Small Chapter/Private University Setting Recruitment Help

[bittersweet]

Hey guys, I've never posted anything on the forum before, but I'm really looking for some input from people who might have experienced similar issues or might just have some good ideas. I'm a member of a multicultural sorority at a private university and we're experiencing a few issues with getting new members for our chapter. We've tried all the usual types of advertisements - flyering, facebook, t-shirts, person to person, etc. and we're just not getting the response that we've hoped for. I think at this point sisters are feeling like we're trying so hard to hit everyone that no one is getting the message we're trying to send. Our school has NPHC chapters and other organizations that aim towards particular cultural groups (Latina, Asian), not to mention Panhel and it just seems like the Greek Office is organized in such a way that it's easier for these groups to reach their target audience. We don't participate in a formal rush process like the Panhel sororities, though we do try to have a week or month of events each semester to try and reach out to the student body (this is in addition to any other events we might do throughout the whole year). Our school slightly tends towards self-segregating and while we don't want to make anyone feel like we're invading their space, we want to make sure that we can try and reach every woman who might be open to joining our wonderful organization. With only 6,000 students total I understand that just as a fact of life we'll be smaller, but there is a limit where I feel like we're just not doing something.

New ideas on how a small chapter can do their best to show the student body that we're here and and a group that could really add to their college experience would be really welcome. New advertisement ideas, even new event ideas that you've seen to be real crowd pleaser's, any of that.

And of course we want to do all this without losing our focus on sisterhood and doing so many events that we all go crazy. Hopefully I've provided enough information to give you an idea of what we're dealing with – just let me know if anything more would be helpful. I've tried to comb the other threads so as not to repeat anything else, so I'd also welcome links to other answers if I've missed something.

Thanks in advance!

[FSUZeta]

have your chapter get together for a brainstorming session. have a tripod with one of those giant pads of paper. appoint someone to record the responses on the paper. you might ask the following questions:

-what is our target market?
-what are we looking for in a member?
-what sets us apart from the other groups?
-what are our chapters strengths?
-what are our weaknesses?
-what sort of events might attract the type of member we are seeking?
-what sort of image do we have on campus?
-how can we get our name out there?

if the npc and nphc chapters hold their recruitment during one particular semester, try to hold yours during the other semester. have your members network with more students by making sure that everyone holds a membership in at least one campus organization other than your own. support the other groups in their fundraising and charity events-wear your letters when you do, so that they know who you are. bake cookies for the professors on campus-wear your letters when you deliver them. have a letter and lunch day once a week at the campus cafeteria.

[preciousjeni]

Originally Posted by FSUZeta

have your members network with more students by making sure that everyone holds a membership in at least one campus organization other than your own. support the other groups in their fundraising and charity events-wear your letters when you do, so that they know who you are.

This is really where interest begins. People have to have that personal connection that makes them want to come out to the events and such. Nice response, FSUZeta!

[gee_ess]

Take a look at the book "I <3 Recruitment." I have not read it, but other GCers always suggest it when discussing recruitment struggles. Maybe it will be helpful in your situation.

[violetpretty]

Originally Posted by gee_ess

Take a look at the book "I <3 Recruitment." I have not read it, but other GCers always suggest it when discussing recruitment struggles. Maybe it will be helpful in your situation.

Although it was written with Panhellenic recruitment in mind, the book has many suggestions that will help your chapter's "person to person" skills.

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by gee_ess

Take a look at the book "I <3 Recruitment." I have not read it, but other GCers always suggest it when discussing recruitment struggles. Maybe it will be helpful in your situation.

And visit Phiredup.com (the site for the company that sells the book). Read the blog and resources. These will give you a myriad of ideas.

Also, search the recruitment threads on this site. There are a lot of them.

[bittersweet]

Thanks so much guys! I've been combing through the recruitment threads on this website for days, but I thought maybe putting out my own thread for more specific feedback would be helpful. So far the feedback has been great, so if you have any more ideas - keep 'em coming!

[ASTalumna06]

Statistics show that when it comes to Greek life, there are 3 different types of students:
Never Joiners (15%)
Maybe Joiners (70%)
Always Joiners (15%)

Never Joiners are the people who won’t be persuaded to join no matter what you say to them. You could offer them $1000, and they’d still turn you down. It’s a waste of time to try and convince them that Greek life is for them.
The Always Joiners are the people who will seek you out. They’ll see posters with recruitment dates, or they’ll notice someone walking by with letters on and ask them about the organization. They just know coming to school that they want to be Greek. Don’t use up a lot of your recruitment time on them, either.
Instead, your focus should be on the Maybe Joiners. These are the people who would be perfectly fine going through their college career having never known anything about Greek life. For the most part, they won’t see a Facebook group or poster in the hallway and think, “I need to go to that recruitment event!” On the other hand, if someone became their friend, and eventually talked about this great organization they’re in, they would probably consider going to a few events (This was me, and a lot of other girls I know on my campus who became Greek).

