What's going on?

[adpiucf]

Hold a variety of events that appeal to various women in various stages of life.

Set up interest groups-- dinner club, book club, knitting circle, mom's club, Young Alum group

Don't overprogram!

Try to do some chapter support. Working with a chapter or planning a social together appeals to a wide range. Also if there is a local chapter, try to host a yearly event with their new members to plant that "alum involvement" seed in their heads-- they are your new members in 4 years, potentially!

Hold events at different times. After work, mid morning, weekends, etc.

Send out a quarterly newsletter as well as setting up a Yahoo! group.

Ask for input and engage your members

Have a welcome packet for new members to your assoc and someone to call them and invite them out for coffee. One on one is sometimes less intimidating.

Utilize your national officers who work with alumnae for ideas

Get the names of women in your area from HQ within a 50 mile radius of your location and do a yearly mass mailing. You will pick up lost members this way. This effort revitalized my Orlando Alum group and now it is thriving! Despite there being tons of alum and a strong collegiate chapter in the area, we could just never get it together... that mailing made all the difference and we set an event around it-- Founder's Day.

Contact the area APH and hold some socials with other alum groups.

Include non members, spouses, sig others, and kids for some of your events! "BYOB"-- Bring your own buddy!

Most alum go their own way because there's really nothing to hold them to a committment. As others have stated, don't worry about alum apathy. Just work with those who are interested.

[paulaKKG]

I think you are doing a tremendous job - it is hard and exhausing to always be the cheerleader/organizer/recruiter when it feels like no one else cares. I've been in that boat before - it sucks it sucks it sucks and then all of a sudden things start clicking and it takes off.

I'm going to add to my comment and say the best way to get people involved is to ask them directly; face-to-face if possible. (email is too easy to ignore)

I read somewhere once that if you ask for volunteers and send to many people on email; you will get few responses because of the "bystander" issue - everyone will assume that someone ELSE will step in to help. However; if you ask personally the individual will rarely say no. (Of course this is sort of blackmail :-) )

I hear you on the trancience. I live in the DC area, and we have a revolving door of members. We have a fairly large organization and a fairly large board and we still struggle - we have 2-3 board members move out of town yearly it seems (we're already on our third treasurer this year) - just the nature of the city. which is why the small group approach has worked well for us - the groups self-sustain, even through membership turns over. Other than that there is not much you can do about it - just go with the flow I guess :-)

[lauralaylin]

I moved to Boston and became co-President of our AC almost immediately. The chapter had been huge a few years back, but now we'd get maybe 2 or 3 sisters showing up to events besides us. So what I decided to do was concentrate on what interested me. I don't know what women with children want to do or our older membership, so I didn't deal with it. If someone had a problem with our programming, they could help out I figured. Two years later we now have 20 sisters coming to our Founder's Day event this Sunday. I had to rent out a room because the restaurant can't handle that many people in one party! And we now have 4 women on our exec board, which is so much help, especially since I don't have to be president.

So, I say stick to what you know, the things you want to do, and it'll all work out in the end. And if it doesn't, since the programming interests you, you'll still have a good time with whatever you are doing! Good luck with everything, your sorority is very lucky to have you!

[alum]

Originally posted by paulaKKG
Have you tried coordinating interest groups? Any idea the ages/background of these individuals?

Our local alumnae organization has 225 active no-kidding members at the moment; and ironically it is because we are very decentralized. We have 14 active interest groups and this is where 96% of our membership comes from. We have a day and evening book club (evening is mostly working women/women with kids, day is mostly retirees, some stay-at home moms); we have a day and evening bridge group, a needlepoint group, a happy hour group, a wine-tasting group, a runners group, a moms and tots playgroup, and a few "zip code" groups - groups of people that meet to do random gatherings based on area. Most of these groups have 20-30 people on the list, and any given meeting is 8-12 of them getting together once a month. This solves the get-to-know people problem - once these core groups get established it is very easy to connect because now you are not trying to get to know 200 people, you are connecting to 20-30 people.

We have 4 "big" events a year (they are fairly well attended - 50-60 people) but otherwise all events are done on a small scale. There is no obligation to attend any given event, and participation in an interst group does not require the person to attend other functions. Each interest group has a "chair" that organizes meetings, and we do have an executive board - but otherwise it is a very low-key approach.

As these eager members email you - suck them in. Have them be the chair for one of your groups.

I think PaulaKKG and I are in the alumnae association. It is an excellent resource. I am involved with 2 of the interest groups that she mentioned.

Even smaller alumnae associations have a lot to offer as well. I have relocated several times to hubby's work and have always found the association to be nothing but welcoming and inclusive.