[paulaKKG]

Kappameg,

What you do probably depends on the specifics of the situation. It sounds like your morale issue is related to feeling small so I'm going to assume that either the members are feeling overwhelmed and burned-out with responsibilities because you have a small chapter, or you are feeling bummed about recruitment because you are not as big as other houses at your college.

If this is a burnout issue, two things will help. The first is to scale back what you do. If that means participating in less organizations philanthropies or scalling back an event or to - do it. Don't think of it as dropping events - think of this as prioritizing your time. The second thing to do is focus on sisterhood. Have a sisterhood retreat, have a sleepover night at the house, or just order pizza and do dinner together. If you have campus events that you usually pair with other organizations, see about doing them alone as a chapter instead. All work and no play makes Jane a dull Kappa - be sure to get the sisterhood connection back in membership. Rather than small being a disadvantage - here it is an advantage. You'll have an easier time building a close chapter with fewer members.

If this is a pre-rush morale thing - focus on a positive attitude going into recruitment. A story from a time when my chapter was smaller is they had only 14 girls going into one recruitment - much smaller than the other chapters who had 50! To make themselves appear larger, they all wore letters every single day before recruitment (about a month). Every night they met at the house, did a big load of laundry, and swapped letter shirts so they didn't have to wear the same clothes every day. To the potential members they assumed our house was huge - everywhere they went they saw our letters! That year they took 16 new members, more pledges than sisters. And there is always COB which should not be seen as "second place" - you can use it as an opportunity to reach out to people who are great campus leaders but for whatever reason avoided NPC recruitment. Quality really is more important than quantity - I joined my chapter while we were still "growing" - the chapter is now the largest, has the highest GPA, wins the most awards, and is definately one of the top greek organizations on campus.

Good luck!
Paula