changes that may be necessary to continue the life of your chapter? Increase visibility on campus. Wear letters every day. Make sure that every member always looks "put together" and acts in a ladylike manner. If you are recieving no help from greek life, than go about things on your own. Organize philanthropy events on campus, set up a table for canned food collection for a local shelter, have a bake sale and donate proceeds to a charity. These are all ways to get your name out and increase visibility while meeting poeple who may be potential new members. Host events with other orginizations on campus. Pick a public place on campus where sisters can lounge between classes, a quad, or student center; maybe even choose a specific day of the week where you bring out you large wooden letters. The bottom line is the more you make youself seen in a positive light, the more likely people will want to ask about you organization. Are there any fraternities that you can host things with?

Delta Pi was right where your chapter was, except there was an active greek life.

We had at one point only 6-7 sisters and we were struggling, we didn't get anyone in formal recruitment. Nationals got involved and it helped. But you can ask Elizabeth, that basically nationals had to get firm and at the time we honestly hated nationals, b/c they told us the truth and didn't put up with anything!! But we ended up getting 5 girls that nov. and nationals still helped us alot. When nationals came down, we did lots of team building activities, goal setting and talking!! One of our main problems was lack of communication between sisters. Nationals will say things you probably don't want to hear, but honestly nationals does not want to see a chapter fail, they want to help you.

In a year, we went from 9 sisters to 20 sisters now and the girls will have informal recruitement in 2 weeks, so we will probably get more help then.

We did get the other 2 sororities supporting us, they actually agreed not to COB for I think a month or two until or number got up and one of the frats helped, their president came to one of our COBs and spoke how much he loved us and helped put flyers up.

It was a lot of work and if something didn't work we tried something else. We never gave up and fought. The greek life cornidator at our school actually told us he thought we were going to fail, he was in shock that we turned everything around.

We are here for you, to offer you guys support. You are not the only chapter struggling, but keep trying new things. If something doesn't work try something else. Also, don't be shy, go up and talk to every girl, even if you don't know them, if they aren't interested they might have a friend interested.

If you have any questions, let me know. Having been there, I know how frustrating it was, I cried several times because I was scared of my chapter failing and eventually being shut down, but now I am in awe of my chapter and how far it has come.

Publicity!
 

I love the story of Delta Pi! :)
That said, last fall my colony was at 6; today we are at 16.

I know some things that help are good publicity when you aren't around (if that makes any sense) - publicity when you are there (ie, letter shirts) helps too though.

For example, at my school, every Greek organization has a "board" (a bulletin board that is locked with a glass window) to display photos, put up flyers, show letters and symbols (we put fake yellow roses in there), etc. People look at them a lot. Talk to your Greek Advisor or Director of Student Life to see if there is anything like that that could become available to you. You may want to urge Delta Zeta to do one too; or you could do a Panhellenic one maybe.

Keep submitting articles to the school newspaper about service, etc. (and pictures if you can). (Lol, just found one - the "Miss AST" thing sounds adorable! How did that go?)

Another example - you really need a website. I can help you if you like; I am our webmistress. Upload your website to the school server (most schools let organizations have a free website on the server) so that students can find it when they search. This way, if a girl is shy or doesn't know who to ask about AST, she can find out more on her own time.

We also paint the rock - spray paint our letters on a boulder near the soccer field. It is a tradition on campus, and all GLOs do it. Are there any traditions like that on your campus? Make sure to be active in them!

Make cute, unique AST letters to put in the window of every girl in your sorority!

Do chants / cheers every so often, just for fun. We do these in the yard area by the girl's dorm before a dorm storm sometimes, and people come out and clap for us. It's pretty cool, and it gets people involved. We do two chants or so before we go.

Don't just focus on recruitment!!!
I love the visible community service ideas.
You also need to have swaps (doesn't have to be a huge planned-out swap - it can be going bowling, pizza and a movie night, etc.) with as many fraternities as you can ASAP. Take lots of pictures! Many girls would be so excited to be involved in fraternity swaps. Use them in your new PR things like board, newspaper, and website. Also, guys talk - have fun with them, and they might say something to their girlfriends about how fun Greek life is and how they really should try to rush AST.

Have an all-sorority social event too (go out for ice cream or something) to get to know the ladies of AKA and DZ. You'll ahve fun, and you'll be able to work together better. Also, how big is AKA?

Don't underestimate commuters. They can be valuable members of your sorority! Many of them are also unsure of how to meet new people and get involved on campus. Tell them about all the exciting events you have planned for this semester, and invite them to hang out (informally) with y'all sometime. Make flyers and hand them out in a commuter lounge, commuter parking lot, building with a lot of night classes, or whatever. List things like "socials with fraternities", "fun sisterhood activities", and "community service" - and give a few examples of each. Don't just write "Rush AST" - it won't help much if they don't know anything about AST.

Good luck!!
I would still love to help with your website - PM me if you would like help with that or anything else!

Tau love and mine,
Marly

I do want to tell you to be careful using fraternites too much. I don't believe we are actually allowed to have men at our rush events. So please don't violate NPC/AST rules. I am always cautious about having men be the reason women join. We are a women's organization and those bonds need to exist independently of men.

However, if you have active fraternities where you know the brothers. Meet their girlfriends. These women are not anti-greek, maybe luke warm on the whole thing, but not dead set against it because they ARE dating a greek. Get to know these women. If you know the men well, get them to put some good words in for you. Do a co-philanthropy and get them to bring their girlfriends.

