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Hi Tom-
Thanks for the pointers. I will have to admit in this thread that I was in a national Fraternity for three years. Faltering alumni finances and support, a deteriorating chapter house, and a final act of the city condemning the building delivered unrecoverable blows to our group. We were down to 9 members and the headquarters made the decision to pull our charter.
We were a dedicated group of guys, we worked hard and had a lot of momentum but no matter what we couldn't shake off the impact of the chapter's riotous haydays of the 80s. Damned with burden of the alumni having avoided taxes, a condemned chapter house, and everything against us it was a miracle that the 9 of us stayed together. But we did...and made a difficult decision to embrace our local bonds of friendship and deny the declaration made by our headquarters to take away our forum for brotherhood.
When we received word that our charter was revoked, five of us met that very evening. Amazingly our headquarters didn't take into account the fact that I'd already lined up a new chapter house to lease from another Fraternity who's group was no longer on campus, we were poised to move forward in a brand new chapter house.
Needless to say emotions ran high and as we sat down that evening, it became clear that the true meaning of brotherhood doesn't have to have a corporate identity to survive. The founders of our group understand intimately the similarities and differences we may have to other GLOs. I hope our niche will be a reinvention of how a Fraternity perceives brotherhood. Money, liability control, and a corporate structure are inevitabilities of any growing business....but our differentiator will hopefully be a reinvention of the marriage between brotherhood and business.
I believe that many national Fraternities have grown so large that business rises above brotherhood....and as we're moving into the expansion mode of our group, I try to be sensitive to that. I am sure that the founders of our countries largest Fraternities probably didn't envision the reality of how large they've all become...the hypocracies of their members with regards to alcohol, sex, and respect. In a way, my group both embraces and educates our members about the realities and responsibilities of being a college student. Our members know that without a traditional headquarters, they need to work a bit harder and pay more attention to the responsibilities of running an effective business.
If all goes well, this concept of involving the undergraduate with the business decisions of the organization at large will give our members a differentiator to other GLOs.
Thanks again for reading and responding!
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