Programming Ideas...?
 

Hey there. I'm the Philanthropy Chair for my chapter at a small college where Greek life doesn't exactly have the best reputation. My chapter (the smallest of the four sororities here) has set our sights on proving that Greeks do more than just party, and really want to use philanthropy and campus involvement to our advantage.

Does anyone have any suggestions of easy, not particularly time consuming programs that work well, involve the campus, and promote a positive image of Greek life?

Sorry, but this sentence made me laugh.

I agree. Just makes them sound extremely lazy.

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It looks like your organization's national philanthropy is Children's Miracle Network. Have you contacted them about any available opportunities? You could also look through this section of GC for different service ideas that you could implement. My university has a volunteer group whose sole purpose is to set up and promote different service opportunities. Does your campus have anything like that?

I really hope you all aren't that lazy :(

We're not lazy, I swear!
 

Haha no worries. We are a bunch of hard working, dedicated women -- who are involved in many, many other things on campus (Student Council, performance groups, etc.), hence the easy and not particularly time consuming bit. Sadly, it's very hard to get more than 3/4 of our chapter together for anything, and we're the smallest chapter on campus. Not that that's a problem or anything that we use as an excuse. Just that it makes running really large, time consuming philanthropy projects ridiculously hard to pull off successfully. I've tried -- didn't work so well.

Phi Mu usually does Hoop-A-Palooza as a main philanthropy, but our campus itself is so small that it would be a challenge to pull off successfully, and our nationals didn't have many suggestions of ways to modify it to make it easier to do on a small campus...

I'm happy that you all aren't lazy. I retract my previous statement ;)

I'm not familiar with your city, but is there any reason you can't have some type of event off campus? Maybe a park or highway cleanup? Or mentoring/tutoring children in the community?

This is just some stuff off the top of my head; I'm sure you'll be able to find a lot more info in this forum.

HI dear,
I am the service chair for my sorority. We too are on a small campus, and have trouble with member turnout. My first suggestion is to see what other groups on campus are doing and join up. Our student activities is always telling groups to do that, join up and share the cost. Maybe you could do something with the 3 other sororities on campus that way everyone knows.

Something for your group to do, and is always a hit with our girls, is VA Bingo. On Fridays at the local veterans post they have bingo and alot of girls go to it. They always have a good time and rave about it for the next couple of weeks.

Hope this helps
Kat

Hey! Down here in the Theta Gamma Chapter we do a softball tournament called grandslam, we were gonna do hoop-a-paluza this fall, but over programming came into play. We are also bringing back an event that we havn't done in about 6 years called "dream date." Essentially, you get a bunch of places to donate dinners, movie tickets, basically anything that you can get and you put together date packages that you then auction off w/ and attached person... careful tho cause you can't auction sisters, nationals wont allow that. its a great way to raise money for cmn cause its all profit since everything is donated.

another thing we do is host something called CMN Week - where we have an on going game of penny wars against all other orgs, as well as hosting events at night. this does get time consuming but its fun. we did kareoke, went to a school baseball game, had a cmn info night, where we brough in miracle families and stuff.

hope that helps!

We used to do a campus cleanup every year. All of the Greeks were involved, as well as other campus groups. It's a great way to recruit new members too with everone wearing letters. The campus administration also appreciates it, so you get brownie points. Admin also loves when you volunteer to do their phone drive with the Alumni Association.

Greeks have done this at our campus too. It's only one Saturday morning and you break everyone up into task teams to target different areas on campus.

You could also offer to help a local school or park to clean up or do maintenance.

Hello,

I read your post inquiring about organizations worthy of your philanthropic work.

I am the Founder and President of the Foundation for Grieving Children, Inc., a national public charity whose mission is to raise funds and provide grants to community-based organizations which assist, educate, counsel and comfort children, teens, young adults and their families who have experienced the death of a loved one.

We are searching for members of the Greek Community to host a fundraising event for the benefit of bereaved children.

I'd love to hear from you. I've got some fun ideas that don't take tons of time...

Best Regards,

Mary Mac
www.foundationforgrievingchildren.org
www.askmarymac.com
www.askmarymac.blogspot.com