A good exercise to do:

Get your chapter together. Have each girl take out a piece of paper and a pen. Give everyone 10 minutes to write down the names of every non-Greek woman on campus that they know. Even if they don't know their names, they can write them down (example: the girl who sits next to me in biology class that I talk to every so often)

After 10 minutes, see how many names everyone wrote down. My chapter did this and the girl who wrote down the most names had 70 on her list.

After this, have everyone take out their cell phones and tell them to call one of the girls on their lists. Tell them to invite someone for coffee, to study, to go to the movies, etc.

Recruitment is about building personal relationships. Make the girls more aware of the people around them who could easily be members if they just took a little time to get to know them.

[preciousjeni]

Originally Posted by ASTalumna06

Recruitment is about building personal relationships. Make the girls more aware of the people around them who could easily be members if they just took a little time to get to know them.

Amen!

[anonymouse42]

Do you guys have a house? If you do, is it possible to allow other campus groups to do things in your space?

For a while, my society had the reputation of being really exclusive / un-open to other people (which is ridiculous, but whatever), and since, like you, we don’t have a formal rush, that made it hard to get people interested in us, because they wouldn’t come to our events. Something that really helped was getting to word out that we were open to allowing other people to use our living room for events like a capella concerts. That way, people came to their friends events that happened to be in our house, and then they met our members and realized we really liked talking to other people. We didn’t get a ton of rushees through these event or anything, but it got the word out that we were actually nice, so that the events that WE threw became more well attended. Even if there aren't negative things said about you guys, this would still be a way to get more people to know about your group.

Along the same idea (and you can do this even if you don’t have a house), maybe you could throw an event that involves participants from outside your group. Like, we throw a couple of coffee houses a semester, and invite anyone we know who plays music to come. People love performing, so it’s never hard to find people to do it. Then they invite all of their friends to watch them, and more people become generally aware of our existence, etc.

I also agree 100% with ASTalumna06’s advice. We’re on a campus that's even smaller than yours, where people are generally very uninterested in Greek life, so we get a lot of pledges through their being friends with a couple of our members and deciding that maybe they actually do want to check us out because they like the people they’ve met and our goals, etc. We have plenty of members who’d never been to one of our rush events, but happened to be in a club heavily populated with our memebers.

[bittersweet]

Thanks so much for that exercise idea ASTalumna06! It sounds like something really concrete, and something to make all of us feel like we're doing the most we can to increase our numbers.

anonymouse42 - we don't have houses at our school, so we're working with using other available spaces on campus. For the second year in a row we have put on a multicultural dance party that was a combination dance and performance event. We invited a lot of performance groups - dancers primarily - to come and perform and then mixed it up with club/dance music from all over the world. We've marketed it as something that allows everyone at our school to mix and mingle at a social that's not exclusive to any particular person or cultural group. We kind of had a less then stellar number of people in attendance this year, but we're hoping to co-host it with another group to bring up the numbers next year.

[bittersweet]

Thanks again everyone! We're going to be having a big brainstorming/power session/business retreat when we get back to school in January to go over the new ideas and plan ahead so that what we do now will really have an impact for years to come. Thanks so much and if anyone has anything else has something to contribute just let those thoughts flow!

[ASTalumna06]

More ideas!

In order to add more PNMs to your Names List (which should include the names and contact info of all non-Greek girls on campus).. hold a raffle. You could raffle off a specific item or do a 50/50.. or not even use it as a fundraiser and give away all the money (what do you care? You just want to meet some new people!) Set up a table in a high traffic area on campus. Don’t clutter your table with things from your sorority.. you’ll scare people away. Maybe wear letters, or have a poster at the table saying, “Such-and-such raffle, put on by ABC sorority”. Nothing more is needed. Only have 2 or 3 sisters stand at the table at once. Any more than that and it could be slightly intimidating for people to approach. You could work on a half hour or hour rotational basis with all of the sisters, if you’d like. Have at least one person there be very outgoing. That person should stand right up front and get people to come over to the table to participate in the raffle. Have the other two members greet people with a friendly hello, and have them explain how the raffle will work. They can ask students ‘small-talk’ kinds of questions and wish them good luck in the raffle. Best part is.. that person that just signed up for the raffle.. you now have their name and contact information.

Another suggestion: Don’t spend a lot of your recruitment and/or PR budget on things like posters and t-shirts. Invest in things that will promote interaction between your members and the rest of campus. Every year my chapter does two of these ‘events’. One of them, “Kissed by an AΣT”, was always done around Valentine’s Day. We would have a table set up where 5 or 6 sisters would stand/walk around for two hours (around lunchtime) for a few days. To people walking by, we would hand them free Hershey’s kisses, and a sticker that said “Kissed by an AST” with a picture of the candy on it. Those that wore the stickers became walking billboards for our organization.

The other thing we did is very similar. We would hand out candy in the week before finals. People had a choice to take either Smarties or dum-dums. Get it? Students were thrilled with the candy. Free stuff is always a plus. Wish people luck on their finals as they take some.