Bonding Chapter Retreats

[ladypink]

I am planning a sisterhood bonding retreat for my chapter. I've searched and found excellent ideas for activities, etc. BUT I was looking for ideas of a possible location. We are a new chapter (only a few months old now) and we have 17 women. we have about $2000 in our chapter treasury but we are hoping to spend a maximum of only $300 for our retreat.

What are some fun locations? No one has a house big enough, we've done hotel rooms before but was hoping for something different and fun. If it helps, we are in New Jersey! thanks.

[adpiucf]

Many moons ago, we did sisterhood retreats in a gym on campus. Everyone brought sleeping bags and it was a lot of fun. Nowadays, they have their retreat at a posh hotel on the beach. How times have changed. Anyway, see if your school or a local church has a hall or gym available. You could do an old fashioned sleepover and lots of fun activities and games.

[kateee]

We did our sisterhood retreat inside the community center on campus. It was fun, but the floor was really hard and not fun to sleep on at all! The community center was nice because it had multiple rooms, and we used the front room with all the windows as our activity space, and designated the back room as a quiet area for those wishing to sleep.

[PhiAlpha05]

This is probably way late given the date of the OP's post, but when our chapter was just getting off the ground, we had our retreats at our cofounder's family cottage about 1.5 hours out from campus. If someone has a beach house or cottage they'd be willing to offer, that might be a nice and cost-effective option. I'm not sure what my sorority does now that the membership has grown into the 50s-60s, but I fondly remember those retreats at the cottage!

[OPhiAGinger]

If you can find a youth camp (think scouts or 4-H) that is not in use, those are often a bargain. Same for church camps or church-owned conference centers.