Look at the president of all the campus clubs. Get them involved. Orientation leaders, RAs, sports teams. We had some good numbers because we had one sister on the soccer team. Recruit a whole team at once, it brings the bond they have already, and expands it. The Sig Chi chapter at my alma mater saved their charter with the baseball team.

I wish you luck, keep talking to us and we'll help ya out. PsychTau would be good for you to contact. She has some great ideas and is a Greek Advisor in VA.

:)
Tau Love

Little E, you have some good ideas about recruiting groups of friends. :)

Also -
Oops! I'm sorry - I didn't mean to use guys at recruitment events... I just meant that it's another good publicity thing if girls know that you are having fun with other groups on campus. Sorry I was unclear. :(

Funlovin, you can do it! It sounds like your chapter has done a lot of great things, and I'm sure the girls who are a little skeptical of Greek life will see that. Good luck.

Hey Ladies! I am also one of the sisters in the Gamma Mu chapter. I just wanted to let you know that everything that funlovinastgirl is saying is true. We are fighting a battle because we have a national staff member as one of our alums and her little sister is an active in our chapter now! Everything that we do is known by the DCC before we can do it. Not that anything we are doing is bad. It's just that she doesn't like change and she wants to completely control our chapter, that could be on reason why no one will take our chapter advisor position (it's been vacant for 2 semesters now). We really liked the EC's that came to visit and they were hard on us, but by the time that the left, they saw what a battle we were fighting. We really don't want to sound like a bunch of cry babies, but seriously its just the girls that are here now. We live in an area that is full of first generation college students and in the socieconomic disaster area. Not many people really have money to spend on dues and such and that's what holds the good girls back from joining. We try to do stuff with the fraternities here on campus, we have four national fraternities and one local...no sorry we have three national ones because one was forced to become inactive last semester because their numbers were so low. See its happening to all of us. We have tried for many years to have panhel, but the DZ's have never wanted to do it. IFC, we attend to do things with the guys, and they are all good to us, but doing things with the guys doesnt help. We have tried socials, game nights, etc with the fraternities and it just doesnt help. We just got a website last week up and running its www.angelfire.com/wv2/alphasigmatau/ if anyone wants to look at it. Also, thanks for offering to do a website for us!!!
We do have a bulltein board here on campus but it is not inclosed and it is in an area that no one ever sees it and as soon as we redo it and put pics up on it, they get stolen. As for publicity, we had three articles published in our paper this week alone. Our president that we have now is really trying hard and I think that she deserves some credit. :)

Hey thanks LightBulb for offering to do a website for us, but as my sister said, we posted one last week (wish we would have known that you would have done it for us a little sooner...haha). We are really excited about it. There are still somethings that need to be changed on it but it is nice. And like she also said, we are submitting articles to the newspaper every week, but they don't always get published. But that's just how it goes. Thanks girls really for all the advice!

OK, take a deep breath....

The first hard question:
1. WHY would anyone want to be Greek on your campus? What do you (Greeks) offer the students? What needs and desires are you meeting?

If you can't answer that question, what is it that you are selling to your potentials? All the recruitment ideas from 10,000 ECs won't work if you cannot articulate why you exist and why someone should be a part of your organization. Period. You have to sit down and figure out what your organization's purpose is for existing on campus. That is your first step. Do that, and then we can work on the next step.

I know the DCC, I know her sister, I've met women from your chapter during District Days when the DCC was a DP. I know past info regarding your campus and the DZ situation. Yes, you have some not so supportive people there (at least you did several years ago). That may be an obstacle, but it isn't an excuse. If you accept that obstacle as an excuse, you'll never get out of this hole. Look at it as an obstacle, then figure out a way around it.

This is doable...you can do this. Delta Pi has done it, Alpha Gamma has done it, Alpha Mu has done it, Delta Chi is doing it. Along with some other chapters that haven't been mentioned. Aside from the first step I listed above, you MUST believe the fact that this can be changed, but you also must understand that it can only be changed with some hard work, answering some hard questions, and by thinking outside the box. I've helped chapters get through this. It's doable.

(I am not being mean here. If you were listening to me speak these words, you would here me being determined, and being honest. I am not trying to blame or be offensive, but we gotta get truthful here. That's the only way this is doable. No fluff. Analysis and action, baby! PM me if you need to!). ;)

PsychTau

Thank you soo much PsychTau. I was at the District Day you were at. I was the recruitment director then and at that time we were really growing. I became recruitment director again this year after taking a year off in that position. I agree with you wholeheartedly and do think that it can be done. It is an obstacle and not an excuse. I hope the chapter as a whole will put the work into it because we do need everyone. I will be the only returning current active sister next year in my 5th year but that doesn't mean all is lost and to just give up to everyone graduating. I will update you on our progress. We will be ribbon pinning a lady tuesday and have events monday, tuesday, and wed.

Tau Love,
Shelley Watkins
Gamma Mu

Shelley!!! I think I remember talking to you! (It seems like it was a lot longer ago...how long ago was it?)

Do you guys have a new Greek advisor? I think Missy told me some horror stories about the one you had...and the possibility they weren't going to be working there anymore, or something strange.

Let me know what's going on and if I can help.

PsychTau

ASTFOREVER -
Wow, y'all have done an awful lot! Great job!

PS - Your website is soo cute! :D