I feel for you. I really do. I've been in your position as an active, and I'm currently advising a chapter that is under 20 members and only got 1 new initiate through fall's formal recruitment.
One of the key things to keep in mind is that very few people will COB based on flyers or mass emails or other non-personal publicity. Invite women you know already, if you can, but whoever you invite, make it an in-person invitation and if they sound interested, offer to swing by their dorm room to pick them up (if this applies). Consider arranging a casual hang-out (a pre-COB event) with one or two other sisters max. Get together for pizza and a movie -- something really normal -- that way once the PNM has met several of your sisters, she is more likely to accept an invitation to a formal COB event. If you have the time (depending on when your HQs requires initiation to be) I'd postpone any formal COB events for at least a couple weeks to get your members' motivation back on track and do lots of pre-COB hang outs.
You are going to feel more pressure and weight on your shoulders now than you can imagine, but know that you are doing all of this as a service to the sisters that came before you and the future sisters that will benefit by having joined your chapter.
Know that it isn't impossible to bring your chapter into a more stable chapter size -- but it is always hard when there is only a small group to start the momentum. Think about it this way, if every member tries to really bond with two PNMs in the coming weeks, and half of those PNMs come out to your COB events in a couple weeks, and then at least half of those women accept bids... well that gives you a new member class of at least 6 women! That is a respectable number for a small chapter and doable if you think in terms of "in order to get at least 6 women, I personally have to have two women I'm recruiting and trying to get to come to a COB event."
It's hard, but so far this is the only strategy I've seen work for chapters that get really low like this.
|