Does Dynamic Recruitment Work at Small Schools?

by Josh Orendi

Phired Up is proud of the testimonials that pour in with success stories from chapters across the country.  Chapters doing Dynamic Recruitment are growing in quantity AND quality.  However, we’re often asked “Does Dynamic Recruitment work at small schools?” The answer is YES!

Some readers who know me personally know that I graduated from Bethany College in West Virginia.  Total enrollment at Bethany the year I graduated was less than 800 students (yes, I said TOTAL enrollment).  The male population was approximately 350.  My chapter of 40+ guys at our peak was only the second largest on campus (damn those Delts!).  Still we had nearly 13% of the male population in our chapter.  That’s the way the numbers work to be competitive at a small campus.

On March 9th, I had the opportunity to meet Andrew from Phi Delta Theta at Kettering University.  This was a follow up recruitment training visit to Kettering.  Phired Up had been to campus a year earlier and provided coaching support throughout that year.  Before I share Andrew’s story, let me tell you a little about Kettering:

Kettering is a unique engineering school in Flint, Michigan with a VERY unique Greek community.  Imagine being on a quarters system rather than traditional semesters and only attending school every other quarter because you’re actually doing co-op work away from campus for the other two.  While you’re away from campus for 3 months on your co-op, there’s another group of men living in your fraternity house that are brothers with a completely separate charter — two charters, one fraternity, one school.  They call these “A section” and “B section” at Kettering.  Combine these two sessions and there are approximately 2000 undergrads at Kettering.  However, enrollment has dropped this year.  In “B section” there were only 100 men in the freshmen class.  Reading these numbers, I’m sure you’d agree that it’s not easy to be one of 11 fraternities at Kettering.

Now, watch the video of Andrew’s story highlighting the success of Phi Delt.

Does Dynamic Recruitment work at small schools?  If Andrew and Phi Delt can do it, so can you.  Here’s the email Andrew sent me the day after Phired Up training.

Our chapter has gone through a huge revamp of our recruitment system from having small classes to a class of 1 and then to having 3 consecutive semesters of classes with 6 each to now a class of 17 bid acceptors (hoping to increase still).  I am also proud to say that these are not just numbers, that these are very high quality individuals I will be proud to call my brothers.  It was great listening to all of your suggestions and ideas … It has been great to not only, not have to struggle for members and interested underclassman, but to be very selective with who we give bids to, which we have found increases the interest even more.  I am really looking forward to adding to what we have already done and perfecting our process with all of the suggestions that you had as well as implementing the things that we had not thought about.  Looking forward to instilling these ideas into our incoming class for future house success!!

Thanks again!

Andrew Shumaker
Phi Delta Theta – Kettering University B-Section
Recruitment Chair 2011
Assistant Recruitment Chair 2010