Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Why Fraternities and Sororities are not Stupid: Reason 7


How many hours of service has your chapter put in so far this year? We're willing to bet it's a lot!

Reason 7: Fraternity and sorority members are serious about philanthropy and community service and spend more hours on service and volunteering than other students.

We're all very proud of the work we do in our communities and beyond, but what really sticks with us is hours and work we put into our service. Many can argue part of the reason fraternity and sorority members excel in philanthropic efforts is the privilege some of our members have, but no one can dispute the hard work we put into service.

Research shows fraternity/sorority affiliation was associated with higher levels of community service and fraternity/sorority members spend substantially more hours per week on community service than unaffiliated students.

Even just using statistics from the National Panhellenic Conference (page 4), undergraduate sorority women have put in over 639,000 hours of service and raised over $2.8 million for philanthropic events and organizations. That doesn't even include non-Panhellenic sorority women, fraternity men, or fraternity/sorority alumni. 

That's impressive and makes a real impact.

What if we could do better? Many of our chapters are making strides toward real cross-programming to avoid member burnout. What if we turned more of our sisterhood/brotherhood events, recruitment events, and the like into service and volunteer opportunities? 

What if we brought philanthropy and service together to raise money while doing actual work? We love seeing what new ideas chapters are developing. Greeks For Good is a great resource to help you raise money for your service efforts. Our Philanthropy and Community Service officer manuals and your campus fraternity/sorority advisors are also great resources for service programming ideas.

So, in short, let's keep it up and take it to the next level. It's what we do.