Introducing Zeta Gamma Chi

[ZGXFounder]

Hello everyone! My name is Bre, and I am a founder of a local organization (not yet a sorority because we haven't been accepted to our school's Panhellenic Council yet) called Zeta Gamma Chi.

We are from a very small school in Kentucky, where Greek life hasn't completely taken off quite yet.

Zeta Gamma Chi is a twenty-first century organization geared around preparing young women to be successful in a modern professional setting, while helping them to make the most out of their college experience and instilling a sense of sisterhood, tradition, and acceptance in our group.

We've run into some issues:

Being non-Greek (at this point), we are not able to do formal recruitment with the other two sororities on campus. And since we just started in March, our name isn't really prevalent on campus yet.

We have been assigned to a basement of a dorm building on campus. However, until we are accepted onto Panhellenic, this is only to be a storage area, not a meeting space. Until then we must meet at another place on campus.

We have very little money to operate on. We want to have the benefit of not paying national expenses and dues without leaving our own chapter to suffer for the sake of affordability. (We've reduced our dues to almost half of most organizations, and initiation fees and such are almost a third of the cost.)

We started from scratch with ritual, symbols, values, and all other indicators that set sororities apart. Since starting, we've developed an induction ritual, and are working on a pledging ceremony.

We have no chants or songs to work from, since we are a brand new organization. Definitely going to need to do a lot of borrowing from other organizations.

We're trying to find a website domain that can easily allow us to present information to not only prospective members, but to our members as well.

Officers. We've adapted a condensed system similar to that used by Kappa Alpha Theta (we used it because it's more professional). We have a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Administrative Officer, a Chief Operations Officer, a Chief Recruitment Officer, a Chief Marketing Officer, and a Chief Financial Officer, as well a philanthropy director, a new member director, a facilities director, a scholarship director, and events director. However, organizing responsibilities and procedures has been quite a feat. We know how to operate a sorority already. It's just a matter of condensing responsibilities while we condensed offices.

There are other disadvantages at this point, but we're very optimistic for the future. We've already got a few incoming freshmen who are very interested. We also have a core set of girls that are very dedicated to making this work, and even maybe aim for expansion some day.

If anyone has words of encouragement, ideas, or some words of wisdom, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks for reading this super long post.

[Nanners52674]

Originally Posted by ZGXFounder

Hello everyone! My name is Bre, and I am a founder of a local organization (not yet a sorority because we haven't been accepted to our school's Panhellenic Council yet) called Zeta Gamma Chi.

We are from a very small school in Kentucky, and the founders of this organization all are from a national organization that recently went dormant against the members' wishes. In order to keep our sisterhood alive, we have formed Zeta Gamma Chi.

Zeta Gamma Chi is a twenty-first century organization geared around preparing young women to be successful in a modern professional setting, while helping them to make the most out of their college experience and instilling a sense of sisterhood, tradition, and acceptance in our group.

We've run into some issues:

Being non-Greek (at this point), we are not able to do formal recruitment with the other two sororities on campus. And since we just started in March, our name isn't really prevalent on campus yet.

We have been moved out of our old sorority suite in a basement of a dorm room, and into another basement of a different dorm room. However, until we are accepted onto Panhellenic, this is only to be a storage area, not a meeting space. Until then we must meet at another place on campus.

We have very little money to operate on. We want to have the benefit of not paying national expenses and dues without leaving our own chapter to suffer for the sake of affordability. (We've reduced our dues to almost half of our former organization, and initiation fees and such are a third of the cost.)

We wanted to be as different from our former organization as possible, and therefore started from scratch with ritual, symbols, values, and all other indicators that set sororities apart. Since starting, we've developed an induction ritual, and are working on a pledging ceremony.

We have no chants or songs to work from, since we are a brand new organization. Definitely going to need to do a lot of borrowing from other organizations.

We're trying to find a website that can easily allow us to present information to not only prospective members, but to our members as well.

Officers. We've adapted a condensed system similar to that used by Kappa Alpha Theta (we used it because it's more professional, and very different from the former organization's system). We have a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Administrative Officer, a Chief Operations Officer, a Chief Recruitment Officer, a Chief Marketing Officer, and a Chief Financial Officer, as well a philanthropy director, a new member director, a facilities director, a scholarship director, and events director. However, organizing responsibilities and procedures has been quite a feat. We know how to operate a sorority already. It's just a matter of condensing responsibilities while we condensed offices.

There are other disadvantages at this point, but we're very optimistic for the future. We've already got a few incoming freshmen who are very interested. We also have a core set of girls that are very dedicated to making this work, and even maybe aim for expansion some day.

If anyone has words of encouragement, ideas, or some words of wisdom, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks for reading this super long post.

Good Luck

[pinksequins]

OP, you have provided enough informtation to identify both your school and former organization.

