Open houses

[PlymouthDZ]

We had an open house lastnight and NO girls showed up (*teary-eyed). We advertised EVERYWHERE and we had really awesome ads, but still.. no one.

Has anyone else had this problem? What have you done to get girls to come? Any suggestions to help me out?

I'm getting a bit frustrated and feeling defeated

Thanks in advance!!

DZ Love,

[dzgirl0702]

Hey! When I was our Spring Rec. chair we followed up with girls to get them to come, but we also did something besides an open house on the first night. Especially with intermurals going on we just invited girls to come hang out at the intermurals fields while we cheered our team on. This seemed to make it a little less intimidating and we had even more crowd support which is always a plus!! The next night we would invite the girls to the chapter room or where ever for a more open house type thing. This way if they already had a connection with a sister they would be more apt to coming by themselves the next time...

Good Luck!!!

[dzandiloo]

Don't be discouraged!

Personal invites are definitely the way to go...also, if you are having an open house, it's good to have an information table or something set up in the student center/quad/whatever, staffed by different sisters at different times (when they are available) to answer questions, have girls "sign up" to receive info, and basically just make personal contact w/the group b/f the event. It breaks the ice in a non-threatening manner and helps them feel like the door is really open to them.

The local sorority I advised a few years ago did that-info table in the student center, for 2 days before their event, and they had a tremendous response...and several girls ended up coming to their party as a reult of seeing the info table, who said they would never have noticed an ad or poster. A table decorated w/balloons, memorabilia & personal invites from the ladies at the table got their attention!

As has been said...sometimes the prospect of just showing up somewhere without knowing anyone can be daunting. Don't give up! Just take a different tact.

[AchtungBaby80]

Personal invites are the way to go. If the chapter at my school had done that, maybe I would've been a DZ a year earlier!

The DZ chapter at the university I went to recolonized, and they were in their first year as a colony when I was a freshman. There were about 3 DZs on my dorm floor, and I remember seeing all the COB signs they put up in the bathroom and thinking that maybe I'd go. But I always lost my nerve! I was petrified of showing up at the house and ringing the doorbell and...well, I'm not exactly sure what I was afraid of, but I can definitely understand why girls might be reluctant to show up for open houses cold turkey. I never in a million years thought I'd end up in DZ when I started rush the next fall, but I think it's funny that I almost went to sooooooo many COB events but always chickened out and I ended up there anyway.

So what we used to do with COB was, each member would take a couple of invitations to an event--pumpkin carving, TV night, whatever--and hand them to girls they knew from the dorm, from class, etc. It really did make more people show up, and members got to sort of pick who came so that many times, the PNMs actually ended up joining.