Local Sorority needs help with Recruitment
 

I am an Alum of a Local sorority that is in it's 15th year of existence. We are having difficulties keeping girls and recruiting. We are down to 2 active members and 2 new members. I am looking for suggestions that I can help them with for next semester's recruitment. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Would you share where you are located?

We are located at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

there are alot of threads with suggestions on recruitment... ive read quite a few. a common suggestion is to talk with you student affairs advisor about campus opportunities to advertise on campus. Since your chapter has 15 years behind it, you can also talk to graduated members about what they've done in the past to get numbers up. Another great piece of advice i recieved was to encourage the members you do have to be visible around campus in letters, Constantly. Your two active members should be visible in other on campus organizations wearing your letters so that other students can see that you guys exist!

Omega,

Those are great suggestions! I know that they are advertising like crazy on campus. They are also Associate Panhellenic members are trying to get some information from them on suggestions. Hopefully that will help. I will check out the other threads. Thanks again.

I've been there
 

Hey babe, so sorry to hear you're going through this - we were stuck at 4 sisters for a full year, and only last semester did we double to eight. this semester we had 7 pledges but it looks like we'll only be crossing three, which sucks, but two are looking to try and pledge again in the fall, and the three girls crossing are really quality girls, so I don't look at it as a complete loss. we're celebrating 20 years this year too.

But yeah, it can be really disheartening where you're at, we're still not out of the woods yet, but I was recruitment chair this year and I think we've done really well considering we were close to shutting down as well.

This is what we did and you should too: wear your letters EVERYWHERE. Also, pimp your organization so much it's like second nature. Think about the reasons why you joined, and what you still love about your sorority, why you would rather be there than anywhere else etc and just say that to anyone you think could be an interest. another thing we did was HOUND anyone who had an interest in us. most of the girls we pledge only rushed us, but we got them interested outside of rush. the girls that come through rush at my school are generally not the girls we would take, even if we had 20 or 30 girls. I got one of the girls we bid to want to join just by having a one-on-one with them before rush, she ended up only coming to our events.

I also know how hopeless it can be to get alums to help, we have tons in the area and when we were at our worst all we really had were us 4-7 actives at recruitment. I love my sisters, but they make it a point to let us know that they've GRADUATED. :rolleyes: sucks, but one of our major turning points came when we stopped depending on them and just did things ourselves. another thing that helped us was when our school switched to formal recruitment, but obviously that's not something you can make happen now, and i don't know how your greek system works.

COB is another big asset. I got a COB and so did two of our girls from last semester. we hold COB events for any girl who has interest outside of rush so that we can grab them before they lose interest. i was given a bid in spring '06 to pledge in fall '06, and our two new sisters got their bids the week after rush before we pinned our class. I think that events held before rush are the best because you can go party with them and show them how cool you are. If you can set a goal to have already bid two or three girls by the fall, you're already on your way.

Another thing that I think helped us was an attitude change. instead of being like, "yeah, we're small and love it!" which tells rushes that you like being as small as you are, or being down on your numbers which never does any good, change the way you pitch yourselves. Instead of letting them bring up our size when we first started to talk about ourselves I would say "obviously we're a little small right now, we just had a bunch of senior graduate, so while we never want to be HUGE, we are definitely looking to grow." So what if most of those seniors graduated two years ago? lol it basically lets rushes feel like they'll be a part of helping you grow, which appeals to a lot of girls. And the girls who want some huge national will just go their merry way. IF you do want to be huge, all the better.

WHEW! Sorry to write an essay, but I really feel the spot you're in, so hopefully I've thrown some things at you that you can work with. I think the biggest thing is not to pretend you're anything other than what you are, and take pride in your org. Don't apologize, and present yourselves like, why would you want to be anywhere else? Growth will be small at first, but we always say that we would MUCH rather pledge one QUALITY girl than cross 10 who suck just for numbers. That will only breed more internal problems for your group later on. Think of this as your opportunity to grow your organization into what you guys want it to be!

Local looove and PM me if you need anything or want to talk further!

<3 Jen

The bottom line is they can't wait until the next formal recruitment cycle and expect to turn this situation around there. As Serena and OmegaPDPrez said, the key is to be super-visible on campus from now until the end of the year.

In addition to wearing letters as much as humanly possible, they should try to sponsor a major community service week-long event on campus near the end of the semester. One suggestion: challenge all campus organizations to some sort of contest that generates donations for a charity. It could be something like t-shirts (which are ultimately donated to a shelter) or canned food (for a food bank) or something similar. Donatable items that they already have on hand work better than something they'll have to go out and buy.

Approach a local business to donate a reasonably good prize to the winning organization, and include that in the publicity for the event. The collection point should be in a very visible part of campus and should be manned at all times by a member (or new member) wearing their insignia. If alumnae are available, pull them in, too. That makes it clear that the membership is a lifelong commitment.

Get the school paper to cover it, even call local radio and tv stations. (You never know. It might be a slow news week and they may jump at the chance to highlight a local college group doing something nice for the community.)

Each member should invite 2 non-sorority friends (i.e., potential new members) to help the group work on this event. Once they get a taste of the sorority by working side by side on something positive, they might want to make the relationship permanent.

Good luck!

Hi there!

I'm so unbelievably sorry to hear about your problem...as the president of a local in Cleveland, I totally get what you're saying. My best advice is to follow the advice you've been given in these previous posts...making your chapter as visible as possible will increase awareness, which will increase curiosity, which will increase the number of girls who rush your chapter! One thing that we've always done is be proud of what makes us different...we're the only local chapter on campus and the 5th oldest local in the country (I'm a Sigma Psi, by the way :D) and of course we are incredibly proud of that, but the trick is making it sound like the best thing in the world. During one of our rush events that we have to have in rooms outside of our house, we take every piece of memorabilia we can find (old composites, pledge paddles, etc.) and put it everywhere and then talk to everyone about how cool it is that you can be a part of campus history when you join our chapter.

Also, we do this little thing we like to call "pre-recruiting," which is more or less talking to girls extensively before they actually go through recruitment to keep up their interests...also, the point of this is to introduce them to as many sisters as possible so they understand how diverse we are and that they can find a home here. I would read up a little bit about pre-recruiting or just general skills on persuasion (or bring in a speaker, like the director of greek life at your school) and how to talk to people and hold a little workshop for your sisters to boost their confidence.

I hope that was helpful. Please keep your chin up and remember what an amazing thing a local sorority is when it's members are committed to their values. Best of luck!

Understanding what your going through
 

Hi there,
I'm a freshman who just joined a sorority, but we are getting resolved in December. I understand that a lot of membership rates drop after a group loses a large pledge class. Thank you all who posted about this topic. It helped me get some ideas for my sorority even though they told us to stop recruitment.

Are AGDBubbles and SillySarah your partners in crime in recruiting for this local?

SHAKING.
MY.
HEAD.

I'm not sure. If they are in the bowling green area i might know them.

Nevermind.

Their chapter's been resolved already, if I'm not mistaken.

Please. The Bowling Green chapter is a great chapter. Don't recruit. Don't do anything to mess up the chances of the chapter being recolonized the future. I'm really sorry you're being resolved, I know a lot of sisters have really been sad about it.

Don't worry i'm not going to mess it up. they told us to stop so i'm not going to. The ideas will just help us in the future when it comes time to reappear as a chapter.

Could you maybe have two pledge classes in one semester? We're trying that for the first time.