Let's Make 2014 the Year of the Member (Part 2)

So you read part 1 of "Let's Make 2014 the Year of the Member." Now you're ready to make your plan and implement programs that are about the member instead of checking off your box of stuff you have to do. Let's do it!

Making the plan

For each bullet point, checkbox, or requirement, go through the following steps:

1. Brainstorm ways to accomplish this task that will make members want to be a part of the process. Think about it in this mindset: What will make them want to attend? Will they find it valuable?
2. Decide on every step necessary to complete this task, write it down, and delegate tasks. What is EVERYTHING that needs to happen? When is the deadline for each step? Whose help is needed
3. Pick a person (or people if appropriate) to be responsible for each item. This individual will be held accountable by everyone to make sure things get done.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 for each requirement.
5. Be the best chapter or council anyone has ever seen.

Still confused?

Let’s try it with an example of a requirement for a chapter regarding philanthropy.

The chapter sponsors or co-sponsors at least two philanthropic projects per year with a chapter from another council.

1. Brainstorm ways that make members want to be part of your event. Once you get everyone together, try to consider events that most of your members will be interested in. Come up with something that people will not only attend, but will be excited to participate in and be a part of.
2. Pick a date, find a space, reserve any equipment needed. When does each part need to be completed, and who will complete them? These individual due dates should be written down and posted for everyone know.
3. Appoint a Leader. Who is responsible for it all? Ultimately, everyone should have some responsibility and should be holding each other accountable, but you should pick one individual to be the ringleader. If this is related to recruitment, the Recruitment Chair should probably be in charge. If you are working on a PR campaign, it might not be wise to have the Intramural Chair in charge.

Following this simple process for each step will set you up for success when you apply for your awards and fill out accreditation applications. Just remember: getting the binder filled is the easy part; the most important part is setting up your year around the members of your organization.

Oh, and make sure you turn your report in on time!

This guest blog is the second in a two-part series by Steve Backer. Steve is in his second year of graduate school studying Higher Education Administration at Southeast Missouri State University where he serves as the Graduate Assistant to Fraternities and Sororities. Connect with him on Twitter at @Stevewithaph. 

Let's Make 2014 the Year of the Member (Part 1)

There is a good chance your campus or headquarters (or both) requires large amounts of documents to ensure chapters are performing up to a required minimum standard. I would like to begin by saying that I am not suggesting your chapter throw that process out the window.

BUT if I were a betting man, I would bet your chapter spends more time making sure the minimum required attendance was met at the educational programs you put on than actually making sure the quality of that program was benefitting your members.

Look at the mission of your organization. Odds are, it is about making men better men or women better women. To prove this, I did a quick Google Search and the first ten organizations that popped up (belonging to a variety of different umbrella groups) have missions that serve their members, not their chapters. Not one that I looked up used the word “chapters.”  So why are you focusing so much on doing things for the chapter and not for the members?

Now you’re probably thinking, “If the chapter is strong, then the members will grow too.”

This is true only if you are making the chapter strong for the sake of the members it serves. If you are focusing on making your organization strong to check boxes off a list and not for the benefit of members, then you are not only skipping the best interest of members, but your constant emphasis on attendance at a crappy program is annoying people too.

So now what? 

We are all just getting back to campus and beginning to plan formals, brotherhood/sisterhood events, and community service. So when you are doing all this, let’s shift the focus from the “what” to the “who” and the “why.”  Once these become the central focus, you will not only be better serving the original vision of your founders, but you will also have happier members. And who doesn’t love when members are happy?

Making the plan

Most of you are planning some kind of retreat in the next couple of weeks that will consist of your exec board, the whole chapter, maybe some advisors, or whoever else has a stake in the group’s success. In the past, you probably used these minimum requirements to plan for your entire year, and you should. Don’t let your renewed focus put you in bad standing. This year, however, you are going to spend a little more time making sure that planning reflects the interests of your members. We'll tell you how in part two.

This guest blog is the first in a two-part series by Steve Backer. Steve is in his second year of graduate school studying Higher Education Administration at Southeast Missouri State University where he serves as the Graduate Assistant to Fraternities and Sororities. Connect with him on Twitter at @Stevewithaph. 

nourish: your mind, your body, your soul

The Questions

What would it look like if women in our field had the opportunity to come together regardless of age, position, or affiliation to just be with their thoughts, their fears, their dreams, their hopes and their insecurities? What if we found a way to be more self-aware so we don't aspire to be someone we ARE NOT and were comfortable living as the person WE are? How would our relationships be impacted if we skipped all the surface-level B.S. and focused on the things that matter?

Our Story

These are all questions I asked myself as I attended The Gathering during the summer of 2012. I wanted to create an experience similar to The Gathering but for women only where we could learn and grow from and with one another. I dreamed about what impact women in our field could make if we were more aware of who we are and what makes us happy to be women and content in what we do professionally. I wanted peace. I wanted support. I wanted balance. I wanted yoga. I wanted conversation. I wanted quiet. I wanted no drama. I wanted meditation. I wanted the beach.

