8 minute read
Building Better Brotherhood
As many chapter officers can tell you, brotherhood is difficult to quantify or even define. In a world increasingly focused on quantitative approaches to just about everything, these difficulties provide a challenge for fraternities that are often tasked with proving the fraternity experience is worth the time and financial commitment to numerous stakeholders. Even highfunctioning chapters able to express their value may struggle with demonstrating the effectiveness of their membership development programs.
When I was elected chapter president, I found myself among brothers unsure of the financial and developmental worth of my chapter’s membership experience. Around election season it became all too prevalent to see members questioning why they joined and if they even belonged in the chapter. I never thought I would be chapter president during my undergraduate membership in Delta Upsilon. However, as someone whose life has been exceedingly transformed by Delta Upsilon and my sense of belonging in it, seeing my brothers not having a similar experience was heartbreaking. I felt compelled to run for office.
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To make members feel welcome and that their time and money were well spent, I knew my actions must have demonstrable impact on other members. Thus, the majority of my time as president has been spent developing a data-driven method to systematically evaluate, improve, and re-evaluate the member experience provided by my chapter to make members certain our chapter gives more than it takes. This databased approach had an unmistakable impact on my chapter, and I believe similar approaches would be worthwhile for most, if not all, fraternities and sororities. The purpose of this article is to discuss the key principles of our data driven approach, implementation within my chapter, and the outcomes to this point. I believe the methods presented herein are applicable to all areas of chapter operations, though my testimonials come from the area of membership development.
Preliminary Data Gathering
Gathering targeted feedback from every single member is critical to systemic improvement. In an organization reliant upon ever-changing membership for its existence, every single member is important as are the demands for their time by the organization. Neglecting even a single member can — and likely will — make them feel excluded and either begin or increase feelings of alienation. While mass-emailing a survey is a tempting and efficient means of chapter-wide data gathering, and while this methodology does have its place, it was not ideal for my desired outcomes. Such surveys are easy for members to ignore and they do not allow for real-time follow-up questions to help brothers develop thoughts or explore intriguing topics that may arise. Individual interviews using a common set of questions are preferable as they alleviate the problems previously outlined while also potentially forging new relationships between brothers. The interviewers should be chapter leaders — likely those on the executive board plus perhaps chapter chairmen — and the common interview questions should target only one or two areas the chapter leadership wants to improve during the semester.
As for my own experience, I developed a short survey focusing on brothers’ sense of belonging and chapter worth by asking a combination of open-ended (e.g. “What can the chapter, its members, and/or the executive board do to make DU more worth your time, money, and effort?”) and quantitative (e.g. “On a scale from 1 to 10, how well do you feel you are able to express your feelings, ideas, and opinions around your brothers without feeling disrespected because of what you say?”) questions. I administered this to each executive board member so they would feel comfortable administering it to their assigned general members. This was done within the first two weeks of the spring semester, and we went over the feedback as a board soon thereafter. The feedback was incredibly insightful and wonderfully creative. Chapter members suggested novel and substantive ways to build brotherhood. In addition, they felt implementing these ideas would make their membership more worthwhile and make them feel like they truly belonged. At that point we knew we were onto something.
Implementation of Feedback
Members must know what their time spent being interviewed is worth. As a chapter leader, what tangible deliverables are derived from the data? Maybe a new kind of brotherhood event? A chapter tradition? A philanthropy idea? How do any of these things add value to the chapter and how will members know their feedback is driving the organization? This last question is crucial, as failing to robustly and clearly answer it makes members feel their time and feedback were meaningless and could undermine the data-driven approach and chapter’s confidence in the executive board. Distributed summaries of feedback and a list of actions derived from it are extremely helpful tools to avoid this pitfall, but it is important to be explicit. Say what was suggested and how that has been translated into an actionable item or how the feedback is being addressed. Do not dismiss critical feedback or twist feedback to suit predetermined objectives. Member feedback should be considered in addition to any officer visions and goals already established. Mutual exclusivity between different perspectives must be carefully addressed.
