How Do The Best Fraternities Operate?
 

My GLO is thinking of reorganizing the executive structure. I have my own ideas, but how do the "best chapters" operate. By best I mean the ones who continually win top chapter at their school, win national recognition, but at the same time are known for great social programming.

Some basics first:
What state are you in?
How long has your chapter been around?
What is greek life like on campus?
Are you an officer?

1) How are they organized? Is it a top down structure with committees, or a horizontal, more dynamic structure? Does every active have the right to know of and affect every decision made? Are most decisions voted on?

1a) Who has major influence in the budget, the treasurer, the exec board, a finance committee, or the whole chapter?? When an unexpected expenditure comes up, what happens? Are dues a lump sum, payments, divided into social and operations dues, what do you do about unpaid insurance?

2) What sort of rules and criteria do they have for bidding? Who do you look for? Do you blanket bid and ask those who don't meet your expectations to leave, have smaller tight knit classes of decent guys and form them into a cohesive unit, or some combination of the two?

3) Are there any special, legal, unique things that you have your pledges do in order to bring them into the mindset of being productive members?

4) How do you deal with members who for some reason or another don't contribute by way of rent, dues, effort, or energy?

5) How do you ensure active's contributions and experiences with the fraternity are equal? Do you cut off dead weight, have sanctions, or try to figure out how to include them?

6) How closely do you operate with your board of trustees/house manager/national advisor/greek advisor? What kinds of things do you discuss?

7) Do you operate with any kind of long term debt like mortgages or loans for home renovations? Where does the money come from?

8) How do you convince alumni to contribute money or otherwise raise funds solely for the benefit of the chapter?

9) What kinds of philanthropy and service do you do and how do you get actives to contribute?

10) And finally, I'd like to know how you deal with risk management concerns.

Thanks
LA

and finally
 

How do you maintain a strong, real brotherhood through all of this mess? How do you keep brothers from losing interest? This is espeically tough for my chapter which has a smaller house.

WOW, slow down.

The questions you asked are valid for sure!

Now, the question is, are you a Member fo a National Organization or a Local, or maybe a Latino, Multi Greek Organization?

You do have a lot of great questuions.

From a National stand point, it is a combonation, running visa vi what Your HQ Group professes and what You as a local Chapter feels.

So, still need to find out what type of GLO you are refering to.

National GLO

If you're national, your HQ should have tons and tons of info for you. Obviously, if you are a newer/smaller chapter, some officers and committees will not be necessary yet. But your GLO will tell you what they've found to be the best way to set up a chapter- exec positons, necessary assistants and committees, etc. Recruitment is how chapters stay alive, and money needs to come in to support yourselves, and then you have to stay close and get along - social events, brotherhood/sisterhood, campus involvement, philanthropy, etc. etc.
good luck
i'm sure by now your nationals has overwhelmed you with all the binders/handbooks/literature they have for you!

Be a one ball house, if any brother balls a rushee, the rushee is blackballed.

Well, we weren't a one ball house, but we did have a one ball guy. We dubbed him "Uno".

i agree for the rushees, thats how we do it....however a pledge requires a 1/3 vote to black him from pledgeship according to our by-laws

No kidding. This is ridiculous. Basically you're saying, "I'm part of a national fraternity. How do we run it?"

Ok. I laughed at this. I shouldn't have, but I did.

We never have a blackball session for rushees; no one ever votes on rushees. The rush chairman is charged with making those decisions. His job is to lead the chapter in competition for the best pledge class. He knows exactly what we're looking for. Brothers who might know something bad about a rushee that would keep him out of the fraternity are instructed to tell the rush chairman; a controversial boy will not be pledged. If you control the quality and quantity of new members on the front end, your chapter can lead the campus.

we dont have a session for rushees....but if one brother has something bad about him hes done

You national headquarters should have certain ways you are supposed to run, there may not be much leeway for you. You should be asking this questions of other chapters in YOUR org, not random people on a chat board.

Yes, every brother has the right to know about every decision, whether made by exec board, or the chapter at large.

Somethings are exec descisions and should be decided on by exec board.

Chapter meetings is where brothers vote. I suggest having your exec board make their decisions and then have them approved by the chapter at large at a meeting.

EXEC BOARD
Pres, Vice, Sec, Tres, and Sgt-at-arms. If you don't have a Sgt. at arms, then use the Chaplain or Pledge Instructor as the 5th.

Exec brothers should not serve on commitees. Everyone else should be on at least one.

Some committees: social, rush, ritual/brotherhood, alumni, etc. Make one person a chair. Once you fill your chairs, then anyone who isn't a chair can be on up to say, 3 committees. Chairman shouldn't have to be on more than one other committee besides their own. I would avoid giving someone two or more chairs, this leads to burn out.


Good luck with your chapter and I hope you make a good showing at Greek Week.

My frat
 

Well speaking as a founding father i can say that we have been on top or our campus as a fraternity:

At my alma mater our college president consider us the Ideal organizations on campus. We are also feature in our college catalog for incoming freshmen, and transfer students. We are the first and only multicultural fraternity on our campus, and own our home as well. There are other greeks that have been there since the 1900'2 but we are baby to the greek life only been around 5yrs now. We are structure on the Roberts Rule of Order going from the top of the president to the bottom. We have our own scholarship for a graudating senior in high school whos showing displaying our pillars on which we stand by, leadership, brotherhood, and sprituality. We first organization to host there own pageant on our campus. We have the highest G.P.A. on campus and we just got this award back, and we dress the best and the flyest of them all, and all the ladies loves us, and we throw the best parties, and social gathers. We also was the first on our campus to go down to New Orleans to help out with the victims, and to sell ribbions on our campus in our colors and gave the proceeds to the victims. By the way we raised over $ 30,000 dollars from ribbions, and other events that we had a covercharge too, and our slient auctions that we have on a reagular basis... along with ever pledge class new and old giving a pledge gift at the end of the semseter...