Tuesday, November 28, 2006

What drives your "bottom line?"

Results. That's what people tell us that they want help getting. People want results. National headquarters want results, campus IFC's and Greek Councils want results, and chapters want results. That's why we get hired, and people expect that we'll help them get those results.

But what results is your organization looking for? For a fraternity or sorority, what is your BOTTOM LINE?

In the business world, the bottom line is easily defined. The bigger the profits (income minus expenses), the better the bottom line. It is a simple dollars and cents math equation.

In the non-profit world, it is a little harder to define, but for most non-profit organizations their bottom line is defined by maximum human impact (lives saved, diseases cured, people fed, etc.) for minimum cost.

But what about for fraternities and sororities? What is the bottom line for TKE, Alpha Kappa Psi, Delta Zeta, Alpha Sigma Phi, or AOPi? Is it measured in service hours? Is it measured in philanthropic dollars raised? Is it measured in amount of people who come to party minus amount of people who go to the hospital with alcohol poisoning? Is it quantity of members? Is it quality of members?

It is the last two questions above that strike up the biggest debates within the organizations we have worked with. Almost every undergraduate tells us that "quality is more important than quantity." But if you're an organization full of QUALITY members, but you only have 2 members, are you a successful organization? And how do you determine what quality is? Is it more than just a 'Good Guy' or a Great Sister?

Tough questions.

My recommendation is to first answer the question, "What is our organization's bottom line?" Most fraternities and sororities that we've worked with have forgotten the very essence of their organization. What is it they are trying to accomplish? What does success look like. And please don't toss out your memorized catch phrases that are found on your t-shirts and pledge manuals. Genuinely answer the question, "What are we trying to accomplish, and how do we know we're successful?"

We talk a lot about the fact that you don't need to choose between quantity and quality of members. You can have both. In fact, we believe that quantity (# of prospects) drives quality. Essentially, the more people you have to choose from, the higher quality your average member will be (of course that depends upon you having a good membership selection process.) It is important to remember though that your organization, like a business, should measure its success and must know what success looks like.

When it comes to recruitment, what is your bottom line?

To answer this question, start by building a dream. We'll talk about this more in another post, but once you know what your organization wants to accomplish, you can work back from there to determine the best quantity of a specified quality of member that will get you to your dream.

You Can't Recruit Who You Don't Know

As fraternity and sorority members, we often talk about how “Recruitment is the lifeblood of the organization,” and “We have to recruit 24/7,” but when it comes down to doing the work of recruitment, we often fall short. Doing year-round recruitment is a hard task, and sounds exhausting for those of us who have planned recruitment events before. So, here are a few tips to make year-round recruitment a much more manageable task.

Tip #1: Cure Your Disease.
Many fraternities and sororities have a nasty disease that can be hard to cure, and that often prevents them from doing effective year-round recruitment. The name of that disease: Eventitis. Eventitis is a disease that has spread to almost every chapter. It makes all the members believe that they have to spend a lot of money and time on planning a big event in order to make friends. The thought of having to put on big events every week to keep recruitment going year-round is daunting. There is good news though – the cure for Eventitis is Doing Small Activities. Normal people (non-Greeks) make friends by doing simple, small activities together (e.g. lunch, coffee, work out, hang out, etc.). Recruit people by doing normal-people-activities, and don’t put so much pressure on yourself to have big events all the time.

Tip #2: People Don’t Join Organizations.
It’s true. People don’t join organizations. People join people. Be honest, did you join a set of ideals, a calendar of activities, and a bunch of great T-shirts? Or did you join a group of people based on your relationships with one or two of the members? Most people can pinpoint the one person who recruited them into the organization. If we know this, we can focus our time on building one-on-one relationships, and not “selling the organization.” People are going to join your fraternity or sorority because of their personal relationship with you, so don’t spend your time, energy and money on cool t-shirts, barbecues, parties, or events; go out and make as many acquaintances and friends as possible, and watch them turn into members.

Tip #3: You Can’t Recruit Who You Don’t Know.
It is a simple concept. You really can’t recruit who you don’t know. So, if you want to build a successful year round recruitment process, the first step is NOT to hold big events, make T-shirts or plan for house rotations. The first step is to get to know (just meet) as many people as you possibly can.

With that in mind, build your year-round recruitment plan so that your members are constantly collecting names and putting them on a Names List. For many chapters, the quality of their members is as important as the quantity of members they have. Tip #3 suggests that Quantity drives Quality. In other words, the more names you have on your names list, the more people you’ll have to choose from, and the more likely you are to get high quality members.

Reference:
Mattson, M. & Orendi J. (2006). Good Guys: The Eight Steps to Limitless Possibility for Fraternity Recruitment. Phired Up Productions, LLC. Naperville, Ill.

Welcome to Wisdom Sparks


Wisdom Sparks is your source for discussing values-based recruitment into membership organizations. Welcome.

This blog is published and maintained by the staff of Phired Up Productions, LLC (www.PhiredUp.com). We hope to offer valuable, practical insights to help groups like fraternities, sororities, and other organizations that can benefit from leading-edge recruitment strategies.
Some authors you might hear from include:
  • Matt Mattson is co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Performance Consultant for Phired Up Productions. Leveraging a Master's in Education with a specialization in Training and Performance Improvement along with a background in public relations, collegiate admissions, fraternity expansion, human performance improvement, and non-profit leadership education, Matt combines his passion for Wisdom with a firm sense of integrity to effectively inspire thousands of organizational members toward their pinnacle of achievement. Matt is the co-author of Good Guys: The Eight Steps to Limitless Possibility for College Fraternities.

  • Josh Orendi is co-founder, Chief Operations Officer, and Performance Consultant for Phired Up Productions. Applying successful backgrounds in business-networking, non-profit expansion, corporate management, and executive recruitment, he delivers a fun, demanding style of training, consulting and facilitating that empowers individuals with the belief and skill necessary for achieving limitless possibilities. Josh is the co-author of Good Guys: The Eight Steps to Limitless Possibility for College Fraternities.

  • Colleen Coffey brings the Phired Up team a dynamic perspective on recruitment and organizational culture. As a performance consultant for Phired Up, she is a skilled presenter and consultant with professional experience working with college students and an extensive knowledge base in the area of sorority recruitment. Colleen has a Bachelor of Social Work from Belmont University and will graduate from Eastern Illinois University with a Master’s Degree in College Student Affairs in May 2006 having completed research on organizational recruitment and program evaluation.
We look forward to learning along with you.
For more information on Phired Up Productions, visit our website.