I have had some Brothers ask "Why are we expanding when we have existing chapters that are struggling?" It's a difficult question to answer. In my opinion, we have to continue to expand. However, expansion needs to be done carefully and cautiously. If we have no chapters farther west than Nebraska, for example, it may be difficult to justify expanding to a school in the Northwestern part of the country.
At the same time, we just don't want to hand out letters to any group of twenty guys that come together and decide that they want to start a Fraternity. If you look at our Chapter history, we have had a large number of chapters fail that are less than ten years old. Why is that? We all know that a Fraternity is more than just cold beer, hot women and great parties. It's about Brotherhood. So why did we fail?
We need to take steps to eliminate risk management issues early. If we are returning to a school where we once had a chapter, we have to ask the following questions: 1) Why did this chapter close in the first place? Debt? Risk Management? Alcohol? 2) If we are returning to a campus, are the right alumni getting involved in the group? We have to qualify the type of involvement we have in our chapters. 3) Do we have University support? This is critical because if we are going to camp out at a school for six weeks and recruit members, it is a whole lot more cost effective to do so with school support than without.
Greek advisors move around alot, so what happens at one school can have a profound impact at another school in our ability to expand at said school.
The bottom line is that if we just go about and maintain what we have and do not expand, we will die a slow death. We have several Provisional Chapters now, including Appalachian State, UNC-Pembroke, Salisbury University, Wisconsin-Whitewater, Pitt-Johnstown, SW Oklahoma and Rogers State.
I realize that I have kind of wandered around a bit in my message here. The point is that we as Brothers have a passion for our organization. We want our chapter and our organization to be successful. However, we can't turn into an organization with 200 chapters overnight. I don't think that's what we want anyway. What we should do is enhance the VALUE of our organization, beginning with our own chapters, and move gradually and steadily so our organization supports and betters each Brother's Fraternity experience, both as an undergraduate and as an alumnus.
Thanks for your time. If I can help anyone or answer any questions or coments, please let me know.
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