From the "Success Stories" thread...
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 16 active members were presented with the modified colony program, and told that if this wasn't within their heart to do, that was ok, and we would grant anyone who didn't want to do it with alumnae status, no questions. We had 3 take that route, and all three are still friendly with the chapter, although they didn't believe in what our mission was. The 13 remaining 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 an added note, these women won the Most Improved Recruitment Award at our Convention in July!! WAY TO GO GIRLS!!
How did you turn your chapter around?
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