[ZGXFounder]

Thank you for pointing it out! Hopefully now its a little more discreet.

[clemsongirl]

Originally Posted by ZGXFounder

Thank you for pointing it out! Hopefully now its a little more discreet.

Considering the entirety of your original message was quoted in the second post I don't think there's much you can do about it now.

[Kevin]

So long as the OP doesn't do or say anything which could come back and bite her, there's nothing really wrong about being identifiable. I've been very identifiable for years. No big deal. My badge number would allow any Sigma Nu to log in to our database and get my full name, address, email, telephone number, occupation, etc.

[ree-Xi]

Originally Posted by ZGXFounder

We started from scratch with ritual, symbols, values, and all other indicators that set sororities apart. Since starting, we've developed an induction ritual, and are working on a pledging ceremony.

We have no chants or songs to work from, since we are a brand new organization. Definitely going to need to do a lot of borrowing from other organizations.

>>Please be careful as to what you "borrow." It might seem like a lot of work, but you don't want people to say "They took ABC's door chant and just changed the name".

We're trying to find a website domain that can easily allow us to present information to not only prospective members, but to our members as well.

>>Try starting out with a blog site to get the basic information out there (you can customize colors, upload photos, and create static pages), and then purchase your own Domain name (it's like $10 a year). It's not that complicated and so much better than one of those "free" websites that give you a URL of http://www.thesitename.com/someweird...lphaAlphaAlpha.

Officers. We've adapted a condensed system similar to that used by Kappa Alpha Theta (we used it because it's more professional). We have a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Administrative Officer, a Chief Operations Officer, a Chief Recruitment Officer, a Chief Marketing Officer, and a Chief Financial Officer, as well a philanthropy director, a new member director, a facilities director, a scholarship director, and events director. However, organizing responsibilities and procedures has been quite a feat. We know how to operate a sorority already. It's just a matter of condensing responsibilities while we condensed offices.

>> Again, try not to directly copy any organization.

Good luck!

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Kevin

So long as the OP doesn't do or say anything which could come back and bite her, there's nothing really wrong about being identifiable. I've been very identifiable for years.

Note that pinksequins said that the OP had given enough information to identify the school and former sorority, not information to identify the OP personally. (Though she has done that as well.) That's what could be a problem for the OP. At least in her pre-edit post, she said a few things that some might consider critical (some might think unnecessarily so) of her former sorority and possibly of the two remaining NPC sororities on campus. Those comments could derail her goal of getting helpful advice. High ground and all.

Originally Posted by ZGXFounder

Hello everyone! My name is Bre, and I am a founder of a local organization (not yet a sorority because we haven't been accepted to our school's Panhellenic Council yet) called Zeta Gamma Chi.

Unless there are some campus requirements about identifying yourself as a "sorority," whether your group is a sorority or not has nothing to do with being part of the Panhellenic Council and everything to do with what you call yourselves.

[pinksequins]

Correct, Mystic Cat!

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Those comments could derail her goal of getting helpful advice. High ground and all.

If someone was to take offense to someone saying the chapter was shut down against the will of the members, I would imagine most of us know that almost every time a chapter is shut down, it is not the will of the members (though our OU chapter shut down a few years ago in order to start fresh and that was by a vote of the members [and props to them, they're doing outstanding now]).

At any rate, it seems she has started a local. I've never been part of starting a local, but I was a charter member of my chapter and we had a lot of the same challenges.

I would advise the OP to first really look at their recruitment model. Since you're not part of formal recruitment, there are going to be few, if any, prospective members approaching you, so you're going to need to be proactive in figuring out how to approach them. My school was always very forthcoming and even printed mailing labels so we could send postcards or letters to incoming freshmen.

Your members, particularly your new members will be the biggest source of referrals. You're probably going to want to create some kind of master prospect list and delegate the recruitment of certain individuals on that list, maybe keep it in Dropbox so everyone can get to it.

In short, your recruitment is going to look a lot like how Circle K or the French Club recruits its members than what you're experienced with. You should be actively recruiting and reaching out to folks now.

I could probably write a book on this subject because I've been part of an organization with little to no guidance on how to recruit members. Sounds like y'all have some work to do.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Kevin

If someone was to take offense to someone saying the chapter was shut down against the will of the members, I would imagine most of us know that almost every time a chapter is shut down, it is not the will of the members (though our OU chapter shut down a few years ago in order to start fresh and that was by a vote of the members [and props to them, they're doing outstanding now]).

Well, the press release issued by the sorority in question said the chapter itself voted to go dormant. There were a few other comments that I think had potential to rub some people the wrong way.

Regardless, I think the suggestion is merely that in a post like the OP's, discretion is the better part of valor, and trying to avoid anything that might be taken the wrong way is the best way to go.

[Kevin]

Well props to them for that vote.

Apparently it wasn't unanimous.