I'll post my own chapter's success story, because it's something I'm really proud of
When I graduated in 1996, I left my chapter with 40 women, a bit above the average size for the university, even though total is 52. As the years passed, they seemed to have more and more trouble recruiting women, while other sororities were growing. There were three sororities that had trouble getting NMs, my chapter being one, and we didn't know why. 2 years ago, the chapter was at their lowest membership ever, with only 16 women, and we realized something drastic needed to happen. We caught wind that an interest group was on campus who wanted to form their own national sorority, and affiliate with KD, but KD wasn't interested, and the campus couldn't expand with only 2 chapters close to total. SO, we proposed a merger of the groups. The merger came with consequences of course, for the 16 active members. With such a large group of women (26) joining, there was no way the chapter could sustain a normal NM program, nor were we interested in that. We knew we needed to re-educate our women on how to effectively run the sorority, while teaching new members about history and values, etc. So we did a reorganization with a modified colony program. The current chapter members all gave up their offices, and committees were formed for recruitment, membership development, academic affairs, operations, etc., and 6 weeks later, we held nominations for positions, based on how the teams were run. All women were eligible to hold any position. The elections went very well, and the chapter completed their modified colony program in about 5 months. The chapter was returned to good standing about 9 months after the reorganization began, with 41 active members. The chapter has since took new member classes of 10, 3 (second NM class of semester), 9 and 14. They are currently one below total, 51, and one of the largest chapters on campus.
This story means a lot to me, because I was very involved in the process to reorganize this group, and it makes me incredibly proud to see how hard these women worked to regain their good standing and be a viable chapter. They are such amazing girls and deserve all of the commendation!!
On a side note, the Greek Advisor at the school, during the presentation to the interest group, said to me, "I don't see why these women don't go through recruitment...there are plenty of good sororities on our campus.", as if our chapter wasn't "good"!
Needless to say, she was not instrumental in our reorganization!