Dues to Inter/National Organizations
 

One of the arguments that I've been reading about in some of the "Abolish Greek Life at *Insert University Name*" is that the dues to their inter/national offices are too high, and therefore are limiting some potential new members from joining.

Just out of curiosity, how much are the dues that your organization asks for?

Sigma Chi requires $500 in dues to our Headquarters:

-$100 at time of pledging
-$200 to be paid for initiation
-$200 in 'new member' fees (which can be paid in $100 increments over your 2nd and 3rd semesters as a member)

These fees are on top of any dues that the local chapter might charge for their organization.

Other than these, the only money that undergrads pay to the fraternity are their individual share of the risk management insurance fees. If I remember correctly from my time as an advisor, those fees were less than $20 a member each month.

Alpha Phi Omega
 

As a non-housed fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega's dues are very different...

At time of Pledging: $31
At time of Initiation: $35

Fall Semester: $20
Spring Semester: $20*

(*Insurance Fees are folded in and this means that brothers who Pledge and Initiate in the Fall, don't pay the Spring Insurance Fee and thus pay $17)

https://apo.org/wp-content/uploads/2...rship-Fees.pdf

I've also seen this argument, and I have to wonder how many people are complaining about national dues vs. chapter dues. I did witness one heated exchange online, and someone was complaining about "all the money nationals is raking in", and when someone asked them what their dues are and they revealed how much they pay each semester, they were clearly mistaken as to how much their national org had to do with what they were paying.

Are there financial barriers to membership? Sure. But I'm willing to bet that most of the problem is stemming from the chapter budgets and not from what the national organization is asking for in order to function.

Chapter Dues are such a heartbreaking topic. One of our local chapters steadily lowered chapter dues in each of the past three years, but with all the problems besetting students this semester there are multiple women who still cannot afford full chapter dues. Thank goodness for payment plans and understanding sisters, we're going to continue needing them for awhile.

As for inter/national dues, there has been no lowering of the nearly $200.00 amount per person this semester.

A few years ago we combined our pledging and initiation fee, it was about $350. National fees (i.e. liability insurance based on whether your chapter had previous RM issues, convention funding, a fee for each active member and so on) is around 450-500 a semester. Each chapter has it's own determined "local chapter dues" and some chapter dues are higher than the yearly national dues.

I was told recently that our organization has one of the lowest National fees for a NIC chapter.

Costs of running a national office have increased substantially over the last 10-15 years. As alums, we didn't see extra headquarter's staff for risk, diversity, etc, not to mention the additional training for the chapter leadership years ago. What the collegians don't understand (many of the alums don't either) is the cost of doing business has skyrocketed, just like in any other business.

Very true. I even understand that AST has a per-chapter technology fee. When you start to think of all the third-party applications our organizations and chapters are now using, it only makes sense. With convenience comes a cost.

The irony is that members are now screaming for the meaning behind membership, the national organizations are scrambling to keep up, but then the members complain there's a cost behind it.

The differences in my org between when I joined (in 2004) and now are staggering. The amount of programming, leadership, and educational opportunities have grown exponentially. It's a great thing. But it's not free.

Just to clarify: The $450-500 semester fees; are these fees that every single member of the chapter pays to your national offices, or fees that the chapter pays as a total and are divided up between the members?

i.e., "Guys, our $500 fee to nationals is due next month. We have 50 members so everyone pony up $10."

Very generally speaking, every organization, regardless of type or council, could stand to do a better job explaining (and demonstrating) the connection between the dues that are paid to an organization and how that travels from an annual budget, to the salaries of the people who provide the centralized services.

To many people who are 18-22, they have not yet been introduced to the ideas of fair compensation (because frankly, their summer jobs--if they had one--likely don't compensate them fairly). They also have not yet been introduced to the idea that you must compensate people well for them to come work for you, either leaving one job in the same city, or to attract people to literally come work for you.

A tangential problem (perhaps related to my point, I don't know yet lol) is that most of our organizations rely on a hybrid of paid professionals and volunteers to enact the mission of the organization.

Think about it:

Collegians pay into a system.
Alumnae volunteer for the system. (and sometimes donate)
Professional staff work for the system.

How can this be a better, sustainable ecosystem? Collegians are revolting (the verb, not the adjective LOL), and it's going to cripple the system if the communication doesn't improve.

I dunno if any of this made sense. If so, yay.

In other words, I wonder:

--Where the majority of the money comes from

and

--If the true source of the money has the most political power

Yes, this. Especially with the cost of college increasing year over year. If students - or their parents - are going to put additional funds into an extra-curricular, club, sport, or organization, they want to see where their money is going. And cost-benefit analyses have become even more prevalent with COVID. College is still expensive, more families are struggling financially, and the demand to see where the money is being used will only continue to grow.

If you only knew the number of times I was asked if I was a paid to be a volunteer!

Sen brings up a great point, I do volunteer with my org and work on the finance piece of things with several different chapters in my area. And of course there are some set costs associated with what is required by HQ and then different chapters may set different dues depending on if they are housed or not, if chapters pay for t-shirts for events and roll that into the costs etc.

I know one big thing we've been trying to get chapters to do especially with budget planning is to put in more detailed line items versus the chapter has $XXXX.XX in membership dues. That basically says nothing. Getting folks to be diligent at the chapter level to do this well, there are some that do a better job than others. But at least if they set up a template and used it year over year they could quickly address questions coming from either students or parents as to what they are paying for.

Similarly when I was in college way back when I would always wonder what are my student activity fees paying for, or what does my lab fee pay for? My thought was I'm already paying a bunch so why isn't that stuff included in my tuition.

All this to say is that I think GLO's and their chapters aren't doing themselves any favors by not being clear or transparent about this stuff. I think if people at least knew where they could find this information and hopefully make an informed decision it would alleviate a lot of stress and heartache.

The $450-500 is Fall billing for each active chapter member. Our Spring fee is lower and is around $300 for each active chapter member.

Our National fee is $750-800 a year, per member. I know that some chapters pay a part of the National fee (i.e. will cover the liability insurance charge, or the fee for each active member) by chapter fundraising. We do not have fees such as technology fee or communication fees.

One thing my organization did was eliminate the traveling consultants. This cut a portion of the operating budget. Our "Success Managers" oversee chapters and their day to day problems/questions and they have virtual meetings with chapters and officers.