I have experienced the snowball first hand with my chapter. I'm a senior now and my bid calss was the first with low numbers for the chapter. We lost a few great classes of seniors also. All of this led to us only having 9 active members during recruitment this year...(Campus total is 45 and the other two groups were very close). We had another nearby chapter come to help us during each round of parties and that was wonderful! It was also a great way for us to meet some of the other girls. Quota was set VERY high this year and we only got one new member through the formal recruitment process. However, we have been working hard on COB and got 4 more last semester and 3 already this semester!!! That gives us a total of 8 so far! They are all amazing girls and we made sure that we didn't lower our standards at all! We now have 18 members so our chapter size is double what it was during recruitment and since we are only losing 5 seniors we are making great progress! It is tough to pull to gether and rebuild a chapter but the reward of seeing a great new group of girls (or even one girl) initiate is AWESOME! Listen to all the great advice listed and if you need any help feel free to ask!
GOOD LUCK to you and your chapter!!!