How to Measure Growth: The Key Metrics Every Chapter Should Track

How do you know how well your chapter is growing? When my advisor asked for a recruitment update, I never felt like “Things are going well!” had enough weight behind it. I was also missing that clear signal to know when things weren’t going so well and a swift change in tactics was due. Especially if you’re trying to drive a dynamic recruitment for the first time in your chapter’s recent history, you might feel that you’re making tremendous progress, but your fellow officers aren’t seeing it the same way. You’ll need more than, “trust me, bro” to keep your train on the tracks.

If you’re anything like I was, you don’t have the time to run a great recruitment AND convince everyone (and sometimes yourself) that the plan is working. The pros are keeping it simple and letting the data tell the story – good or bad. Recruitment isn’t just about gut feelings; it’s about tracking the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to guide your efforts.

Two Types of Recruitment KPIs

Lagging Indicators → These show results after recruitment ends, like:

• Bids signed vs. bids offered

• New members retained vs. those who dropped

• Money spent on recruitment

These help reflect on past success but don’t help adjust strategy in real-time.

Lagging indicators are most useful to make it clear if you’ve met your objectives or prove that you haven’t. The pro’s know about them, but only use them to validate and adjust long-term strategy over the next several semesters. This is not the place to start if you suspect there’s significant room for improvement in how your chapter goes about recruitment.

Leading Indicators → These show real-time progress and predict future success, like:

• How many new people your chapter meets weekly

• The percentage of members actively meeting new people

• The number of unaffiliated Instagram followers gained

These help you make changes NOW before recruitment is over.

Leading indicators are on the minds of pro recruiters every week, if not every day. They know how much, how fast, and in which direction these KPIs are trending. They have thought through thresholds for each indicator that tells them when to double down and when to switch gears. These indicators often speak for themselves and when done well, they give your ‘recruitment update’ for you.

The Most Important KPI: Your North Star Metric

The best predictor of growth isn’t just the number of bids signed—it’s how many total relationships your members have with non-members. The more people you know, the stronger your recruitment potential.

Fraternities and Sororities are deeply social organizations. At the center of all of our chapters’ inceptions were excellent men and women who decided to gather and be excellent together. In order for you to be a member of the same organization decades later, those excellent founders must have intentionally sought out more excellent people to carry on the organization, year after year, all the way to you and the PNMs you’ll recruit in the coming months. Improving your North Star Metric by increasing the total number of people your members have relationships with gives you the best chance at finding those next excellent people to call brothers and sisters.

The scary part of any good North Star Metric: you rarely have total control over its trajectory. Being a great leader and top notch dynamic recruiter is knowing what levers you can pull, what measurable changes you expect those levers to make, and what impact that might have on your North Star Metric. If you’re ever unsure about a decision, choose the path that leads to more meaningful connections.

The KPI Ladder: 4 Leading Indicators That Drive Growth

North Star Metric: The total number of people your members have relationships with.

4 Key KPIs That Feed Into It:

1. Breadth → % of members who have met someone new in the last 30 days.

2. Depth → How many new people each member meets per week.

3. Frequency → How often members are meeting new people per week.

4. Quality → The ratio of high-potential recruits to low-interest contacts.

These 4 KPI inputs are the most influential, complementary factors that probably most directly affect your North Star Metric. All of ‘the work’ of your growth system drives your KPI inputs that drive your North Star Metric that drive your desired outcome of finding the right amount of the right people for your organization.

Why This Matters

Tracking these KPIs takes the guesswork out of recruitment. The best recruiters don’t just “hope” for success—they measure it, adapt, and improve. Keep your chapter focused on building relationships, and the rest will be a whole lot more phun!

Pro Tip: Want to grow? Start tracking how many new people your members meet weekly—and watch recruitment get simpler.

Pro Tip: More of a people person than a data wiz? There’s FREE tech that collects this data for you! No need to re-invent the wheel with over-engineered spreadsheets, hang out with our team in ChapterBuilder office hours and we’ll show you how it works!

Pro Tip: Don’t leave anything (especially excellent people!) on the table. Every person your chapter members have met have their own lives full of lessons and experiences you could learn from if you care and stay curious.

 Written by Jonah Mudse, Growth Consultant