.jpg)
There are campuses where fraternity and sorority philanthropy events have gotten out of control. Nearly every weekend is full of tournaments, contests and fund-raising events where fraternity and sorority members trade funds for their charities. For many chapters already inundated with mandatory events, it's starting to be too much.
Service: good. Constant events: evil. While it's great that we raise money for worthy charities, we've allowed the time demand of philanthropy to get out of hand.
Having just returned from the Southeastern Panhellenic Conference, I was reminded about how the constant barrage of charity events has become the bane of many Greek women's experience. One woman from a large campus told me that they sometimes had as many as three fraternity fund-raisers a weekend. "If it's not a formal or semi-formal, it's a philanthropy," she said. "You really have no free time at all when you're in a sorority at our campus."
Of course, the sororities are just as bad as the fraternities.
I recommended to the woman that there was no requirement that their sorority participate in every fraternity's event. They could say no to some of the events, I said. She laughed at me. If they didn't, they would be seen as unsupportive of the community, and no other group would support their fund-raising projects. It's a vicious circle. You have to go to 50 events so that people will come to your 1.
The core problem is that our philanthropy efforts are no longer just about raising funds – they are about image and showing off. It's about having an enormous tournament for multiple days with t-shirts, teams, sponsors, food, and banners. We want everyone to be impressed. The irony is that by the time we complete these monster events, the money raised is usually disappointing. Routinely, Greek chapters are spending more than they raise.
It doesn't have to be that way. A spaghetti dinner where everyone pays $5 for unlimited food can be fun and easy. Churches have been doing it for generations. What about selling candy bars? When I was a kid, we raised $10,000 in a week by selling boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts. By the way, they still do that program. You can read about it here.
I bet there are lots of chapters that would rather write you a check for 10 boxes of donuts than rally their members to attend another dreadful day-long tournament. But, getting Greeks off the "crack" of philanthropy events is going to be difficult. Naturally, the charities and some of our fraternity headquarters are putting major pressure on chapters to not only keep up their events, but expand them.
Another idea... What if you took your Greek community and put all chapters on a service rotation. One third of chapters could hold fund-raising events, and everyone would agree to support them. One third of chapters would host hands-on service events. Greeks interested in service (like a few from each chapter, not 90% of all chapters!) would show up to a hands-on volunteerism event, helping kids, seniors, or building a house for Habitat. The final third of chapters would organize awareness events for their particular cause. So, one week we wear ribbons for AIDS awareness, or we distribute buttons on campus for sexual assault awareness, or we hold a rally to end homelessness open to the whole campus.
If we did this, we would certainly get better press coverage, and we could involve the rest of campus. That's good for campus image.
Service, to be really impactful, needs to be about all three things: funds, hands-on volunteerism, and awareness. By putting your chapters on a three year rotation, you teach your members that service is more than swapping checks, accumulating t-shirts, and filling your calendar.
The picture is from John Hopkins University, Kappa Delta Phi, 2003.
