|
We at Alpha Tau have a very active Parent's Alliance. They do all sorts of things from sending snacks (granola bars and such) for Dead Week, to coming to the house to decorate for Christmas, to coming to our Winter Formal to serve us and our dates dinner. They also have raised quite a bit of money for us in the past couple years and have paid for new patio furniture for our deck, steam cleaning of all our bathrooms and the building of a new trophy case.
I have no idea how this activity got started, but I figure you need a dedicated core group of parents for the first couple years. I also think it's important to have things that require varying levels of dedication. Obviously if every parent is going to have to donate 5 hours a week to the Parent's Alliance then no one is going to be interested.
The key is getting pledge's parents involved each new year (maybe in the coming years you can hold a Pledge's parents event - like a month or so after rush gets over - to welcome them to the Beta family...we at Alpha Tau have a Pledge move in day to help the pledges move into the house, there's a nice lunch, and presentations from the Chapter and the Parent's Alliance, so it's basically the parent's first formal introduction to Beta.)
Also, do a lot of singing if you have moms coming. They eat that stuff up. you don't even have to sound that good.
ZZ, I like the idea of the Yahoo news group. I'm going to suggest it to our our Alumni Relations chair. It could be very helpful in letting alumni know about our upcoming 115th Anniversary, as well as the other news you said that goes on.
|