Our chapter alumnae base is very very small...We're thinking about asking our headquarters if we can do a "make State U your home away from home" and try to draw in alumnae who went to schools in a different state. The chapter already invites some of these alumnae out to our events, and the participation is fair, but with the help of the corp board, maybe we can step it up a notch. The alumnae from other schools in our state have recently been hit up by their own chapters for fund raising for housing at those campuses, so we don't want to approach them.
I was mistaken about needing the first years parlor fees up front. The school is actually going to allow those to be tacked on to each member's semester school bill, since it's money that will be owed to the school. The sisters wont even really miss that money, because it will be coming out of their financial aid before they are issued a refund check - they'll just get a slightly smaller refund, that's all.
So the good news in that aspect, is we could probably get away with only $13-$15K now...and we're thinking about hitting up hotel liquidators for deals on furniture, and bargain shop for decorative items.
We're going to look into some info with our Foundation and see what our options are...and look for a lawyer
We're considering giving the chapter members the option to pay a 1 time start up fee, or have them work several fund raising events on behalf of the corporation board to help raise the money. This way, if they have the money and want to pay rather than being available at fund raising events - they can.