Fraternities stand at a crossroads. Passive IFC and chapter recruitment efforts must be transformed into active, direct practices. Friendship, the principal benefit of joining a Greek organization, has not gone out of style and is still very much in demand on every campus, but our market demands a more personalized and individualized conversation about the benefits of our organizations. Interest in friendship-based groups will always exist among students. Fraternity members need to take their product, their friendship, directly to the potential buyer, the unaffiliated student.
Continued dialogue develops the relationship into a friendship.
The North-American Fraternity Conference membership recruitment strategy, therefore, is based on friendship. Since recruitment is nothing more than making friends, chapters which embrace the friendship approach during recruitment will attract a larger pool of students. Fraternities can meet this need to belong when our message is friendship. In analyzing the pool of men on campus, three types emerge. First is the 'always join' group.