Chapter divided over image building

[33girl]

Maybe I'm not quite awake yet but there were parts of your post I didn't understand. Do you feel you are cutting too many girls, not cutting enough girls, or just plain cutting the wrong girls?

Do fraternities other than the two you always mix with have open parties? Go to those. Don't let anyone make you feel like you shouldn't be there. If guys get to know more than one or two of you and have nice things to say about you, that will carry weight with rushees.

Do you have a list of women (friends, fellow members in other activities) who might be interested in your sorority but don't want to go through formal rush? Are you inviting these women to just hang out and get to know sisters without it being an "event"? COBing these women is way more effective than having to grab some random girls after formal.

[greekgal2k17]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Maybe I'm not quite awake yet but there were parts of your post I didn't understand. Do you feel you are cutting too many girls, not cutting enough girls, or just plain cutting the wrong girls?

Do fraternities other than the two you always mix with have open parties? Go to those. Don't let anyone make you feel like you shouldn't be there. If guys get to know more than one or two of you and have nice things to say about you, that will carry weight with rushees.

Do you have a list of women (friends, fellow members in other activities) who might be interested in your sorority but don't want to go through formal rush? Are you inviting these women to just hang out and get to know sisters without it being an "event"? COBing these women is way more effective than having to grab some random girls after formal.

I feel like we're cutting the wrong girls more than anything else. And some of the girls who we should be trying to recruit drop us the first day because they realize the lack of image and incohesive-ness of our chapter after a few conversations.
Our social chair rn is a little sister at one of the two frats we mix with a lot, and she's in charge of getting us info about what parties will be happening each weekend, and she doesn't do a great job at that--there are open parties, but she doesn't get us the when & where, so we have to reach out to other girls in different chapters for this information.
I was actually recruited via fall COB a year and a half ago, so I definitely agree that its more effective, but I will say it felt like the chapter was really desperate for girls then and that hasn't changed. Getting my friends and other like-minded members to come up with a list of girls we think would fit would be a great idea, instead of what we're doing now!

[33girl]

Uggg, if you can possibly have an assistant social chair get one. Someone who's a little sister is not going to see a problem mixing with her brothers all the time.

Alternately -I don't know how
large your campus is, but just leave her out of the equation and find out about parties yourselves. Our social chair was only responsible for mixers, she had nothing to do with individual sisters just going out to parties. As a matter of fact, that probably shouldn't be a "duty" of her office - it could be a possible risk management/liability issue.

No matter how successful a chapter is - you should ALWAYS have a list of women on hand who might be interested in joining. Scrambling after formal rush (or after a bunch of girls drop out, or total increases, or whatever) is a recipe for disaster.

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by 33girl

No matter how successful a chapter is - you should ALWAYS have a list of women on hand who might be interested in joining. Scrambling after formal rush (or after a bunch of girls drop out, or total increases, or whatever) is a recipe for disaster.

This! At a meeting, give every sister a piece of paper and five minutes and have them write down the name of every non-Greek woman that they know, regardless of whether or not you want them to join or think that they want to or not. Even if a sister doesn't know a girl's name (e.g. the girl who sits behind me in Econ and borrows a pencil every other day), write down a description.. and encourage that sister to get the girl's name! Then combine them all and create a master list. Add contact information if you have it. Every time someone meets a new woman on campus, their name should be added.

Talk with the Recruitment Chair and work with them to implement this. It's a great place to start. From there, you need to encourage your members to talk to these people. Have two sisters invite one of the girls on the list to coffee or lunch. But don't have them wear letters or recruit for the sorority. Just make a friend.

Remember: people don't join organizations; people join people.

[MaggieXi]

I went through a similar situation back in the stone age. My chapter was only 4 years old when I joined. It was seen as "the non-sorority sorority", "the diverse sorority", "the girls who don't care about their image sorority", etc. compared to the standard labels, which is what you heard as freshmen. My pledge class was the first to be over quota and the older girls didn't quite know what to do with us because we pushed back. They only wanted to mix with 2 fraternities - which had the chapter hotly divided, and they wanted to keep the "non-sorority sorority" label. My pledge class did not and later we found out that some upper classmen felt the same. There were a lot of growing pains, some of the seniors and juniors rejected us because we went against what they wanted, but as they graduated, things became more cohesive and easier. The closed mindset changed - we extended invitations during recruitment to girls that previously would have been cut because there was an assumption that they would want to go with a different chapter, we mixed with every fraternity, we had philanthropy events with fraternities and sororities, we made ourselves more open. By the time I was a senior, the chapter was flourishing, the "label" had changed to the "fun easy going girls".

It sounds like what you are going through are growing pains. We were lucky because during our growing pains we had an incredible ELC who got us additional support from our National Organization. You don't need a marketing campaign, as a group, you need to change the way you are thinking about your chapter. Open yourselves up and things will change.