Basically it's just out of the kindness of my heart and that I know the enthusiam they had before has to be in there somewhere. Just matter of getting out.. I dunno. Just wanted to know if any fraternity guys had any good ideas on how to get them motivated.
The biggest thing is.. these guys are some of my best friends and I hate seeing them so down about it.
It is certainly not over. When I joined my glo there were 10 brothers on a campus where the all male average was about 40 or 50 or so. It takes hard work but it's easily doable. We are up to abotu 25 now with no graduating seniors this year. A problem with a lot of fraternities that go from big to small still expect rushees to knock on their doorstep. It doesn't work that way when you're small. you gotta go out and meet people. It's possible. If they still want to go on, they need ot keep their heads up and try.
My organization was in a comparable spot two years ago. The key to being a success is to win the freshman. For the most part freshman have no clue how the greek system works so in there eyes they cannot discern between the biggest and the smallest fraternity if both can make themselves equally visible. Yes the smaller organization wont have as much exposure in terms of people wearing letters but its still possible to hide your numbers and appear bigger than you are. Since the organization had many guys graduate there should be an influx of recent alumni willing to come down and help. The next step is to throw big parties. Now this may vary in difficulty depending on where you go to school but it is the opportunity to show the freshman a good time. 10 guys can run a party but a good ammount of preparation is needed and chances are you will only break even cash wise unless you can support a massive rager which is hard with 10 guys.
If you throw a good party then the freshman will have a good opinion of you guys and with all the alumni it does not need to be known how big the organization active list is untill pledge season and at that point they are commited. The mixer scheme will probably disintigrate with only 10 guys but thats ok as long as you have a base of people which will come to all the "open parties" they can fill the void for mixers until you have more members.
Next is to put on a lot of stupid little programs that wont necessarily garner much attention (if they do then great) and thats fine because you will constantly have some sort of flyer with the organizations name on the boards of the residence halls. If you start at the beginning of the year and make some strong friends you can have a big pledge class by the spring.
Honestly now is the time when the organization has nothing to loose so it can go balls out and risk it all otherwise they are done.
Using this strategy we have been able to triple our organization size back to healthy numbers at a school which is not greek friendly and filled with giant tool box organizaitions who let anyone walk in there society.
My fraternity is in a similiar problem as i have seen others describe. We are a national fraternity with good numbers but my chapter is now down to 8. My school is very antigreek and incredibly blind to the fact that all social life revolves around the greek community and their involvement. Despite this i know that recruitment for some organizations is not a problem, the sig pis, while all assholes here, get 15+ men pledge classes, while we get 2. Obvisously we are not rushing correctly. Our image on campus isn't huge outside of the greek system. The sororities love us and love to party with us.
so i have 2 questions: What have been the best things to attract perspective pledges. What drew you to your respective fraternity/sorority and why them over another?
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