How do you get your chapter more involved?

[SammyMan]

I became a active member of my Fraternity last spring, and I would say overall that I am well respected in the house as a good/hard working person. Because of this my President asked me to attend UIFI for our chapter because we need all the good PR we can get. On campus there are rumors of us hazing, having solely "social members", and never contributing to the community.

We are known as the party frat and are one of the largest (most well known) on campus. I'm fine with this, and understand who we are. We are a social bunch and we enjoy partying.

The thing is that I would really like to make us more well rounded, more respected, and be known as a GREAT overall fraternity and not just as a party fraternity.

At the UIFI event I met a lot of great people in the Greek community and a lot of people who want to associate with us. The thing is that many are worried because of our rep and because they think we lack commitment.

At the event, I represented very well and showed people another side of our fraternity. The thing is that now I'm back, I'm worried about how I go about asking my guys to get more involved in the community. We have a number of issues, but I think the thing we could do to help our rep and stature is just by increasing community service.

I'm thinking of ways to slowly transition this, so at first it may not be their ideal situation but they will eventually grow to love service.

Here's one idea I came up with:
- I go up to the guys and tell them that we are doing a once a month community service event. The event will only 3-4 hours on one day.

-I get them together as a group and we pick a single event that we all can get behind and support.

-The key is that every month I try to get a new sorority to do it with us. It gets us involved with a sorority we may not be familiar with, keeps us consistent, and motivates the guys with the idea of meeting new girls in a non-party situation.

-I can sell that by meeting people outside of party situations it creates a new world of oppurtunities, betters community, gets us more respect, and if you want to party you still have plenty of time in the day.

I thought this was a decent idea. I tossed it out to a brother though and he shot it down. Said that there arent enough sororities we'd want to do events with (shallow reasons), that we dont pay dues to do service, etc.

We are a chapter of nearly 100. I'd say at least 40 guys are solid for this type of stuff, but then we have the other group that could give a damn.

How can I change the mindset and motivate everyone?

Thanks for reading. Don't judge the guys just by this also

[33girl]

Do you have to vote to do this sort of thing? Bring it up at a meeting and see how it goes over. You might be surprised and guys might vote for it in a secret ballot that wouldn't admit liking the idea to your face.

Does your fraternity have a national philanthropic event that they do yearly?

[JohnnyCash]

Originally Posted by SammyMan

I became a active member of my Fraternity last spring, and I would say overall that I am well respected in the house as a good/hard working person. Because of this my President asked me to attend UIFI for our chapter because we need all the good PR we can get. On campus there are rumors of us hazing, having solely "social members", and never contributing to the community.

We are known as the party frat and are one of the largest (most well known) on campus. I'm fine with this, and understand who we are. We are a social bunch and we enjoy partying.

The thing is that I would really like to make us more well rounded, more respected, and be known as a GREAT overall fraternity and not just as a party fraternity.

At the UIFI event I met a lot of great people in the Greek community and a lot of people who want to associate with us. The thing is that many are worried because of our rep and because they think we lack commitment.

At the event, I represented very well and showed people another side of our fraternity. The thing is that now I'm back, I'm worried about how I go about asking my guys to get more involved in the community. We have a number of issues, but I think the thing we could do to help our rep and stature is just by increasing community service.

I'm thinking of ways to slowly transition this, so at first it may not be their ideal situation but they will eventually grow to love service.

Here's one idea I came up with:
- I go up to the guys and tell them that we are doing a once a month community service event. The event will only 3-4 hours on one day.

-I get them together as a group and we pick a single event that we all can get behind and support.

-The key is that every month I try to get a new sorority to do it with us. It gets us involved with a sorority we may not be familiar with, keeps us consistent, and motivates the guys with the idea of meeting new girls in a non-party situation.

-I can sell that by meeting people outside of party situations it creates a new world of oppurtunities, betters community, gets us more respect, and if you want to party you still have plenty of time in the day.

