Service hour requirement
 

Hi!

I belong to a local service sorority at a private university. As the Philanthropy Chair, I am looking to increase our service hour requirements and would like to get your input.

What your service hour requirements at your sororities.

How many hours must you log per semester.

Do the hours have to be divided between the house and community?

Thanks for your input.

McKenna

Our service hour requirements were recently raised from 6 hours to 10 per semester. We have a few opportunities per semester to to earn hours by donating items- i.e. three canned goods = one hour. Our required philanthropy events do not count towards hours. Hope this helps!

I believe my undergraduate APO chapter has raised the service hour requirements to 25 hours a semester. I think most accomplish that through one or two dedicated service projects and one committee membership.

OPA nationally requires all active sisters to do at least 10 hours of service a semester, however most of our chapters require their actives to do more. When I was active, my chapter required each active sister to complete at least 25 hours of service a semester.

Active chapters do at least 6 service projects a semester (as they must do one for each area of service in our purpose along with our President's Project and Permanent Project) so all their hours come from working and participating on those projects.

Our chapter of Gamma Sigma Sigma (now inactive) had a minimum of 10 hours for pledges (now Members in Training) and 15 hours for initiated members, but most of us did 40-50 hours each semester.

An important part of requiring service hours is providing service opportunities. As a chapter, we co-sponsored the Red Cross blood drive, a sleep-out (in a tent) for homeless awareness with APO, sold Daffodils for the American Cancer Society, volunteered as Salvation Army bell ringers, managed tables at the mall for the Giving Tree, etc.

In addition, we could earn hours (up to half of them) doing other service work, but each organization or event had to be voted on and approved by the chapter. I also remember that were allowed to count donated money towards a few hours, but I believe that changed sometime during my final semester.

Approving other organizations can get tricky, and I hope was done in advance. I could easily see one member trying to get escorting patients to an Abortion clinic for hours and another trying to get making sandwiches for lunches for those protesting outside...

Sometimes it isn't even that clear though. I know APO chapters who do fundraisers for Autism Speaks and I know people who *hate* the organization...

When I was in college, my OPA chapter (a different one from Dreamful Spirit's chapter) required 30 service hours for pledges, 25 for actives although most members earned far more than that. And I totally echo what Ree-Xi said. The chapter's job is to make opportunities for service by organizing a wide variety of projects throughout the semester. We typically had 1-3 service projects per week. Some required the whole chapter. Others just a handful of members. They were presented and approved in our chapter meeting each week and then people got to sign up for the ones that fit into their schedule.

I was using that as example of service projects where what one member would find to be community service, another member might not. I'm aware of what PP does, but there are clinics where performing abortions is the primary activity of the location. (Not saying this is true of every location that performs abortions).

The question is whether making sandwiches for those protesting outside such a clinic would count for service hours, just as those escorting people into the clinic past the protestors would count for service hours...

Well since our chapter has been inactive for 18 years, I couldn't tell you. If this was for our Alumnae chapter, we'd go through the same process - voting on any requests.

I can't tell if you're playing the morality game to see if an org would allow service hours escorting women for medical treatment or counseling at an "abortion clinic", or playing the conundrum game of "why is ok to escort patients but not to support the picketers?" or vise versa.

Again, questioning your motives.

I'm saying that if a chapter doesn't specify what organizations are acceptable for service outside the chapter program, you end up with members asking for service hours in organizations that other members don't consider work with to be community service. if you have a member who is (*flips coin*) adamantly pro-life, then they may not vote to approve service hours for the act of escorting those seeking an abortion. I'm saying that this can be avoided by approving organizations ahead of time.

Tangential, but perhaps relevant (and less political):

My APO chapter had a service project where they would visit trainee service animals to play with them. It helped the animals get socialized to other humans and such.

The university stopped funding the transportation (gas reimbursement) because they said "service to animals" didn't count.

Great discussion! THANK YOU!!!

Who said that the chapter doesn't specify what (type) of organizations are acceptable? Some chapters may have very specific criteria, others may have more general guidelines and require discussion before making a decision.

During my undergraduate membership, I don't recall any instances when someone had already done X and it ended up being voted down and it being a problem. As I said, most of us came to the organization with established service relationships, and nobody every got upset at not being able to apply that time spent toward our service requirement.