What Makes a Chapter Strong?

by Peter Kim

I believe every chapter officer wants to make their chapter strong and be competitive with other chapters.  I’m hoping that these tips will help you create a stronger chapter. General meetings are a way to communicate with members, and a perfect moment to explain chapter goals to fellow members. Now, how can you get more members or students to come to meetings?  Make the meeting time as convenient as possible and keep the meeting time consistent. Do not change the meeting time often, that will confuse students so a fewer number of students will appear. Set the general meeting agenda so that it is relevant to students’ needs such as providing transfer information or scholarship information with actual recipients’ stories. This will attract more members to attend the meetings.

The Chapter needs to encourage more members to volunteer on the HIA and College Projects. If more members become involved in chapter activities, more information and ideas will be shared . Therefore, membership retention and members engagements are essential parts of a strong chapter. How we can increase members’ involvement? Many students are  hesitant to engage with a new environment or academic activities that they think are not going to benefit them. Therefore, the chapter officers’ team has to demonstrate their strong leadership skills and develop an environment where that members are freely contributing to the chapter. However, you should not put too much pressure on members who decide to volunteer because too much responsibility will be a burden for them to handle. Try giving them relatively easy PTK tasks such as writing  blog entries or posting PTK event posters  and report their success during the general meetings. This will provide them with confidence and a feeling of accomplishment. Therefore, they will want to become more involved in activities and tasks. Please don’t forget this. Chapter officers must make the effort to sustain constant communication with volunteers so they won’t feel left out, but part of team. These tips are what make a chapter stronger and would make more chapter members actively involved in chapter activities.