Today I received a "cold call" email from a local board member of one of our national philanthropy partners. The local board she serves on is 3 hours away, while we have a local board that our local alumnae and collegiate chapters partner with for fundraising and volunteering.
She said she had
been Greek in college. (Strike One
) She wanted to know if we could send any members to volunteer at a couple upcoming events their board is hosting, and also wondered if any of the collegians might be interested in serving on their board. I politely replied and said that we are very involved with our local group, and that the two events conflicted with move-in weekend and recruitment. But I also said that any collegians from her part of the state might be very interested in summer volunteering and gave her the chapter's philanthropy e-mail so she could communicate future dates.
Well, she sent me a rather offended reply, like she thought I was dismissing her. Well, I kind of was. What I really thought was: our collegians are over committed to fundraising and volunteering as it is. They organize their own events, they go to all the other fraternity and sorority fundraisers, and they stress about PR, planning, organization, getting enough people there, getting enough volunteers, etc. Every GLO has one major event each year, and 1-2 small ones each semester. This chapter won an award for philanthropy/community service at the last Convention, but we're really trying to get them to scale back. It's a campus culture issue with all the groups. As faculty advisor, I'm not going to promote members driving that far to volunteer during the school year.
So, how much is too much? Have GLOs gone too far and reached "too much of a good thing?" Are you seeing this phenomenon on your campuses?
