Smaller Groups-how can you make PNMs feel chosen?

[bluefish81]

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

Everyone talks about their HQ's "pressuring" them to "get the numbers" but let me be the first to say that our HQ was fabulous to us and provided us with tons of resources.

We had an LC assigned to our chapter. She suggested implementing a marketing plan on one of her visits. We organized a chapter committee to work on it (which I was on as PR chair). She was available all the time if we had any questions about anything we were putting in it.

I agree wholeheartedly. For several years, my undergrad chapter struggled with formal recruitment, we were great at informal but when formal would come around some of the members who'd joined via informal weren't comfortable with the setup of Formal Recruitment. It took a long time for them to realize that while it was a different method of joining the chapter (then they had) it wasn't something awful to be feared and it was a lot less time consuming in the long run than COBing 5 days a week, every week of the semester. That is so draining on a chapter.

As many of the previous posters have stated, the solution isn't going to happen during a recruitment party with an unhappy PNM who doesn't want to be at your party in the first place. Chances are good that you know she doesn't want to be there anyway. Especially if it's pref. I think that in that situation it's probably best just to be as kind and gracious to her as possible but spend more time focusing on the PNMs that want to be there and will hopefully be joining your chapter the next day. That's not to say that a conversation that you have with her couldn't turn it around, she won't love your ceremony, the speeches won't strike some chord in her, but if she's just killing an hour until she heads off to ABC...

The real solution is a 24/7 PR effort, it's developing a PR plan and then implementing it. The undergrad chapter that I attended and used to advise started developing a PR plan a few years ago. AFAIK, this is something that all of Thetas undergrad chapters have to do. I also think it's important to have a committee develop the plan, but at some level, other members of the chapter have to be aware of the plan. Otherwise, how can you expect them to participate? Honestly, I also think this is where my undergrad chapter has started to see some of their success. Yes they continued to COB (so does every other chapter on campus to some extent), but they aren't getting 9 girls thru formal and 18 girls via informal anymore, it's more or less the other way around.

And Faith4Keep I'm going to be sending you a very longwinded PM!

[adrie435]

The thing that I think turned things around for my chapter was really spending a lot of time pre-recruiting (we have deferred recruitment) in addition to a new PR plan. When we got to know our rush crushes very closely outside of recruitment it was a lot easier to get them to forget about a stereotype and join the group with the girls they love. Sometimes all it took was three or four sisters being very close with them and really motivated to represent the chapter well. I think the important thing for us was that we didn't get to know them as sorority women.. we actually became friends and naturally introduced them to our friends (and v/v they introduced us to other freshmen). It becomes a lot easier when you know the girls to make them feel chosen-- they obviously know that you want them to be your sister since you are already friends..
My pledge class was about a third of quota my freshman year bringing our chapter size to about half of total.... Once our class got initiated, we got motivated and determined to turn it around. We took almost 2/3 of quota the next year and my class alone knew almost every one of the new pledges personally before recruitment began. We kept it up the next year with close to 2/3 quota and then my senior year we took something like 3 less than quota (with only 3/7 actually making quota) and ended up over total.