-Jenny

I have always longed for real, honest, non-competitive, unconditional friendships—especially with women. On one hand, I always felt there was something powerful in the female connection—an understanding, empathy, nurturing - that women shared in friendships. On the other hand, I had also experienced the competitiveness, cattiness and judgmental perspective in some of those same friendships—and in some of those cases I was an offender!

 I got the book The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, as a gift from an amazing woman (grateful to Lori Neff—you are still teaching me today) who I attended the Interfraternity Institute with in 1999. She warned me the book was a “little hippy-dippy” but to stick with it because it taught her more life lessons in 200 pages than anything over the last 20 years. So, I read it. Over and over and over—and continue to read my battered-up copy at least once every six months. For me, nourish had been in the back of my head as a thought, a hope, a concept since 1999. It just took some life and professional experience, some amazing and some disappointing experiences with women and a great conversation with Jenny to realize that there are women (including myself) who want and need a space to explore the questions from above; a place for women to deeply connect with other women; a place to nourish body, mind and soul. And so it began.

-Megan

Our Motivation

So we were two women with a similar idea that needed each other to push to actually make it happen. We put our hearts and our minds together and built nourish. We submitted a grant proposal to The Gathering Class of 2012 and were lucky to be the recipients of the grant. This officially made our vision one that had the ability to become a reality.

The Context

We revisited the book to frame our work, The Invitation by Oriah. “It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.” – The Invitation

The Invitation is a declaration of intent, a map into the longing of the soul, the desire to live passionately, face-to-face with ourselves and skin-to-skin with the world around us. nourish is an intense sabbatical designed to help women in the field of higher education accept the Invitation.

nourish is not a retreat, it is not a conference, it is not a stand-alone experience. nourish begins by making a personal commitment during an annual sabbatical to finding your authentic self and living an authentic life by nourishing yourself, nourishing others, nourishing your body, nourishing your mind, nourishing your soul and nourishing the sisterhood (relationships) in your life.

Nourish … the Experience

On September 9 we arrived to the Islander, a beautiful beach-front property on Oak Island, North Carolina. We began with conversations around what nourishment looked like to us. We discussed how and where we find nourishment in our lives and what will it take to let go of what is and find nourishment within ourselves over the next few days. That night we were lucky to experience a sunset meditation on the deck overlooking the ocean. The sound of the waves and the fresh air across our faces was the perfect natural setting to begin our work.

We spent time nourishing mind. Through the nourishing of the mind we read books and articles and challenged our minds to open up in new ways. Through proposed discussion topics from the book we chose a partner and nourished one another. This was a critical time in the experience where we appreciated one another and accepted the other person and ourselves for all we bring to the field and the world. Through guided conversations, participants were encouraged to explore ideas and concepts many had not explored in depth before. Nourish soul was conversation around sharing perspectives, insights, experiences and spirits of the women in the group. This was the group time where we had no leader but great discussion as a large group. Last but certainly not least, at the end of each night we nourished sisterhood. Each of the women who joined us in this experience has a passion; love and dedication to the field of education and helping others achieve their potential. When we nourished our sisterhood, we focused on how we could experience and share our sisterhood in a more authentic way in our professional lives.  

We both feel after writing the grant and dreaming about the potential of this program that it far exceeded our expectations.

If you want to talk about our experience and what has changed for us since nourish, feel free to reach out. We all had different experiences but we all had balancing experiences that have changed and improved who we are as women and as professionals.

We are excited to announce we will be doing another nourish in fall of 2014. Applications will be available in spring of 2014. Please contact us at NourishLLC@gmail.com in the meantime if you are interested.

Thank you to AFLV and The Gathering Class of 2012 for having faith in us and for making our vision become a reality! We all are forever grateful and blessed to have had the experience.

Mingle often with good people to keep your soul nourished!

A guest blog from Megan Vadnais & Jenny Levering, 2012 grant recipients from The Gathering for their program, nourish.

Hazing - It's Weird

We're totally serious on this one. As we talked about National Hazing Prevention Week in the office, we tried to be really deep and figure out why people haze. But as we talked about different hazing activities people partake in, we kept ending up at the same reaction:
"That's really freakin' weird."

A summary of our faces

Think about it though. Let's pretend we're explaining some of our activities to our parents. Let's even pretend our mom is not like a regular mom, but a cool mom.

Mom: What is the 4-1-1? What has everybody been up to? What's the hot gossip?
Hazer: Well, tonight we had a line up, so we made the pledges stand side-by-side. Then we all pointed out where each girl needs to tone up. It was really fun, and they appreciated the constructive criticism about their bodies. One girl even cried!
Mom: Wait ... what? Honey, I'm confused. That doesn't sound fun; it sounds weird and mean. Why would you want to look at all the pledges in their underwear?
Hazer: Well, she needed to prove she belonged. It's like, the rules.
Mom: But why would you pick her for a pledge if she has so many things to fix? Maybe you should do that whole rush thing better and pick girls you don't think you need to fix.
Hazer: Mom, go fix your hair.

Even if you had a cool mom, explaining some of the activities that chapters use to haze is hard to justify because it sounds kind of insane.

