I am entering my sophomore year at my university. I have signed up in a fraternity that is currently working to be reestablished. They will start off as a Colony and hopefully be chaptered by the end of the spring semester. I would be happy to help rebuild this fraternity, but I was told that I would not get the same experience as joining one that has already been established. I understand that it would be a lot more work recruiting and rebuilding rather than actually doing what a Chapter typically does. However, would I still be able to get the experience of being in Greek Life, such as participate in Philanthropies, Scholarship opportunities, and even socials with sororities?
It may well be a different experience. But just about every organization will change as people come and go. Just because it is different doesn’t make it better or worse. It may be quite rewarding to put the effort into an organization that will grow and flourish in the future and you will know that you had a part in it.
The chapter may get more help from the national organization, may get more supervision from the local alums.
I was a member of a reorganizing group. It was fine. We even got to sign the charter.
I was a founding father of an newly established fraternity. I would contact field officers from nationals that are often more than not happy to help you out.Honestly there wasn’t that much difference in the day to day operations as
a colony between us and already established fraternities. We still had socials and mixers, held the same leadership positions, and could do pretty much most things established fraternities could do except for the full rituals and some other things they don’t tell you until after you become chartered. I actually preferred it because we got to really build something we were proud of from the ground up.
The key is differentiation is of course the membership, you will have less members than a established organization and will have to put in double the effort to recruit new members. For us this turned out to actually turned out to be our greatest strength. We recruited people that wanted something “more out of the traditional fraternity experience” and wanted to do things differently, wanted to defy greek stereotypes, and were extremely intentional about recruiting high quality people as well as diverse people from different backgrounds. With our starting class, we ended up recruiting more than half founding fathers that were people of color, almost unheard of in the greek community, as well as some of the best people I have met. That is the key. You have to have a differentiating factor and really sell people on the “why.” For us this meant recruiting high quality people and going out of our way to go to club meetings of organizations, especially cultural groups, to make sure that we were recruiting the most diverse and inclusive group possible. And it really paid off.
The other difficult part is that as a beginning organization, you will have to find people who believe in the mission and will help chart the future course of the organization as there is a lot you have to decide. Leadership will take on additional responsibility, but it is also an exciting opportunity to shape the organization. Lastly another good thing about starting off as a colony, is that you can oftentimes keep dues low because you won’t have as high dues requirements from nationals – so that can be a selling point, You might start off with lower funds with less people, but you can really decide the direction of the organization. All the things you mentioned you will be able to have, if you are able to successfully recruit and run the organization to have those things.