If you are on the executive board of your fraternity and have issues with members dropping out, you might be wondering how to increase fraternity membership retention. You’re not quite sure where you’re going wrong, but you’re trying to find the answers. After all, you need members to keep the fraternity going.
How do you increase fraternity membership retention? You can increase fraternity membership retention by focusing on these two things:
1. Improving recruitment
2. Improving the chapter
Now, you probably want to know how you can do those two things in more detail. Keep reading to learn why recruitment matters in terms of active membership and how to improve the active class.
How to Increase Fraternity Membership Retention
As stated previously, it comes down to two things: improving recruitment and improving the active chapter. Read on to learn how to do both.
1. Improve Recruitment
The reason that recruitment is so important is that this is where you start bringing on new members. Those new members ultimately determine the future of your chapter. Therefore, recruitment should be taken seriously (while still having fun).
All active members must be on the same page for where the future of the chapter is heading. There should be a discussion about this before recruitment. That way, when recruitment comes along, that vision can be effectively communicated to potential new members (PNMs). PNMs should have a clear idea of what will be expected of them when they join your fraternity.
If they do not have a good understanding of what will be expected of them, they are more likely to join for the wrong reasons.
What happens when those members end up becoming active?
They end up dropping out because their expectation of what they were going to get out of the fraternity doesn’t align with reality.
PNMs must have a realistic view of what joining your fraternity means. That way, anyone who doesn’t align with that vision will drop off during recruitment and not once they are already active.
You want members who aren’t an excellent fit to drop off early. This allows members to focus more of their time and energy on those who do align with the fraternity’s values.
Once you focus more on those members, they will already have fond feelings towards your fraternity when they join and will be less likely to drop out. After all, by this point, they’ll have already developed stronger bonds with active brothers during recruitment.
Additionally, if you need help with improving recruitment, you should utilize a Greek life management platform. Not only will that help you improve the quality of your members, but the quantity too.
2. Improve the Chapter
Even after recruitment is all said and done, active members who have been active for a while may start to feel differently about the brotherhood once they are active. The hype of recruitment wears off, regular meetings begin to occur, and the attention is no longer on them. Now, the focus is on the new class of newly initiated brothers.
So what keeps active brothers active?
It all comes down to incentivizing brothers to stick around and finding out their pain points.
It’s a good idea for executive board members to actively talk to the active class members to see what they can do to improve the chapter.
If the brothers in your fraternity feel that they aren’t getting enough out of the events you throw, it may be time to improve your chapter events. If members are busy with obligations outside of the chapter, and you are making events mandatory, this can also become a burden for members.
It’s up to you to actively make time to talk to each one of your members. It’s vital to understand their experience in the fraternity so far.
If you are finding that your brothers don’t feel connected to other brothers in the fraternity, that was a result of recruitment. However, you can’t go back in time, so what you can do is make sure that active members are still bonding.
It might be time to revamp your brotherhood events and create more. Give members the opportunity to go to activities that they will enjoy to connect with more of their fellow brothers.
You can also have a mandatory brother of the week every week where a brother is supposed to pair up with another brother to do something fun together. Then, they must share their experiences during your chapter meetings. This allows for brothers to connect with other brothers they wouldn’t have otherwise connected with. Although not every pair will be a success, this does give those who feel out of place an opportunity to connect with someone who might end up being the reason that they stick around.
Wrapping Up
When it comes to increasing membership retention, you need to focus on all aspects of the fraternity, starting at recruitment and ending at active membership. You’ve now been given concrete ideas on how to improve each element, but it’s up to you to get the bottom of where things are going wrong, especially when it comes to your active class. If you aren’t communicating effectively with potential new members or with your active class, why would people stick around?
Invest in your members so that they will invest their energy and efforts back into the fraternity. People value organizations that value them.
With that said, to improve both your recruitment and active chapter, make sure to connect GreekXperience with your campus. If you’re struggling, you don’t need to go at it alone. They have customizable voting and bring a social-media-feel to Greek life. That way, you’re chapter can stay connected digitally too.
GreekXperience is here to help, so let them help you!
0 Comments