Write, Execute, Achieve: Greek Life Philanthropy
Many people normally associate Greek Life with negative connotations referring to alcohol, parties, an exclusive group, etc. However, after joining a sorority, so many opportunities have come upon me in order to better my community and myself. Within every chapter in Greek Life, their whole meaning surrounds their so-called philanthropy. Each year, every sorority and fraternity sets aside certain times to fundraise for their philanthropy. Nationally, each sorority and fraternity represents his or her organization or group with an end goal to raise money. However, how each sorority or chapter fulfills their goals successfully and efficiently is for that chapter to decide. In the midst of all of this fundraising come groups of people who need to work together competently to follow the written guidelines, execute the plan, and achieve the purpose of the events.
Ever wonder where all the posters, such as the ones below, advertising fun events such as “Slushies and Puppies,” or social media posts saying “Mac N Phis” come from or what these sayings even mean?
Well, I can tell you that most of them come from Greek Life representatives. Before joining my sorority of Alpha Phi at Delaware, I did not realize how much of an impact I would be making on not only my school and community, but also nationwide. However, even being in the sorority for almost three years now and partaking in all philanthropy events, I never realized how much work goes into all this fundraising. Specifically, I never realized the amount of writing and planning that goes into a week filled of events. In order for my sorority to execute the plan of our events and achieve our end purpose, we must follow all the written guidelines and advertise to the best of our ability to get the biggest turn out. In order to accomplish this, a lot of people have to come together. Luckily, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with some of my sororities’ philanthropy chairs, specifically our main philanthropy chair Gabby, who told me a lot of what happens behind the scenes of the events.
Specifically within my sorority at Delaware, we set aside two full weeks of philanthropy events each year, one week in October and one week in April. Nationally, Alpha Phi’s philanthropy is the Alpha Phi Foundation. In our philanthropy, we raise money for our foundation in order to help grant our sisters scholarships and help those who are affected by heart disease, as well as contribute a large amount of money toward women’s heart health and research. Below, you can see two of our Instagram stories after our events thanking everything for coming out and supporting us to help us raise a significant amount of money.
Before any of this fundraising, our philanthropy chairs work efficiently to contact the community, other fraternities and sororities on campus, our advisors, Alpha Phi Internationals, on-campus centers, and more. Gabby explained that for one of our sporting events she had to “email the gym to reserve a room and rent out pinnes for the team players.” They also work in order to spread awareness of the events taking place both works by making posters, flyers, and social media posts informing of the time and place of each event. In order to maximize our philanthropy week’s success, we kicked off the week with an Instagram post of some of our sisters. The caption stated, “Today kicks off our philanthropy week! Come by the Harrington turf from 3–5 today for Alpha Phifa. Keep updated on our social media for the rest of this weeks events.” Within all of this, a tremendous amount of writing and skill go into each day to make it the most successful to reach our end goal to fundraise and support women’s heart health.
Personally, my favorite events are “Slushies and Puppies”, “Mac N Phis”, and our greatest fundraising event, The Red Dress Gala. Although there are numerous events, these in particular are the events that I have sat in on and interviewed all the extra work that goes into how to make these occasions as amazing as they are and achieve our purpose. Slushies and Puppies was on Wednesday, April 17th, and is an event with puppies to play with, as well as slushies’ to purchase. Ultimately, I think you can see why people are so intrigued by this. I mean, who doesn’t like puppies? On Thursday, April 18th, Mac n Phis took place, where people come in late at night to get an endless amount of mac and cheese for $5. After getting more information from my interview of these two events, I saw a remarkable amount of advertising and contacting that occurred beforehand. The board members, for example, asked one fraternity to join us for Slushies and Puppies, and members within the fraternity brought some of their dogs they had on campus.
As you can see on one of our Instagram Stories on the last page, the fraternity and some girls in my sorority are sitting with the dogs during our event. They also read about what other Alpha Phis throughout the nation have done for their philanthropy events. They were also sure to ask many questions to make sure our event was very successful for us as it was for their chapter. Gabby stated, “We love to work with Alpha Phi at Arizona. We are always coordinating with them because they have been so successful with their philanthropy events. We also work with them on our Recruitment decorations and outfits, in addition to Philanthropy week events. Something we specifically loved and want to do for next year that we saw the Arizona chapter do was a talent show. With this talent show, a guy in each fraternity comes and puts on their talent; Arizona Alpha Phi made it clear it was very successful for them because it brought in almost every fraternity to watch their brothers, as well as each sorority wanting to come and cheer on their favorite fraternities.” After speaking with Gabby I went on Arizona Alpha Phi’s Instagram page to see any posts about this event.
To the left is one of their Instagram stories posting for their event. Particularly for all events, sororities will have amazing social media posts that are made for every girl in the sorority to post onto their social media pages to get the word out. Remarkable posters and banners by the most artistic sisters were also prepared as another way to spread the word. Below are some examples are the banners that hang on the Alpha Phi house to spread the word of our upcoming events.
Lastly, Red Dress Gala is our biggest event and occurs at the end of our philanthropy week in the fall. The hardest part of this event is making and sending out the invitations to all the girls and their families throughout the summer. These invites are hand written and are made beautifully, enclosed with a save a date and RSVP. The invitation contains magnificent cursive almost like it was typed looking a little something like this,
“The sisters of Alpha Phi
Invite you to attend the 10th Annual
Red Dress Gala
Benefiting the Alpha Phi Foundation
Friday, October 5th
Time: 7:00–11:00 pm
Tickets: $80 per person
Deerfield Country Club
RSVP by September 25th”
Next on the list entails placing each girl within the sorority into groups of four or five to build magnificent baskets in which are raffled off the night of the gala to gain the numerous amount of fundraising that we do during this event. The philanthropy chairs also go around to local businesses and send emails to companies who contribute every year with donations to advertise to them to give back to such a great cause. When I asked Gabby about this she laughed and stated, “We of course need to contact Deerfield, but they kind of know the deal by now and have a set menu for us for the dinner. We do have to contact them about a month before the event to give them an exact number and how we want the tables set up. Deerfield loves us!” Again, posters and social media posts are created for those who want to give to the cause, however, this event is for alpha phi’s and their families’ eyes only. Within all these events and every philanthropy event that takes place during the year, an event-planning document to Alpha Phi International must be sent in order to explain a rundown of the event. This writing must be done by someone who is proficient in their skills in order to relay all the details as specifically as they can, because any aspect left out can lead us into trouble with nationals.
Certainly, I would never think writing is a huge part of a sorority or fraternity, but I have seen from first hand experience that there is a lot people may not realize unless they are on the committee themselves. Within the “Threshold Concepts” section in Writing about Writing, Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs state, “We know that writing helps us communicate and make meaning with others, and get things done. We know this without being told because we use writing like this all the time” (11). Because writing comes so naturally to us, we may forget all the features of writing we partake in during an everyday experience. I have noticed that my fellow sisters are using the world of writing to come together and negotiate how to plan and target the audience in order to bring their ideas to life. Writing is what helps people be able to get things done and succeed in any aspect of their life. Wardle and Downs also state, “In our sororities, we have written guidelines and rituals that help us know who we are and what we stand for” (11). Writing can be very powerful, if done correctly. Within the philanthropy weeks, the philanthropy chairs use writing to their benefit and follow the rules for how all the committee chairs will diligently use writing together. My sisters are skillful writers, which have given my sorority the ability to productively meet our philanthropy goals each and every year.
