Guide to Principled Recruitment

1. Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Guide to Principled Recruitment

2. Overview Three Keys to Effective Recruiting Five Steps to Effective Recruiting • Persistence • Personality • Timing • Define your terms • Understand YOUR job • Know what Sinfonia has to offer • Relationships = Effective Recruitment • Recruiting never ends

3. Three Keys to Effective Recruitment

4. 1st Key - Persistence It usually takes multiple contacts with a prospective member to make him feel welcome and comfortable with the group. Things to consider: How much is too much? How can you be persistent and welcoming at the same time?

5. 2nd Key – Personality First impressions are lasting. Things to consider: How do brothers who are more socially introverted fit into the recruiting equation? What can a chapter do to help its members be more effective recruiters?

6. 3rd Key - Timing A contact made at the wrong time is wasted. Things to consider: When is the best time to ask someone to consider joining? What are the factors in college life that may make joining a Fraternity attractive? What factors make it difficult?

7. Five Steps to Effective Recruitment

8. Step 1: Define your terms What is the Fraternity?

9. “Personally, I look upon a fraternity, as not only a social body, but an educational influence. Our business is the making of men; and the all-important question for us ‘Are Sinfonians any better for being Sinfonians? Do they leave our portals physically, mentally, morally stronger, cleaner, purer - in fact more worthy men than when they enter?’ If not, then the Sinfonia Fraternity has no excuse for existing and for making such large drafts on our time, our energy and our means.”

10. “Fraternity seeks to upbuild the whole man, to make of him a manlier man, a more musicianly musician.”

11. “[Sinfonia] supplies a very real need in the minds and heart of young men, and older ones, too, who want to develop musicianship and manhood.”

12. “Sinfonia… does not say that every man shall admire everything in everybody who is a Sinfonian. This would smack of insincerity. It means something on the level - practical and helpful; for in Sinfonia it is designed that every man should study everything in everybody in order that he may know him better - that he may recognize his virtues by praising and trying to emulate him and discern his weakness and shortcomings by sympathizing with and trying to help him.”

13. Step 1: Define your terms Who are we looking for?

14. Who are we looking for? • Who needs Sinfonia? • Who does Sinfonia (or your chapter) need? • What type of members do we want to attract? • What type of members do we want to avoid? ________________________________________________________________________________________________ • What role do conservatism play in your chapter’s recruitment philosophy? • Quality attracts members, but so does quantity. • People want to be part of something they perceive to be successful.

15. Step 2: Understand YOUR job What is our responsibility?

16. “I am deeply impressed with the responsibility we assume when we invite men to become one with us, bound together by fraternal ties that are never to be broken. It is a serious responsibility, as well as a great opportunity, and God will surely hold us to strict account for our influence upon each other, whether it be for good or for evil, uplifting or degrading.”

17. “The type of man you and I are, the personal influence that radiates from our lives, will be the power to make or unmake the men with whom we are now associated or who shall come after us. If we are men of low ideals or no ideals, it is folly to expect much of worth from the organization.”

18. Step 3: Know What Sinfonia Offers What are the benefits of membership?

19. “…many a young man has been inspired through his Fraternity associations with an ambition to make the most of his life and in every way to be worthy the respect of his brothers…Many of the boys are now out in the world fighting the battle of life, making a place and a name for themselves, inspired to do their best by the thought that their brothers are deeply interested in their successes.”

20. “Whereas before you may have lived isolated in your work, in your pleasures and pains, your conquests and defeats, your hopes and despairs, now you have company. The force of the idea of brotherhood has made itself felt upon you.”

21. “This abundant good-fellowship makes a wholesome, uplifting and indelible impress upon your complete manhood and is fashioning you into a better all-round man and a better man all around - outside as well as inside the mystic circle.”

22. Step 4: Relationships = Effective Recruiting The relative unimportance of Rush Week

23. Why did you join? • Events can have an impact, but men will join if they have developed a trust with a brother or brothers. • Chapters must have discussions that allow individual members to express their reasons for joining. • This is a critical understanding that will in forming your recruitment philosophy and process.

24. Step 5: Recruiting Never Ends Active and Inactive Recruitment

25. Active Recruitment is the typical “rush” cycle. This includes formal and informal rush activities

26. Strategies to improve the success of your chapter’s active recruitment • Start planning the previous semester • Active recruitment is too big for one person to plan • Take input from the entire chapter • Make a list of prospective members and sources of potential members • Create an advertisement plan

27. Things to remember when advertising • Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia is not only for music majors • Make recruitment brochures and posters • Publicize your chapter’s website and email contact • Designate days when everyone wears Fraternity insignias. • Ask Faculty Sinfonians for assistance in recruiting • Make sure they do not misrepresent the Fraternity. • Invite non-members to participate in functions.

28. Inactive Recruiting How you treat and act around both members and non-members on a regular, day-to-day basis.

29. “Always remember that you are only one of many, yet a thousand eyes are upon you and will judge the whole Fraternity by your deeds, words and character.” - Edward J. Stringham (Iota)