Hi,
I am from a small chapter in PA with only around 40-50 girls. Total is 75 and every other sorority on campus is at or above total. I agree that it does hurt during recrutement when we have two pnms per sister and the other houses have one sister per pnm.
I also agree that weak chapters can turn around. When I pledged, I was one of 5 people in my whole class. There were 12 people graduating that year so it seemed that our chapter was losing numbers fast. We got a chapter consultant in a few months later and while she was here, we recriuted 15 new pledges via cob. It turned our chapter around pretty quickly.
My advice is to engage in subtle pr all year round, not just during rush. The Alpha Chi Omegas on our campus have a program called PACE, Promote Alpha Chi Everyday, and they are the biggest sorority on campus. The idea of PACE is to always have at least one sister doing something to promote Alpha Chi, even of she is just wearing letters while helping an old lady cross the street or a group of sisters hanging out in the student union having fun together. It isn't blatant pr but it gives the impression that they are a fun and caring sisterhood. As a result, they always do really well in rush (we have deffered rush until sophomore year on our campus so pnms have a year to get to know the sororities before rushing.) In Phi Mu, we do things like have a table in the cafeteria that is "ours" during lunch and sisters come and go during their lunch times but there is always at least a small group of sisters there. We sometimes invite friends of ours who "happen to be" freshmen to sit with us at our table (kind of a way to get freshmen women that we like to hang out with us and see how cool we are).
I guess the point of my above spiel is to mention that on my campus, subtle year round pr is what works for all of the houses on our campus.
Hope this helped. Feel free to PM me or IM me at clair424
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