Local Sorority Looking to Merge with a National Chapter

[Jfurr1126]

At my university greek life is looking to expand its amount of national sororities on campus and decided to let my local sorority merge with a national in place of their planned extention (if we so choose.) We've formed a reseach committee and have spoken with the head of greek life to gather as much information as possible about various procedures that would have to occur for this to happen. However, we haven't found very much information about many things our members are asking about such as costs of national dues, the actual process for merging/ colonization, length of the colonization process, etc, due to NPC rules. While I'm not asking for specifics on what particular ogranizations do I was wondering if anyone here could give any general information about their dues, how national chapters feel about not being able to get a house soon after a charter (currently there's not enough room near campus for another sorority house), general merging process/ timeframe, and anything that you might feel would be helpful for us. Also, from my understanding, Panhellenic here would like to have this new chapter participating in formal recruitment in Fall 2008, does anyone know if we were to vote to begin the merging process as soon as possible, is this feasable? I hope this all makes sense, thanks a lot for your time and input!