Hi pbear and welcome to our board!
First off, starting a national org will definitely take a lot of work. I think the first thing you will or should want to look into is getting your sorority incorporated. I am not sure where one would go to do this but I'm sure if you surf the net, you might be able to find this. Or maybe some of the other up and coming org members on this board can help you with that aspect.
I think once you take care of that or even while you are taking care of that, you will need to start the expansion part of becoming national. However, you and your sisters will need to come up w/ a process of expansion. By this I mean, you need to come up with the methods by which an Interest Group will become a chapter. For instance, my sorority does this: Interest Group, Colony and then Chapter....where each of these phases will include having the interested ladies accomplish certain tasks before they can become members.
Example: w/ my sorority, women in the Interest Group phase have certain requirements to fulfill to become a Colony such as establishing themselves as an official student org on campus, finding a faculty member to serve as an advisor, making a list of short and long term goals, etc, etc. They also need to have at least 6 women to be an IG and they need to be an IG for at least a semester.
For the next phase which is Colony status, the women would be colonized if they met all the requirements asked of them during the IG phase. At this point, they also become Associate Members of our sorority, meaning they are now allowed to go through the sorority's educational process to learn our history, traditions, etc. During this process, they will again have requirements to fulfill to become an official Chapter.
So as you can see, you can do something similiar to that or vary it however you want to. I would try to do some research of the expansion processes of the service sororities out there to see which one you guys could borrow ideas from or modify to fit your org. My sorority is social and you can use the methods of a social sorority, but since you all are service, their methods might suit you all better. That's all up to you though.
After you figure out the expansion process, you will need to get your name out! That takes lots of advertising. If you all have a website, I would start there and start posting it on all the search engines on the net. If you don't have one, I'd make one. When my chapter got established, our sorority didn't have a website. Our chapter started the first website. From there, we have gotten SO much response from women all over the country wanting to start a chapter on their campus. So websites are GREAT for recruiting! Next, if you have other colleges/uni's around, I would start advertising (putting up flyers, etc) to see if anyone would like to start a chapter. If there aren't any close schools around, then you all will have to do some traveling to the nearest schools. I would try to start w/ the schools that are closest to you b/c it can be hard expanding to places that are really far away.
Let's see..I think that's like the basic things you need to do to get started. I'm the National Asst Membership Chair of my sorority, so I asst w/ starting new chapters. Feel free to email me...my email address is in my profile.
Or just post on the board again, we're all really friendly in here and will do our best to help you!
ZC4L
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A Radiant Lady of
Zeta Sigma Chi Multicultural Sorority, Inc.
"Diversity: Often perpetrated, never initiated"