How Do The Best Fraternities Operate?

[LATau]

My GLO is thinking of reorganizing the executive structure. I have my own ideas, but how do the "best chapters" operate. By best I mean the ones who continually win top chapter at their school, win national recognition, but at the same time are known for great social programming.

Some basics first:
What state are you in?
How long has your chapter been around?
What is greek life like on campus?
Are you an officer?

1) How are they organized? Is it a top down structure with committees, or a horizontal, more dynamic structure? Does every active have the right to know of and affect every decision made? Are most decisions voted on?

1a) Who has major influence in the budget, the treasurer, the exec board, a finance committee, or the whole chapter?? When an unexpected expenditure comes up, what happens? Are dues a lump sum, payments, divided into social and operations dues, what do you do about unpaid insurance?

2) What sort of rules and criteria do they have for bidding? Who do you look for? Do you blanket bid and ask those who don't meet your expectations to leave, have smaller tight knit classes of decent guys and form them into a cohesive unit, or some combination of the two?

3) Are there any special, legal, unique things that you have your pledges do in order to bring them into the mindset of being productive members?

4) How do you deal with members who for some reason or another don't contribute by way of rent, dues, effort, or energy?

5) How do you ensure active's contributions and experiences with the fraternity are equal? Do you cut off dead weight, have sanctions, or try to figure out how to include them?

6) How closely do you operate with your board of trustees/house manager/national advisor/greek advisor? What kinds of things do you discuss?

7) Do you operate with any kind of long term debt like mortgages or loans for home renovations? Where does the money come from?

8) How do you convince alumni to contribute money or otherwise raise funds solely for the benefit of the chapter?

9) What kinds of philanthropy and service do you do and how do you get actives to contribute?

10) And finally, I'd like to know how you deal with risk management concerns.

Thanks
LA