Potential improvements to invite matching?
 

I was thinking about release figures and software and all that, and if your chapter has a return rate lower than in previous years, you can get burned. You are supposed to invite enough girls each round that the number of girls you have at each party equals the number of girls remaining in recruitment divided by the number of chapters.

So, let's say there are 200 girls in recruitment, ten chapters on campus and 5 parties this round. You want 20 girls at each party, for a total of 100. If you are expecting a return rate of 100%, you issue 100 invites. If you are expecting a return rate of 50%, you issue 200 invites. 66%, 150 invites, etc.

The problem comes in where you are expecting 66% return, and only get 50%. Now you have 75 women attending, where you'd like to have 100.

So, two crazy suggestions, let me know what you think:

1) If a chapter's total number of women returning is not enough to fill up the number of parties - 1, they only hold the number - 1. In the above example, if you had fewer than 80 attending, you would only hold 4 parties instead of 5. This helps the parties look fuller, and gives the chapter a break.

2) Allow a second invitation list below the first one, so if not enough women accept, it goes to the second group, as in final bid matching. In the above example, you could submit 150 invitations, plus up to 50 others you wouldn't mind inviting if you weren't limited by the number of invitations. If only 75 women accept from the first group, the software looks at the second list, and if any of those women do not have a full schedule, they are added to your party list.

I know that to do this right, you would technically have to rank the second list, but chapters could do it totally randomly and still come out better than if they didn't have a second list. I suspect in most cases, too, the second list would not be everyone else, but may be short enough to rank.

I am certain that software could handle these suggestions with little additional work for the greek life office, so what do you guys think the pros and cons are?

They both look good to me but I don't have any direct experience with it like you do.

About the second option, is it better from the PNM perspective than in the old days of no release figures because it would only invite "extra" girls if the chapter would be aware that they actually needed to look at giving them bids?

(Remember that one of the benefits of release figures was to keep groups from stringing girls along until right before pref? If everybody gets a back up list for parties, what's to keep it from being about stringing people along?)

I think they are good suggestions, but I wonder if the problem could be solved somewhat by simply changing the release rate for the next event at that chapter? Does it not work that way?

The only time where it is actually a problem that your return rates are lower is for bid day. I understand that return rates will fluctuate a little from year to year, but I think something catastrophic would have to happen to lower them to the point where it would make it very difficult for an otherwise healthy chapter to make quota, even if they have to snap bid a few women.

I think, in some situations, having really empty parties could be killer. Also, if you up the number of invites for the next party, it is possible that you could be inviting a woman to the next round who did not attend this one. That can also be killer.

I see what you mean.

I kind of forgot about systems with a smaller number of groups. I'm used to systems where the drop off between the 2nd to last round and pref cuts the number of parties a girl can go to in half.

At a campus like that, you could just not release many and have almost double the girls you would need. (Assuming of course that you'd really want to pref them and that the smaller party size the round before didn't turn most of them off.)

But at a campus where there are only four groups to begin with and a PNM is cutting from three to two or something before pref, there's no way to make up the numbers really.

I think this could be good. Only panhellenic and the chapter would know how many parties they were hosting. The PNMs wouldn't know. The parties would be full and the chapters would only be looking at PNMs they were interested in.

Are you all going to be able to do it this year at Auburn with the extra parties you built into the schedule? It seems like it makes it easier to vary and not make it obvious to the PNMs since all chapters will have at least some off parties, right?

Do PNMs notice party size and come to the conclusion that a smaller party = less desirable chapter? If anything, I would think that PNMs might notice a smaller chapter size and conclude that the chapter is less desirable. We all know that tent talk happens. If ABC is the "top" chapter on campus, they will have smaller parties because they will have to release more women with the RFM. Tent talk will sway PNMs more that party size will.

I was pretty oblivious to the number of sisters in each chapter during recruitment and the party size. If party size appears to be an issue, condensing the parties for certain chapters may be a good idea.

I think you are misunderstanding the RFM. The idea is not to make the top chapters have fewer women at their parties, it is to make them release more women because the women they do keep are more likely to show up.

I think there are PNM's who would assume fewer PNM's = less desirable chapter.

This quite often takes place. And the converse is also true. If some chapters are releasing heavily early in the process, their second round parties may appear quite small - even though they are a historically strong recruiting chapter. It's really all about the chapter's preference - Panhellenic should accommodate them. If you want fewer parties with greater people in each, I say why not!

In RFM, this is called a Flex List. It is used only with Priority ranking, though, rather than Accept/Regret. (Which is another "pro" for Priority.) In A/R chapters don't know their return rates until after all invites have been issued and either accepted or regretted. Chapters are given a certain number to flex from both their keep and release lists. So if a chapter is doing uncharacteristically bad, they get to bring back more women from their release list (the ones they have indicated on Flex that would have been invited if they could). If they are doing uncharacteristically well, some women can get pulled from the keep list (the ones they have indicated on Flex that they would release if they had to.)

You are correct. ICS handles it quite nicely!

The campus I advise does this. There is what is called a "flex list." Each chapter has a different size flex list, depending on their average return over the past 3 years and it works both ways. Example: A chapter has a flex list of 20. This means that they must choose, in order of their preference, 20 women that they did not invite back that they would be willing to invite to keep their numbers "ideal." Additionally, they must choose a list of 20 women from their invite list that they are willing to release if their return rate is higher than expected.

For obvious reasons, there is no "flex list" requirement before preference round.

Sorry, I must have been typing at the same time.

The flex list sounds great!

What determines what system a campus uses? Is there expensive software that the system would have bought that determines it, or does every campus have the choice of choosing priority ranking and flex list over accept/regret every year?

I agree with Violetpretty that chapter size probably matters more than party size, but a smaller chapter who also find themselves with sparsely attended parties kind of faces a double problem in terms of impressions, I suspect. I think a chapter would be better off having fewer parties and having those parties seem fuller and livelier.

We actually did #1 at my campus, and while it made for a better party, trust me that the PNMS do know. All they have to do is compare party times with their friends to figure out that everyone who went to ABC went at 3:00 p.m. Even if they're not thinking that way, somehow the word gets out.

I think that the reducing the number of parties idea would better at larger schools where there are more PNM's or in earlier rounds. It would be far less noticable if XYX only had 9 parties instead of 10 or even 4 instead of 5. At smaller schools, it is very noticable. I know it's happened a few times at my college and while it does make the chapter members feel better because they X larger parties, as a Rho Chi, I know that the PNM's definately knew what had happened which defeated the purpose...