How do you get your chapter more involved?

[SammyMan]

I became a active member of my Fraternity last spring, and I would say overall that I am well respected in the house as a good/hard working person. Because of this my President asked me to attend UIFI for our chapter because we need all the good PR we can get. On campus there are rumors of us hazing, having solely "social members", and never contributing to the community.

We are known as the party frat and are one of the largest (most well known) on campus. I'm fine with this, and understand who we are. We are a social bunch and we enjoy partying.

The thing is that I would really like to make us more well rounded, more respected, and be known as a GREAT overall fraternity and not just as a party fraternity.

At the UIFI event I met a lot of great people in the Greek community and a lot of people who want to associate with us. The thing is that many are worried because of our rep and because they think we lack commitment.

At the event, I represented very well and showed people another side of our fraternity. The thing is that now I'm back, I'm worried about how I go about asking my guys to get more involved in the community. We have a number of issues, but I think the thing we could do to help our rep and stature is just by increasing community service.

I'm thinking of ways to slowly transition this, so at first it may not be their ideal situation but they will eventually grow to love service.

Here's one idea I came up with:
- I go up to the guys and tell them that we are doing a once a month community service event. The event will only 3-4 hours on one day.

-I get them together as a group and we pick a single event that we all can get behind and support.

-The key is that every month I try to get a new sorority to do it with us. It gets us involved with a sorority we may not be familiar with, keeps us consistent, and motivates the guys with the idea of meeting new girls in a non-party situation.

-I can sell that by meeting people outside of party situations it creates a new world of oppurtunities, betters community, gets us more respect, and if you want to party you still have plenty of time in the day.

I thought this was a decent idea. I tossed it out to a brother though and he shot it down. Said that there arent enough sororities we'd want to do events with (shallow reasons), that we dont pay dues to do service, etc.

We are a chapter of nearly 100. I'd say at least 40 guys are solid for this type of stuff, but then we have the other group that could give a damn.

How can I change the mindset and motivate everyone?

Thanks for reading. Don't judge the guys just by this also