Even when we were trying to use common excuses like "they need to prove they belong," the activities just sounded weird. In what universe are line ups, pledge book signing, dressing in embarrassing costumes, or blindfolded quizzes considered normal behavior, let alone behaviors you could use to prove your worth? A recent Cosmo story of one woman's account of her experience being hazed has garnered attention for degrading women in general, but mostly because no one could look at these activities and call them normal by any standards.

Take a look around you this week. There are many great statistics and campaigns that tell the physical and psychological effect of hazing. There is also a lot of great info about what could happen to hazers since it's against the law in 44 states. But take a step back and look at hazing from a normal perspective: it's pretty weird.

Good Times are Consensual

We seriously never imagined the day when we would be giving a shoutout to Playboy for its perspective about sex. But the day is here, and we're all about Playboy's Top Ten Party Commandments for a Consensual Good Time.

As we've talked about before, many behaviors, attitudes, and words on college campuses across America are conducive to a rape culture. But as Playboy puts it, "Consent is all about everyone having a good time. Rape is only a good time if you’re a rapist. And f@¢# those people."

Why does this matter to you as a fraternity leader?

Let's think about the overall perception of fraternity men. There are a lot of uninformed people out there who think we're all rapists. But, just like the examples Playboy's list gives, there are many ways for men to stand against rape. 

Fraternity men at Northwest Missouri State University, the University of Iowa, Ohio University, Washington University in St. Louis, Wittenberg University, and countless other universities are leading the way in efforts like A Walk in Her Shoes and No Woman Left Behind.

In fact, a recent study finds fraternity men have lower levels of hyper-masculinity, a predictor of sexual aggression, than unaffiliated male students. We're not saying we're perfect by any means, but the current sexual assault education fraternities receive should serve as a catalyst for fraternity men to educate their entire campus communities.

Not sure where to start? There are plenty of creative ideas in Playboy's list, or you can look into national movements like Men Can Stop Rape and One Student.

If the Hef can take a stand for a consent, we're pretty sure you can, too.

Editor's note: We've recently discovered that this article is a hoax by the group FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture and was not published by Playboy. But that does not detract from these great ideas, and the group's ideas are spot on.

It's Not Just Us

Fraternity/sorority members leading the charge at Marshall University

September is the month that holds Hazing Prevention Week, and with that comes a bunch of articles, blogs, and social media posts about preventing hazing in fraternities and sororities.

Many of you feel singled out by #NHPW and are quick to bring up the argument that it's not just fraternities and sororities. Trust us, we feel ya on this one.

After a two-year suspension, the Florida A&M band has returned, and in the past week, the Towson University cheerleading squad has been suspended for competition for one year for an alleged hazing incident. ESPN is notorious for highlighting the rookie hazing in NFL training camps each year.

But just as we coach our chapters with recruitment and public relations efforts, perception is reality. As long as any of our chapters haze, fraternities and sororities are an easy target. If public perception is that all of us haze the crap out of people, others' realities are that we haze the crap out of people.

However, this concept can be applied to improve our image and showcase what we're actually about. As the groups who are most often targeted, we can and should take the lead in the hazing prevention efforts in our campus communities.

One of the main differences between fraternal organizations and other student organizations is that we explicitly say we are about brother/sisterhood and building better people. As values-based organizations, it's our job to tell people what we're about and take a stand against hazing. The sustainability of our organizations is dependent upon it. These values that we stand on and talk about so often are the main reason we should be the leaders in hazing prevention. It's in our founders' ideals that we stand against hazing.

So this September, let your actions and words create a new perception. Let everyone know what we're really about.

Once Upon an Orientation

Why did you join a fraternity? What does your sorority do anyway? Do you feel like you paid for your friends?

New student orientation: a time of excitement for campuses across the country AND an opportunity to share the benefits of fraternity and sorority membership. You remember the feelings during orientation—a million things to do, tons of questions, and a mix of excitement and anxiety over every little thing. So how do you help the fraternity and sorority experience rise to the top?

Storytelling.

We’re not talking about the campfire stories or library hour gatherings. We want you to tell YOUR story. Knowing how to share your story in a succinct and compelling way instead of throwing around faceless facts will help connect sisterhood and brotherhood to potential members who could see themselves in your shoes.

One of our biggest failures in explaining fraternity and sorority life to others is this belief that brotherhood and sisterhood are impossible to explain. As leaders who have invested a lot of time and energy into our organizations, it can be difficult to break it down to the basics. Stories—your personal lived experiences—are what can connect others.

Jim Blasingame, host of the Small Business Advocate, offers the Three C’s of Storytelling: Connect, Convey, and Create. We've broken it down for you here in our new resource that you can use with your chapter, council, recruitment counselors, or even yourself!

People are moved by emotions, and throwing a bunch of facts out there is hardly effective when you could relay an experience so compelling the listener HAS to learn more. Your goal is to move a person to action, not to be a walking Google search result.

You may have 60 seconds with a potential member during an orientation session or a new student block party. Are you going to spend it spouting out statistics about GPA and intramural championships, or are you going to spend those precious seconds to tell a story worth repeating?

That's what we thought. Now go out there and share YOUR story.