My chapter’s spring semester programming calendar essentially wrote itself because of our beginning of semester interviews. This allowed us to put our time and energy into planning the events suggested by members rather than having to invest time and energy into brainstorming new ideas. Since our planning process was more effective, we were able to hold more events, which was another member request.
Additionally, the interviews revealed issues regarding chapter culture that members wanted addressed, which led to meaningful dialogue in the chapter that resulted in non-disruptive and positive culture change. The pieces of feedback leading to these changes were made clear to the chapter by compiling and distributing a feedback summary report with action items early in the semester. Brothers were able to watch these action items take shape and seemed happy they made meaningful contributions to the chapter. Meanwhile, officers were happy they could develop outcome-oriented goals informed by the membership.
Evaluation of Changes & Documentation
A data-driven organization must provide those who give feedback with the opportunity to evaluate its implementation. This evaluation must be available for future leaders. Average leaders gather feedback and good leaders implement it. However, great leaders also gather feedback on the implementation. It is easy to stop after initial feedback implementation, but this does not necessarily help the organization in the long run. Without follow up the chapter leadership does not know the sentiments of the general membership regarding the work they did, nor is there anything to be handed down to the next generation of leaders besides anecdotes and a fading footprint of their predecessors’ work. Similar to exit interviews in the professional world, follow-up interviews give members the opportunity to evaluate the chapter’s progress and voice opinions on how their feedback was meaningfully addressed. These interviews also bookend a phase of potentially substantial chapter change, allowing for meaningful documentation in the form of problem-approach-outcomes. This documentation is a crucial goal setting tool for incoming or aspiring chapter leaders, as are continued and improved iterations of the interview-implement interview cycle.
My executive board conducted end-of-semester interviews in the spring to determine if members felt we made progress in the right areas. By the end of the semester, every single qualitative and quantitative metric included in the first interview had improved. Members were incredibly supportive of the work the chapter officers had done, and were excited for our future. However, they were also not afraid to voice their beliefs regarding where we fell short and what needed to be addressed in the fall. After we completed this round of interviews, I compiled and distributed an end-of-semester feedback summary. I linked the feedback and action items from the beginning of the semester with their end-of-semester counterparts for the sake of transparency, continuity, and desire to improve wherever possible.
We used this document to ensure areas for improvement were addressed in the fall. Using the wealth of data available at the end of the semester, I also compiled a semesterly report that will turn into our chapter’s annual report by the end of the year once we have the fall data. Finally, the interview feedback and semesterly reports are already being used as a foundation for a three-year chapter plan. The data we gathered from the interviews and the resulting report provided us with tangible information to use regarding members’ visions for the chapter and areas of focus for the plan.
Conclusions
A data-driven approach to systemic chapter improvement is well worth the time invested by our chapter. Such an approach has catapulted my chapter from a good chapter with a questionable value-added proposition to a high performing, award-winning chapter that provides members the means to satisfy their wants and needs. Through preliminary data gathering, feedback implementation, and follow-up evaluation, chapters can make strides in improving members’ experiences. In addition, such a system provides valuable opportunities to develop deeper relationships between interviewer and interviewee. Through this, brothers know their ideas, frustrations, and desires matter to chapter leadership. The dynamic nature of questions and responses from semester to semester creates a sustainable cycle for chapter development, given there are strong leadership transitions and advisory support to sustain the system. Fraternity and sorority members have no choice but to provide evidence to demonstrate how their efforts add value to chapter membership and how members receive a personalized experience. My approach has provided this in my chapter and I believe it can be transferred to others, as well.
Clayton Cooper is an undergraduate student at Case Western Reserve University studying mechanical engineering. He has been a member of Delta Upsilon since 2015 and has served the fraternity at the local and national levels since his first semester as a member. He will pursue a PhD in mechanical engineering upon his graduation this December and aspires to one day be a professor at his alma mater and an alumni advisor to his chapter.
