Rush is a stressful time for everyone. A lot of people tend to believe that PNMs (potential new members) take on the majority of this stress. But the truth is, Greek officers take on a lot of responsibility themselves during the rush process!
If officers don’t have access to the proper tools, rush becomes much more difficult.
Make sure your sorority or fraternity is armed with the best tools, tips, and tactics to make the recruitment and rush processes a breeze.
This article is chock-full of recruitment ideas for your organization. However, before we dive into recruitment ideas, make sure your chapter remembers the most important part of this process: the people. If you focus too hard on the process, you can lose sight of the relationship-building aspect of the exercise. Use the tips we outline in this article to help your chapter focus on the people. Use the navigation below to jump to the section that will be most helpful for you!
- Sorority Recruitment Ideas
- Fraternity Recruitment Ideas
- Fraternity and Sorority Recruitment Software
Ready to make this year the best ever for your chapter’s recruitment? Let’s get started!
Sorority Recruitment Ideas
1. Make a Recruitment Budget
One of the first things you should do before diving into the recruitment process is create a budget to plan out your expenditures. The price of bid day or preference night especially can add up if you’re not careful. Between decorations, food, drinks, and other one-off costs, it can be difficult to stay on track for a healthy financial plan.
Before you even begin hanging the streamers, make sure you set a realistic budget that will encompass all of your upcoming sorority activity ideas. You can also look for effective ways to cut costs, such as:
- DIY decor. Make your own banner with a bed sheet and some paint, create attractive garlands from construction paper and string, or spray paint signs to save some money on decorations. Make sure to also pick a theme that will allow for less extravagant or labor-intensive decorations. For instance, choose country chic over a jungle theme.
- Using your connections. Maybe you have an alumna who works as a florist. Or maybe your advisor designs t-shirts. The connections your sorority has can make the biggest difference with in-kind donations for a tightly budgeted recruitment. All you have to do is ask.
- Bake your own cake. While many sororities find it tempting to go to the grocery store and buy custom cakes or other desserts with your letters and colors for recruitment house visits, you can save a lot of money by making it in house. Ask your members to make their favorite homemade treats to really wow the PNMs.
Budgeting is easiest when you have all of your financial information stored in a single location. Before you dive into any other sorority recruitment ideas, invest in a complete financial management solution for a holistic view of your financial health. Then, you can put aside an appropriate amount of money for your chapter’s recruitment.
2. Create an Effective Presentation for Your PNMs
Most sororities consider showing slideshows or videos in the background of the first couple of rounds of recruitment. This presentation gives you the opportunity for an extra element to wow your PNMs. Put together a slideshow or short video to show your PNMs what your sorority is about.
You may choose to show a few different aspects of your sorority. For instance, you may decide to create a presentation about:
- Your sorority’s philanthropy.
- Sisterhood at your sorority.
- Fun events and activities.
- Formals.
- Anything else that represents your chapter!
Save your formal presentation for skit day. However, a well-done slideshow in the background of important conversations will lighten the mood and provide more context to your PNMs about the sisterhood your sorority provides.
Make sure you store your slideshows in a place where you’ll be able to find them now and where others will be able to find it in the future. Who knows, this could be an opportunity to leave a legacy at your sorority! Future officers may use your slideshow for inspiration.
3. Represent Your Sisters on Skit Day
So you’re preparing for skit day? While skit day takes a lot of planning, the sisterhood activity of prepping and practicing a routine makes an effective skit one of the most effective sorority recruitment ideas.
Even if it takes a lot of practice, be sure you and your sisters stick it out until the end. It’ll be worth it to show the PNMs how much fun your sorority can be. This is your chance to show off the personality of your sorority! Be sure to:
- Pick music that represents your sorority. Choose music that your PNMs will know, that also gives you the opportunity to show them who you are. For example, a sorority who considers themselves more preppy might do a parody of an Ariana Grande song, while a more alternative chapter might choose The Killers.
- Pay attention to your sorority’s talents. Do you have a group full of singers? Dancers? Actors? Cheerleaders? Take advantage of these talents and let your sisters show off a bit. Choosing something that your members are already interested in will ensure they have fun while communicating the interests of the group to the PNM.
- Have fun while creating the skit! Too many sorority sisters end up frustrated and annoyed during the preparation for skit day. However, when you choose something that the majority of people enjoy, everyone will have fun creating together. It’s obvious to your audience when your members are having fun during a presentation, so make an impression on your PNMs simply by enjoying yourselves.
Skit day gives PNMs a chance to start a conversation about what they saw in the skit. They may say, “Wow, this sorority is filled with such musical talent. I’m a singer, myself” or find other connections to the group.
