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.