Colony to Chapter

[knoxie13]

Originally Posted by dnall

Not a TKE as well, but...

As others have said, event concepts get far too much attention. Think about it like this - a girl doesn't go out with a dirtbag because it's a cool date idea. Well maybe she would, but she probably won't continue to see you & if she would she's just using you and will bail at first chance. You wouldn't want any part of someone like that, be they girl or rushee.

Sure, it's nice to publicize something that'll get people out, but actual events are about making rushees feel very relaxed and comfortable so both sides can make friends as quickly as possible with no pressure.

Not to be harsh, but doubling up your numbers in one rush is neither very likely or necessarily a great idea.

I don't entirely get how quarters work, but 20 fall & 10 spring would be a 100-120man chapter if you had perfect retention. After a year you have 23 guys. You aren't exactly rushing or retaining like a 100-man chapter. No amount of amazing events is going to change that in one rush. You need to worry less about events and completely rethink how you're recruiting.

Someone mentioned recruiting is a year-round process. What that means is you need to be out making friends with guys that weren't necessarily going to go through rush & selling them on you. Those guys will enter the rush process already 90% locked in & you can spend the majority of your effort on new faces. I don't know what the restrictions are on your campus, but if you don't make your goal in formal rush, if you can continue to add people after the fact (COB) then you should do a lot of that.

I don't know if you have 23 guys now because your recruiting badly or you've recruited well and not retained anyone, but either way if you are actually able to pick up anything close to 20 you need to take a hard look at retention because it's going to be very hard to hold on to them.

Since you've been through this colony process, I know it won't scare you when I say you have a lot of work ahead of you. Good luck. I really do hope you pull it off.

I happen to go to the same school as Purch and have been in the Greek system since TKE was starting up. The issue isn't that they have bad member retention, the issue is that we go to a school with a very small Greek life and it's really hard for new groups to break into the system. He's looking for a way from them to stand out in rush from the few big fraternities.