You will not have a good recruitment if you do adequately prepare. Rush needs to be planned months in advance, and the recruitment chair needs to ensure that everyone is on board with the recruitment plan.
The first step is planning rush events. My chapter would typically spend between $2,000 and $2,500 for rush. This was the equivalent of the semester dues for five to six brothers. In our very best year, we had 18 guys pledge and only twelve were initiated. That means it cost us about $200 for every pledge brother.
I share these figures because I wonder if we were recruiting the most efficient way. I wonder if it would have been a better strategy to spend next to nothing and dramatically reduce pledge dues. That always seemed to be the biggest initial hurdle to pledging. I wonder if spending $250 for an off-campus basketball court was more effective than playing ball on campus somewhere. I realize that money needs to be spent for recruitment, but I think it is essential you keep this in mind.
Let’s assume that the events are planned and reservations are made. The next step is giving each brother a rush schedule. This is not your typical rush calendar. This is for the brother’s only. It should tell where brothers are expected to pick up rushees and the times they are expected to be at the dorms. It should tell them where they are to go once they get the rushees and what time they are supposed to be there. The schedule should contain phone numbers of every brother and every location that is hosting a rush event. It should contain directions of how to get to where they are going. It should contain a section for the brothers to keep track of who they met and anything they want to remember about them.
It is essential that every brother has a copy of this schedule and had easy access to another one by email when he loses it (because they will lose them).
The first thing you need to do when you get a rushee to the house is to get his contact information. There have been many guys that visited my chapter house that were never invited back because we didn’t know how to get in touch with them. Believe it or not, one semester we did a great job getting information from guys. We had each guy fill out an information sheet the minute the visited the house. However, we lost all the contact information by leaving them outside overnight. We lost a lot of guys due to that blunder. It is so stupid to put so much effort into rush and then not do something as simple as getting a name and phone number. Make this your number one task whenever you have a new guy visit the house.
Again, preparation is the key. On the day of the event, you want to make sure the brothers focus is on recruitment. No one should have to worry about the details of the event, because they should be already take care of.
To learn more, check out our most in-depth article on fraternity recruitment: The Complete Guide to Fraternity Recruitment.