4. Match PNMs to Sisters Ahead of Time
With the right sorority recruitment software, you can empower members to suggest a match of another member with a PNM during voting. It’s often obvious to some of the members who certain PNMs will really hit it off with. Let them suggest these matches!
Great matches are an obvious sorority recruitment idea that will lead to a better experience for everyone, so make sure to give people a say in who will match well.
It’s hard for officers to keep track of every member and PNM, and even harder to further consider how their personalities will match. As an officer, you can’t be expected to do it all! But relying on your dedicated sisters can help you out tremendously. They may even know better sometimes (as hard as it is to admit) about what personalities match up best with one another.
Getting ahead on matches and simplifying the process with effective software will take some of the stress out of the whole recruitment process. That leaves more time to spend discussing with your sisters rather than sitting on your computer trying to match personality types. Export the match report into Excel or a PDF so that it’s easy to access during the pref round.
After you’ve matched people, don’t just toss those records. Save them for future reference. This helps give insight into the types of personality matches that worked well for future recruitment processes.
5. Create a Voting Slideshow for Your Members
Voting can be almost impossible without a slideshow. This slideshow contains information about each PNM including their GPA, legacy, class, and hometown. You can also include flags or tags for positive or negative aspects of each PNM.
Usually, it takes sororities hours to design a slideshow manually. Think about it, they need to look up the records you have on every PNM, search Facebook or Instagram for more information, and then start the designing process. It’s exhausting just to think about!
However, if you have access to a management solution that pulls stored information about each person to automatically include in the slideshow, you can save your members a ton of time.
This sorority recruitment idea makes it especially easy for members to pull up slides and see information about PNMs as necessary.
Pull up this slideshow for the voting process so that you can give members a quick snapshot of each PNM and remind them who each girl is. This slideshow makes it easy to compare the positive aspects each woman can bring to your sorority. Even if the final voting decisions are difficult, the slideshow doesn’t have to be!
Fraternity Recruitment Ideas
1. Make a Recruitment Budget
We’ve already touched on the importance of a recruitment budget as a sorority recruitment idea. However, fraternity recruitment looks a little different. Therefore, the budgeting needs for an effective fraternity recruitment plan will also look a little different.
While sororities might worry more about decor for their houses and videos to show the PNMs, your fraternity will likely need to leave more room in your budget for events and food to create an inviting opportunity to better get to know people.
Make sure you have all of your finances recorded in a single location so that you can accurately budget for each of your amazing rush events.
Planning events can be pure chaos. Between contacting administrative offices, getting in touch with all of your brothers, setting up the venue, getting the word out, and ordering the food, the last thing you want to worry about is the budget.
That’s why planning is so important! As hard as it might be, try to plan out as much as possible in advance for your recruitment events. Check in on your current financial standing. Then, start estimating the cost of the venue, food, decorations, and other elements. Write these estimates down.
After the event is over, you can compare your planned budget with the actual amounts you spent. This will help you plan your next recruitment event more effectively.
2. Plan Athletic Opportunities
What better way to bring the boys together than with some friendly old-fashioned competition? Athletic opportunities are top fraternity recruitment ideas that give members the chance to bond with rushees during recruitment.
Try doing something unique to make sure your fraternity stands out. There are plenty of unique athletic events that your fraternity can plan in order to stand out from the crowd. For example, you might choose to host athletic events such as:
- Axe throwing
- Bumper cars
- Archery
- Dizzy bats
- Mini golf
- Laser tag
While the planning for these types of events can be extensive, it makes a huge difference if you’re able to pull one off. Athletic events give your members and prospective members something to laugh about and connect over.
3. Sport Your Fraternity’s Brand
With the age of the internet, recruitment for fraternities has changed. You can’t count on new people to search for your fraternity out of the crowd. They won’t come knocking on your door, at least not without a push. That’s why our next fraternity recruitment idea is: find ways to expand your brand.
Make sure it’s easy for you and your brothers to sport the brand of your fraternity to make yourselves more well-known on campus. Some ideas to make sure your fraternity becomes a key presence on campus include:
- Designing fraternity merchandise. Try customizing a t-shirt, baseball cap, or koozie. Just by wearing it around campus, your brothers act as walking billboards for your fraternity. Companies like Bonfire make it easy to get started with this merch strategy.
- Staying active on social media. We live in a digital age, and you need to make sure that your fraternity has a strong digital presence. What’s even better is combining this with the first strategy! Post pictures to social media of your members sporting your brand.
- Always prepare for a first impression. You never know when your fraternity members will meet someone who could be a perfect fit for the chapter, and you never get a second chance at a first impression. Leading up to recruitment, make sure you and your brothers clean up a bit. Keep a clean shirt, trim your beard, and make the effort to engage with others.