I thought this was a decent idea. I tossed it out to a brother though and he shot it down. Said that there arent enough sororities we'd want to do events with (shallow reasons), that we dont pay dues to do service, etc.

We are a chapter of nearly 100. I'd say at least 40 guys are solid for this type of stuff, but then we have the other group that could give a damn.

How can I change the mindset and motivate everyone?

Thanks for reading. Don't judge the guys just by this also

My chapter had (has?) the same problem, what we started doing is participating in other organization's philanthropy events and we found when we did we actually placed on many occasions and won a few.

You should also push for your brothers to get more involved in outside organizations apart from the fraternity. Also try showing up to events sober.

You can still maintain your social/party fraternity image while gaining respect through involvement.

[SammyMan]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Do you have to vote to do this sort of thing? Bring it up at a meeting and see how it goes over. You might be surprised and guys might vote for it in a secret ballot that wouldn't admit liking the idea to your face.

Does your fraternity have a national philanthropic event that they do yearly?

We have a national charity but our chapter doesnt have an event every year that we do. We basically do the bare minimum that is required. I'd say 3 out of the 5 major fraternities are the same way. We mostly do philanthropic work for the bare minimum, but I think the key for us is not donating money but rather donating our time and showing our faces out in the community.

I think our chapter is taking a turn for the better because of recent leadership changes. I think more guys would be willing then lets say two years ago, but I think there is still a number of guys who joined because of dumb reasons they were recruited with. A secret ballot may work though because I know a number of guys who are worried about the opinions of their peers.

[SammyMan]

Originally Posted by JohnnyCash

My chapter had (has?) the same problem, what we started doing is participating in other organization's philanthropy events and we found when we did we actually placed on many occasions and won a few.

You should also push for your brothers to get more involved in outside organizations apart from the fraternity. Also try showing up to events sober.

You can still maintain your social/party fraternity image while gaining respect through involvement.

I could try pushing that hard. I would need to think of some extra motivation to make them go, but it may be easier to start off with tagging along rather than taking it all on at once. I mean it was even hard for us to get guys to show up to school sponsored Greek Week events. I just dont get why guys couldnt even show up to stupid games that are 5 mins away from our house that are fun.

I dont care about winning Greek Week, but come on at least show up and act like you care. We probably have the rep of having "social members" and not actual brothers because of reasons like this. It disappointed me when our partnered sorority threw a BBQ at our house, and over half our guys refused to go.

Sorry for the rant. But yeah I'm gonna think about working with other organizations to start off

[JohnnyCash]

Originally Posted by SammyMan

Sorry for the rant. But yeah I'm gonna think about working with other organizations to start off

This could get tricky, just make sure you go about it the right way.

If you're going to pair up with sororities to participate or throw/host an event, make sure that 1) it's a sorority your chapter would want to do something with and 2) it won't involve asking too much from your chapter.

For example, if it's XYZ that barely anyone in your chapter knows and it involves waking up at 6am on a Saturday... its a guaranteed fail.

[excelblue]

It's a great start you have there. Now, you'd have to work tactfully in order to actually get the rest of your chapter on-board, but one of the most effective ways to do that is to start asking them what they honestly want to see. I'd be very surprised if everyone just answered: "we're good as is, party on Wednesday?"

Once you've gotten that down, it's time to start doing things with low entry barriers. For example, if you just approached some place and volunteered to do community service, it'd be very absurd for them to reject you no matter who you are or what you've done in the past. Same thing applies to having study sessions, etc.

Since I co-founded a new chapter on my campus, we actually had to build a reputation up from nothing. Here are a few main things that really helped:

- Lots of community service. We hold a 5-8hr event every other week, and each member is required to do a certain amount of hours each semester
- Participating in other orgs' philantropy events
- Offering public study sessions and tutoring (c'mon, there's gotta be some academically strong people in your fraternity)
- Having a presence in several on-campus activities (eg. winning a Rube Goldberg contest did wonders for us in terms of the type of publicity we wanted)

As for holding an event with a sorority: hold off on the parties until later.