Often our members believe that joining a chapter means having a good social life, events, friends and being active in the classroom. Which can lead to an immediate expectation of success, envy, work, and an overwhelming responsibility to lead their chapters through the chaos a school year may bring.  

Furthermore, when a potential new member is deciding where he wants to call his home for the rest of his life, that becomes a life altering decision that could and will be affected by the overall culture of the chapter and how they treat their potential new members. However, it is even more important that our chapters continue to grow their cultures in a positive way such as how they have conversations in person, intentional outreach, transparency and a commitment to understanding that the results you want only happen when the chapter is doing this without even knowing it, because it’s not the culture of the chapter.  

Rule #1:

Healthy human interaction consistently leads to intentional conversations with our potential new members. This could consist of a chapter being willing to get out of their comfort zone and take a different approach to the conversation side of things in recruitment. More importantly, chapters must find a way to gradually include all the things that made them amazing into their natural conversation with one another. One of the easiest ways to do this is by being a dynamic recruiter, showing all these values rather than just telling them about it.  

Try this:  

“Hey (Name), my name is (your name) and I saw that you were interested in playing basketball and if you are enjoying your experience at the university of (name) so far? Follow this up with how you feel this way and what other experiences have led you to feel this way.”

Once this happens, we can open that dialogue a bit more and start finding ways to insert chapters of culture and values into the conversation as a solution to whatever problem they may be having.  

Rule #2:  

Intentional Outreach and involvement within your chapter members in outside clubs on campus can improve your overall culture and ability to see things in a unique way. The best students that I have encountered with some incredible chapter cultures were always the groups that had multiple people involved in multiple clubs that were not just their chapter. These groups made it a point to be heavily involved on campus and utilize that to help them with recruitment, marketing and how they can approach potential new members considering a lot of them may be serving as tour guides for their respective university. Hence, these people can meet them where they are at and show the culture of their organizations by how they choose to interact with some if not all potential new members. It is imperative to build a chapter culture centered on campus involvement, high gpa, being good people and being known as the people that would simply give you the shirt off their backs.  

Rule #3:

Transparency is not an option but a realistic expectation if you are expecting someone to join a positive culture that will impact their lives forever. Finding ways to be honest and show how you all interact with each other, approach problems and enable a potential new member to become comfortable all play a part in establishing a positive culture. I have often noticed kids who seem to genuinely be interested, but the chapter is noticing what that person may like or have a lack of awareness that their culture may not be the best for this person. PNMs know when they are being lied to normally and unbelievably; they read the chapters “culture” before they even realize they have lost a kid in recruitment.  

Try this: 

“Hey John, I remember when we talked at our last event that you were a Florida State fan and that you used to play golf in high school. What made you stop playing golf, and how do you feel about Tiger Wood’s son going to play golf at FSU? “ 

Rather than bombard him with the same questions as everyone else, be unique and continue the conversation that you originally started. This is one of the easiest ways to show that you practice what you preach and that your culture is rooted in finding good people because it is based on getting to know them as a person and if they fit that chapter’s culture. However, that does not have to always be through specific comments. By utilizing something like this you create a natural conversation to eventually insert ways your chapter creates value.

Rule #4:

Creating a lasting culture is something that is practiced over time and must be consistently improved.   

Creating Cultures That Keep People is rooted in how we treat each other from the time you step foot into a house in recruitment all the way until you decide to go alumni officially from a chapter. Furthermore, when someone shows interest or not how does your chapter respond, do they hang onto that culture, are they willing to still be a socially excellent person and ensure that potential new members have a good time or will they immediately start to become the stereotype that hurts our culture the most. Which is that of a transactional recruitment experience where we are not making guys feel like they are human beings and instead feel like they are a number and under an immense amount of pressure. This is something that if you continue to build a good culture that you can consistently improve from semester to semester, creating a consistent system of growth and reaffirming that chapter culture while showing it as well in your interactions with.  

Our goal is to continue creating healthy chapter cultures that potential new members are over the moon about joining on a consistent basis. Furthermore, we want our chapter cultures to reflect that of a genuine experience where you can make mistakes, improve, run chapter leadership, and show people the value that your chapter is creating daily. If you are doing this by having that extra conversation with a stranger, first-year student, or potential new member, or are you holding the door open for someone just to do it? If you are not actively engaging in the culture that you are committed to creating in real time, then our jobs as fraternity and sororities have been lost because our chapter culture is at the center of everything we do and how we do it. Unfortunately, once we lose track of our culture is when we start losing our best people and when we keep that culture at the center of everything, we continue to find the most quality individuals in a vast quantity.

Written by Darrian Stringer, Growth Consultant