How to make our local sorority legitimate?

[dp1228]

Hi! I have looked through almost ALL the threads for locol sororities and it's helped out a lot. I know that people tend to ask repetative questions so I made sure I looked through all the threads before I posted my questions.

I am one of 23 founding sisters of a locol sorority in Connecticut called Phi Gamma. We started two years ago and are still very young, but we have a strong group of girls and we already have quite a few alumni. We also have a prominent member of the NPC on our campus who is advising us on everything we are doing. We have the support of the administration for the most part and we have been able to recruit a sizeable number of women these past few years (usually we can get about 12 to 20 girls for our Fall Rush/ 5 to 10 for our Spring Rush). Our name is also readily recognized all over campus which is great. We even have the support of multiple women from other national sororities on campus. Although things are going okay for us we do have problems that I am afraid will hurt us in the long run.

Basically we are an underground sorority. Although we have the support of our administration theres not much they can do but recognize us as a club. We have been trying for the past two years to become recognized by the NPC, but there are certain people who have blocked that from happening. Their excuse is that because chapters from national sororites on our campus have acted inappropriately which in turn has caused them to be "disbanded", they do not want to accept any other greek organizations on campus. As another option, we have been operating under our student government as a club but what we WANT is to become a legitimate local sorority on campus that can be recognized as such.

I am worried about this because there are people who are interested in joining that are discouraged from doing so because they think we arent legitimate and that we have no right to call ourselves a sorority. People from other sororities are telling PNM's that we arent a real sorority and I see it hurting our recruitment numbers.

SO what I want to know is what kind of options do we have for making our group legitimate if we arent under NPC or NPHC? We were thinking about becoming Incorporated but its so expensive and we need our dues to fund us throughout the year. Is there maybe any other umbrella organization that we can join?

Just to make it clear we arent looking to become affiliated with a national sorority anymore. We have started from scratch and all we want to be recognized by EVERYONE as more then just a club faking as a sorority. We just want to be seen as a local sorority that has a legitmate claim to call itself a sorority. What can we do? I would really appreciate any help because I want our young sorority to start off on a strong foundation so that eventually in the long run we can open up other chapters. Thanks!