Small Chapter. Simple Tactics. Big Results.

My name is Thomas Draper, I pledged Delta Sigs fall of 2019 in a pledge class of 3 guys. Our chapter at the time had 18 guys and I was motivated to increase this number to strive as a chapter.Within a couple months of becoming a brother, I attended the LEAD weekend that nationals offered to all the chapters.

My brother, who was the VP of recruitment, and I learned about recruitment strategies with Matt Mattson from Phired Up. We left that weekend more confident than ever, but still worried that the strategies would not work because of the different greek atmosphere that is at the small engineering school: Michigan Tech.

We hit the ground running with the strategies that spring and then COVID-19 hit and everything came to a halt. Fast forward to the fall and we were yet again ready to go.

We had many hoops to jump through with Michigan being half locked down during the global pandemic but we immediately found something that drove results, almost by chance. My brother and I went out on campus and set up a slackline and started balancing on it back and forth and it was like a magnet. Guys, and girls, would be amazed at what we were doing and stop to watch. This made it very easy for us, all we had to do was greet them and ask them if they’d like to try it out. It got them out of their comfort zone right away and acted as a conversation starter.

We continued doing this everyday during the first week of school and scattered the next few weeks and we were able to get a names list with 33 guys in ChapterBuilder. This may not seem like a lot to any ordinary chapter at a large university but as I mentioned before, in the 2019-2020 school year we gained 3 brothers.

The next few weeks we got closer to the guys and were able to choose the best 12 of these guys to give bids to. But we didn’t just give those guys the bids, we made sure to properly pre-close them and make sure that they were going to pick up. My chapter was able to give 12 bids and received 100% bid acceptance with only 15 actives to begin with.

To sum things up, Phired Up recruitment strategy works, even if you think your school or atmosphere is different and even in a global pandemic. Even the smallest of chapters can be successful if pursued right.