Alumni Involvement
 

I was wondering what some of your chapters were experiencing as far as alumni involvement?

Do they just serve as your housing corporation? Do they help with chapter operations? finance? event planning? mentoring?

Let me know

We have an Alumni Advisory Board which consists of around 5 or 6 alumni. It is headed up by the alumni adviser. He then appoints alums to whatever advisory slots he thinks are needed. These guys' involvement with the chapter varies, but it is enough that we do know what is going on.

We have an alumni chapter. This is of course distinguishable from an alumni club because it's Mu Tau only. The alumni chapter does directly support some active events. For example, I think we sponsor a night of formal rush from alumni funds. The alumni chapter's job is to sponsor alumni activities, for example, we might do a golf outing. They make sure to keep alums up to date on when homecoming is, they have their own meetings, dues, etc. Our alumni chapter is going to be the starting point for our capital campaign. Since they're already organized, we just utilize their lines of communication in our quest to build our CEF or whatever we're doing.

We have a house corporation... that's pretty self-explanatory. We do whatever house corporations do.

When Theta Eta re-colonized in October 2006, Headquarters set up an Alumni Advisory Board (AAB) that summer before they set foot on campus. Once the original 16 undergraduates were in place, there were 10 or so alumni in various positions to support & mentor them. Headquarters has some very specific positions & responsibility roles defined which helps a lot.

Now we are nearly 2 years into it and the alumni support has dropped off substantially. I am the most hands on and work with the executive officers regularly. Then I call upon other alumni who I know will help out when asked. There are three key areas that I am highly involved in - recruitment, LEAD facilitation and strategic planning.

Recruitment - we have a very effective recruitment process and philosophy that has us head and shoulders above the other fraternities at NIU. We are very selective about who get a bid, no one flunks out, nearly 100% get initiated if they pledge and those who only want to join a drinking club weed themselves out.

LEAD - once they are in the fraternity, then need to be educated, molded and indoctrinated in the ways of excellence. We only allow alumni and university administrators to facilitate LEAD. The undergraduates love LEAD and see it as a huge competitive advantage in the culture of our fraternity. No other student organization offers a four-year ethical leadership development curriculum. The achievement crowd is drawn to Sigma Nu - the party guys go elsewhere. LEAD is a great recruitment tool to get key alumni re-involved in the fraternity. They really love giving their time & wisdom to our undergraduates.

Strategic Planning - we are working on a two-year strategic plan complete with Mission, Vision and Action Items to support the goals laid out in the Vision. There is a six-man strategic planning committee headed up by the Lt. Commander. Like an architect, we are spelling every last detail over the next two years so that the finished product two years from now looks exactly like we envision it today. If you want to be the best, you have to plan for it because it won't happen by accident. This philosophy and culture puts us in the top 10-20% of fraternities all by itself. Now we just need to execute the plans and I will hold them to their comitments with enthusiasm and encouragement.

Through recruitment, LEAD and the 2-year strategic plan, I feel as if we have our growth, membership quality, organizational culture and road map for the future well in hand.