[Adelie]

From ASUADPi:

Well I can answer for Guardians of the Diamond.

Right now we are just getting off the ground. ..
As of now we have a group set up for ADPi's where we can discuss pins we see on Ebay.
As for money, we take donations via paypal... And that is .. DONATIONS FROM THE SISTERS.
Another thing that is important to us is educating the collegians about the importance of their pin.

It sounds like Alpha Delta Pi’s are in the same stages of this as we are, and the concept of your operations sounds almost identical too. How has it been working so far? Have you had much luck?

As for why people really take this to heart. It just varies sister by sister. I am very passionate about our pins remaining in the hands of a sister, while other sisters will not feel as I do. It just really depends.

Which is exactly the frustrations with the whole black market problem to begin with. Yes it is true that priorities are and should be collegiate programs. On the same token, without the historical aspects, there wouldn’t be any collegiate programs. I think a lot of people simply do not want to see non-members who have no affiliation with the organization owning something that is such a treasured symbol of their organization. It’s sort of like seeing someone from another country disrespecting an American flag-- I think it is similar in emotional resentment. And you are right, there are some people & groups who do not share those sentiments and do not care about retrieval


From ISUKappa:

We've found, that even though it's the members of the badge rescue group spending their own money to rescue badges, the women who have had their badges lost or stolen and then rescued and returned to them go on to actively support the Fraternity in other ways: be it volunteering as an adviser, becoming a member of her Alumnae group, donating money to the Foundation or becoming a member of our group. So in our small way, we are strengthening our Fraternity.

that is very interesting!


From Little E:

I'm curious who you are and what organization you are with. This could be astronomicaly expensive for some organizations, especially because there is no way to really budget for it. And in a time with very tight budgets it could be close to impossible. Now some loose agreement with alumnae, not the HQ is another story... I'm curious who the 'we' you talk about it though.

“we” being Theta Phi Alpha, which incidentally is the smallest sorority in NPC. So yes, it can be very expensive for groups such as ours, or the really large groups who have many pins out in the world. Which is why it would be very important to have an open communication & keep active points of contact between the groups who were interested in participating so that the exchange idea could work. If we knew a name & phone number of a person/people from the retrieval groups of other sororities, if we see something in a antique store, for example, we could call that person & tell them what we are looking at— “do you wish for us to purchase it”? if a group was only interested in certain ones, they would also share that information so that the others would know. It would also be important that communication be the key factor, otherwise the whole thing would be a bust.

And I think it sounds like all the groups who have retrieval programs do so by relying on donations only, not HQ support. So this would be an exchange agreement between NPC alumna.