This question was submitted by one of our readers. If you have a question you want me to answer go here to submit it: Fraternity Advice.
Question:
My fraternity is really small, and is in debt pretty bad, so we really can’t do much without having to pay for it ourselves. How are we supposed to recruit?
Answer:
This is a hard one to answer considering you didn’t give much information. Feel free to leave more info in the comments below and I’ll address them.
Here are some thoughts I have about your situation:
You obviously need to get your debt under control. I will assume you owe the money to yourselves and not others. By owe to yourselves, I mean that brothers are behind in dues.
Here are my thoughts on How to Get Brothers to Pay Fraternity Dues.
If you owe money to others, you probably need to fundraise your butts off and get back to level. Here are some quick thoughts on fraternity fundraisers.
Finally, those ideas really don’t address the problem. You need to figure out why you are having money problems. Are your dues too low? Does your fraternity spend wastefully? Is your house sucking you dry? Obviously low numbers is hurting you…
Whatever your problem is, you need to figure it out and address it.
Finally, assuming you can get your money problems under control (no need to read further if you can’t) then you can focus on recruitment.
Besides the fraternity recruitment advice that I go into great detail on in this site, there is something that your chapter offers that is unique.
Your fraternity can offer perspective new members the ability to rebuild a chapter. You need to find leaders who will relish the challenge of rebuilding your chapter into something great. These guys will get to be saviors to be remembered for generations of future brothers. This is appealing to a lot of guys.
So the next question is where do you find those guys? Think of where the leaders are on your campus. RAs are a great place to start. Also student government is ideal. And don’t forget the athletic teams.
Have frank conversations to these guys letting them know that you are essentially giving them your chapter to build into something great. All you need is one guy to buy into the vision. He will be able to help you sell the vision to others.
Best of luck. Remember that the bigger the challenge, the bigger the reward. Feel free to keep the conversation going below.
This question was submitted by one of our readers. If you have a question you want me to answer go here to submit it: Fraternity Advice.