Recruitment Methods

[arvid1978]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Ho, ho, ho. You are either extraordinarily naive, or extraordinarily lucky, is all I can say.

And my point is that anyone who is a Bitter Betty or Bob is NOT a desirable member for ANY organization. They usually join to further their own agenda, not to become a happy member or improve the group.

I'm sure if you hung around a student center on sorority Bid Day, you could get lots and lots of pledges. They'd all be crying their guts out and hating themselves and ready to join any group who offered them a kind word, whether they gave a rat's rump what it was about or not, but hey, that would certainly help membership goals.

No, I would say that I work around chapters that look to more than just who wants to pledge a frat or sorority as potential members. Not all campuses are the same and most students could give two shits about greek life. APO is not a facet of campus greek life, we are a completely different animal. We are supposed to have broad appeal across all campus demographics. I could give a rat's ass about Bid Day in general or what any of the social GLOs are doing because they're not in the same league as us.

Avoiding your mentioned problem of the Bitter Betty/Bob goes back to values-based marketing and a quality values-driven pledge program. If you have those, then these people quickly weed themselves out when they see what we're really about, that their bitterness just doesn't fit in and the chapter has procedures in place to minimize it. If they are able to make it through and fake their way to a set of letters, then maybe it is time for the chapter to look at why they weren't able to get the values across. One pledge causing that kind of drama in a class is a textbook example of a bad pledge program and one that needs help from the alumni volunteers in that area ASAP because they're just perpetuating their own problems.

Again, programs like Membership Academy are actively working with our students to develop these Pledge Programs of Excellence to have both high quality and high quantity members. I highly advise you take some time to get current on what is going on with APO's membership education programs, because frankly I think the fraternity has developed some great programs to aid the actives in addressing all of this and more.

Could membership in APO help people like that? Yes. But their presence and vitriol could also drive away other prospective members. This isn't about selective membership, but it also isn't about marketing ourselves so we appeal to people for the wrong reasons.

The fact that you're using words like "fratty" as a pejorative just shows me that you don't get it.

The fact that you don't understand that a large majority of students these days either see Greek life as a bad thing or actively have no interest in social GLOs for a myriad of reasons shows that *you* are the one who doesn't get it. When students see greek letters, stereotypes come to mind and preconceptions are made. The average college freshmen has little to no understanding of what Greek life is like outside of Animal House, Old School, and Stomp the Yard. Many of them don't want that and would never seek a bid for a fraternity or sorority. Others simply just have no interest in what Social Greeks have to offer.

Some of the best brothers I have ever known who truly get what Brotherhood is all about would not have pledged their chapters had it been marketed with the greek letters as the front-and-center thing, because they were not looking for or interested in Greek life. The students use the term "fratty" in a pejorative manner because they see so much wrong with it, and to market ourselves in a way that mentally lumps us in with that is completely stupid.

Then again, what do I know? I've only been an alumni volunteer directly working with hundreds of APO students on multiple campuses for 8 years, watching as attitudes evolve and shift over time as the landscape of college changes. When a chapter markets themselves just like a social GLO, they do not reap success and lose out on recruiting the best possible students into the brotherhood. When they reach across and cast a wide net followed by a consistent values-based message, they are beyond successful both in quality and quantity of members, which leads to better service being done, which begets more quality and quantity of members, and so on. We're seeing this on a more consistent basis now that we have 3 years of data confirming the success of Membership Academy. I'll take that success any day over a chapter that thinks it's too good to recruit a variety of pledges.