Advice

[AKΨ_BRO@DSU]

Hi. My chapter was recently installed about 2 months ago and I was just wondering if any brothers have any advice on how we can start off on good terms and last as chapter. Fundraising (especially), Rush activities, Professional events, social events, etc.

[ThetaPrincess24]

Originally Posted by AKΨ_BRO@DSU

Hi. My chapter was recently installed about 2 months ago and I was just wondering if any brothers have any advice on how we can start off on good terms and last as chapter. Fundraising (especially), Rush activities, Professional events, social events, etc.

Here are a few ideas that my chapter was known to do. We celebrated our five year anniversary in 2003 and we are still strong.


Fundraising:

We had a committee for this and basically what we did was we had a letter drawn up explaining whpo we were, our purpose, etc. and we would just go around to different businesses of all types, insurance, restaurants, the bookstore, cd stores, etc etc. Sometimes we got monetary donations and sometimes we got gift certificates and gifts donated to us (which we would give out as door prizes for events and stuff or do random drawings during meetings).

Professional events:

We had the President of the university and his wife speak at a professional event. We had a lot of brothers that worked at Lexmark here and sometimes we'd have Lexmark people come and speak to the chapter. I'm kind of fuzzy on other things we did in this area other than have people come in to talk to us about proper business etiquette and resume's.

Rush activities:
Sometimes we would combine a professional event with a rush event. Or a social event and a rush event. I wanst involved that much with rushing so I am sorry i cant help you more here.

SOcial events:

Every semester we have a bowling league where not only do people fromt eh chapter participate but we invite alumni to join us in the league as well. This is ENORMOUSLY successful with our chapter. Other social events were you know parties at people's houses (Xmas, Halloween, New Years, Fat Tuesday, Thanksgiving, Homecoming(for preparty purposes). Then we would ofcourse go to basketball games and football games(complete with pre-game tailgating). After meetings it was also tradition to go to BW3's. I think too we also had random parties pop up as well. We are a very social chapter which helped us with rush and with member retention. We also had snacks at every meeting.

Hope these ideas have helped and congrats with your new chapter!

[Marie]

Hi There,

We had a committee chair for each of the areas mentioned, but we were a big chapter (over 100 members). Typically each new chair held a combination of old programs/fundraisers/events and new ones that they created.

For professional development, we had company presentations during chapter. Sometimes we would have presentations open to the campus. However we rarely did these unless we could guarantee sufficient attendance. During the career fair season we had a corporate bar crawl where we secured representatives from several companies to participate in a bar crawl with us on one of the evenings of the career fair. We also had a few office visits, ettiquete dinners, and golf lessons.

For social, we had an event at least once a week. I think we called it Thursdau Night Outtings, but I may be remembering wrong. This used to be a happy hour, but by the time that I graduated we had expanded it to movie nights, broomball, paintball, capture the flag, game night, etc. to make our sober brothers feel comfortable. Additionally, we always took a day trip to a local state park for games, bar b que, and canoeing. We also had an active walk out once a year (I think we called it walk out). We had an overnight event (off campus) for our pledges to bond and celebrate being chosen as pledges. We thought it would be nice to do something similar for actives, so all the actives would go away overnight once a year to bond. There was a senior Thanksgiving trip to Vegas every year as well. Oh, we also had a formal every spring and a barn dance every fall.

Finally for fundraising, we ran a consession stand during football season (I think we got 1/2 of the profits). We also had bake sales and solicited alumni. I honestly can't remember what else we did b/c the project changed every year, and fundraising wasn't a big part of the chapter.

[AKΨ_BRO@DSU]

Hey thanks...both of ya!