Losing Morale and Numbers

AXiDQueen · #1 08-08-2007, 02:56 AM

Hi everyone. This is my first time posting here. My sorority house is suffering with house morale along with dwindling numbers for recruitment. The two situations are very closely related; a lot of girls are down on the house because we cannot recruit more girls. Another reason for low morale is some girls just don’t care to be involved in the house and treat it as a somewhat bearable place to live. Other girls live and breathe our letters and do their best to improve on everything. We are not the most “popular” sorority but we do not have a bad reputation either, we are just in the middle really which is frustrating in itself. We have had sisterhood retreats and specified chapters to address these problems. We seem to be able to pinpoint all the problems and brainstorm possible solutions but they are never carried out. How are we to boost morale? Does anyone have any ideas? It seems as though these girls want to change their attitudes but when new ideas are tested, they work for about a week or so, and then it is back to the old ways of grumbling about going to house events. We want people to be excited to be there. What can we do?

One of the best spring boards we had was that we recently won a lot of other house’s philanthropy events. We thought that this would make for good talk during RUSH as well as a high point in our chapter life. This helped a few girls find their love a bit while other’s opted not to participate and take the fine. The quality of our girls is slipping. Sadly, during fall RUSH we do tend to give a few girls bids who we just semi-like because we need to fill our quota which is about 25. This of course is a huge window of not getting quality girls. Case and point, last fall recruitment we got 20 girls and 6 of them are no longer in the house. 2 we lost to school transfers while the other 4 stopped caring and were either kicked out or dropped out. Getting a lot of girls to join the house is a high point and since we have not met our quota in some time now, the negative attitude of a “bad sorority” is affecting girls’ opinion of their own house. Our house beats their brains out coming up with new skits and ideas for recruitment but every year we seem to come up short. We do the letters days, we do tons of RUSH rehearsals, and we always have the most positive and house-loving girls trying to inspire the other girls. What more is there that we can do? We are in desperate need of help. It’s almost as though our whole chapter needs a make-over and an attitude adjustment.

Everyone knows that as much passion as a few people have for something, it is hard to inspire about 40 other girls to feel it too. Please help. Any ideas are more than welcome. Thank you so much.

amanda6035 · #2 08-08-2007, 09:26 AM

Have you talked to your advisors? Sometimes, a little outside perspective is good. You might even consider having an ELC come visit.

One of the things my chapter did to help boost attitude is that we "accidentally on purpose" started not making a big hairy stink about people not showing up to events and such. You joined a sorority to be involved, right? So you should WANT to hang out with your sisters and do those events. Sometimes you have other commitments, but for the most part, unless someone was excessively absent, we didnt even tally up petal points (or merits, whatever you call them) because forcing someone to be somewhere for a specific event made that event "not fun."

How many times do you guys hang out just for the heck of hanging out? With 40 girls, it's probably difficult to plan a spur of the moment outting - but why not grab a few sisters and say "hey, let's go get pedicures..." or whatever else.

If I didnt learn anything else about the negative people in my chapter it's this: they have to be willing to want to have fun. As cliche as it sounds, they are going to be negative, no matter what, until they have made themselves so miserable that they cant stand being miserable anymore. You've heard the expression "you can lead a horse to water, but you cant force it to drink?" Yeah, we've had a few of those. While I dont necessarily think its appropirate to "give up" on that girl, or those girls, you also will drive yourself bonkers if you try to change them. You can continue to invite them to things, going to dinner, going bowling, whatever kinda fun event you and some other sisters may be heading out to. If they have a piss poor attitude and it shows, they will eventually realize that they are a miserable person to be around. On the other hand, it might be a wake up call for that individual, and she might make a turn around because she wants to have fun.

As far as recruiting and numbers. PNMs can tell when something is fake. They can feel the tension in the air when sisters either dont want to be there, dont have a good attitude, or have conflicts with each other. They can also tell when a chapter is genuinely happy and fun to be around. Depending on how your recruitment parties go, if you can work it to where a couple of sisters who are pretty close can sit with a PNM or two and tell stories about how much fun they've had together that shows that they are friends with each other. I went to Destin with 2 sisters one year for spring break. One of them convinced myself and the other girl to go on this big swing (similar to bungee jumping, I cant remember exactly what it was called). I screamed and screamed and screamed. but when it was over, we laughed, and had such a great time going it, and we have some great pictures to show to go with the story. You have to show PNMs why your sorority is SO MUCH FUN, and what kind of benefits they are going to get out of being a member of your chapter.

Check your private messages. I've got some other advise for ya that doesnt need to be public knowledge.

oldrusheenowmom · #3 08-10-2007, 10:07 AM

When thinking about PNMs- Is the so/so quiet and shy and a potential asset- call an alum or two during that hectic time and find an honest rec? Is the so/so not an asset, and one who will end up recruiting more members like her or causing others to form negative opinions about your chapter? Sometimes quality is FAR more important than numbers in boosting pride and moral.

doubleblue&gold · #4 08-10-2007, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oldrusheenowmom

When thinking about PNMs- Is the so/so quiet and shy and a potential asset- call an alum or two during that hectic time and find an honest rec? Is the so/so not an asset, and one who will end up recruiting more members like her or causing others to form negative opinions about your chapter? Sometimes quality is FAR more important than numbers in boosting pride and moral.

Agreed! And that quality person will attract more. It doesn't happen overnight. it takes more tha one recruitment period to get things changed.

PinkRose1098 · #5 08-20-2007, 10:01 PM

Amanda - have I mentioned that I love you! You serious give some great advice.

amanda6035 · #6 08-22-2007, 02:36 PM

aww, thanks! I try....sometimes my ideas are out in left field (no comments from the peanut gallery, trish) but I always try.

//hijack
SPSU recruitment starts tonight! Woo!
//end hijack

AXiDQueen · #7 09-30-2007, 03:48 PM

Ok so here is an update on the situation. A big chunk of our problem was our seniors. They did not care about being involved with the house and really put the other classes down about them "not being as good as they were". However, they have mostly all moved on and let me tell you, the house is a happier place to be in now. Although there are still are a few negative girls, which goes without saying, over all we are trying to be positive.

Recruitment went very well this year although we thought it went better than just getting 22 girls. We are at a huge university and we have very competative sororities. Nationals is still jumping down our throats about not getting 30 girls, our quota but we are working on that with informal recruitment.

Another problem that we have been struggling with is funding and money. We don't have the money to compete with the other sororities on campus. We are doing our best to work around this and keep moving forward.

All and all we are doing much better and are putting our house back together. Thank you to everyone who gave me advice!

SigKapChatter · #8 09-30-2007, 04:33 PM

We had a similar situation in my chapter. When I joined two years ago we were not a very popular house and morale was low. We had been fighting for numbers for over a decade. This year for the first time in over a decade we are over campus total. What changed? We stopped taking new members because we needed numbers and only took the girls we knew would add to the strength of our chapter. Another sorority on our campus was scraping the bottom of the barrel with us. They did not make this change and now they are dying.

I'm glad to hear you are doing better, and I encourage you to stand strong against nationals. All they see is the numbers and the financial spread sheets. They don't see what those extra numbers are doing to our lives. Not to sound bitter against nationals, but they screwed us over a year ago and played with our recruitment numbers after we had approved a different list and we are still living with the effects of it. Needless to say, we did NOT let that happen again this year...and we ended up with about as good a pledge class as could ever exist.