While designing merchandise is a great way to make your brand recognizable, the impression your fraternity makes goes much deeper than that. People will remember a group of young men who go above and beyond to make an impact on campus by helping people, maintaining their grades, and looking good.
4. Plan Events that Revolve Around Food
Fraternity recruitment is slightly less structured than sorority recruitment (in general), meaning that you need to create opportunities to get to know the guys interested in joining. These opportunities won’t just be handed to you.
And what’s the best way to get college kids to show up anywhere? That’s right: food! That’s why the most effective fraternity recruitment ideas involve food. Create some room in your budget and plan to feed some hungry men during fraternity recruitment. Some ideas to get this started include:
- Making snacks at the fraternity house. This is a great option for fraternities on a budget. Ask officers to buy snacks in bulk or assign attending members to each bring in a snack to serve at the house while you get to know prospects.
- Host a grilling competition. Ask your members (and prospects if you want!) to grill their favorite dish. Event attendees can try the food and cast their vote for the winner.
- Catering a buffet-style meal. If you have ample room in your budget, try catering an event. The promise of a buffet is sure to draw an enormous crowd on a college campus.
Be sure that whatever food-related events you choose, the meal prepping is well within your budget. You’ll need to estimate the attendees, how much they’ll eat, and probably factor in a vegetarian option.
There’s nothing that will boost your event attendance rates like a plate of hot food. Plus, food provides a great opening line to get to know someone better.
5. Have an Effective Communication Technique
Our next fraternity recruitment idea helps your chapter stay courteous of your members’ time. Recruitment is a busy time for everyone! Not only do your brothers need to worry about grades, but they also need to do chores, navigate relationships, go to the gym, and ensure a smooth recruitment process.
Invest in a software solution that makes it easy to communicate with your members in a single location. It helps if that software has a mobile app associated with it so that members can just check their phones to stay up to date from wherever they are.
This app should give your members full-time access to:
- Financial planning
- Details for events
- Communication
- Recruitment voting
You need to make sure your brothers are looped into the fraternity recruitment plans and know about the events happening around campus. They should find it easy to look up information about the activities the chapter hosts so that they can show up on time and help your chapter put your best foot forward.
Fraternity and Sorority Recruitment Software
The best idea that sororities and fraternities can incorporate into their recruitment process is investing in software specifically designed for Greek chapters.
Recruitment software should help your chapter:
- Manage voting. Vote for PNMs using your fraternity or sorority recruitment software. Your members should be able to quickly and easily vote from wherever they are.
- Store information about PNMs. Collect vital information about each PNM such as their legacy status, GPA, and other details. You should be able to tag each PNM for positive or negative aspects that could impact your organization.
- Compare PNMs. Automatically create slideshows or another display method to compare PNMs with one another using the details and tags you’ve collected in your software solution.
- Match PNMs to members. When members vote, they should have the ability to suggest matches of other members to PNMs. This will maximize the number of conversations that hit it off right away. Who better to match you with a PNM than your sister and friend?
- Run reports. Reports should pull data about your PNMs and voting to reference and save as an organization. For instance, a PNM report, Votes Report, Comments Report, and Matching Report can help keep your chapter organized during this hectic time.
- Integrate with ICS. Be sure whatever solution you choose also integrates with the most common collegiate recruiter, ICS. Integration of your recruitment tools will cut out the time it takes to upload spreadsheets for each party and round.
The best Greek software will do more than just help with recruitment. It should help streamline all of the activities for your organization. For instance, if you create your bid day or event budget in the same solution as you handle the rest of your chapter’s finances, you’ll streamline your budget creation and finance tracking.
Or maybe you need access to an easy communication platform for your recruitment process. Software that encompasses your official recruitment needs and provides a communication platform will help your members stay on top of the recruitment activities and chapter announcements.
OmegaFi is a top pick for software that fulfills the recruitment and management needs of sororities and fraternities everywhere because it offers all of these solutions and more!
Effective sorority and fraternity management, from nailing recruitment activities to paying your bills on time, greatly enhances the college experience. If you want to learn more about managing your sorority or fraternity, check out the additional resources we’ve compiled below:
- Fraternity Recruitment | 7 Reliable Ways to Master Rush. Looking for more tips to enhance your fraternity’s recruitment process? Check out these helpful tips by OmegaFi!
- Top 8 Fraternity Dues Collection Services for Your Chapter. Collecting dues, paying bills, and otherwise managing your finances is easy with the right software. Check out our top picks.
- What is Sorority Software? If you’re looking for a complete software solution to manage your sorority, check out this helpful guide about sorority software.
