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.