[steves504@yahoo.com]

Totally in disagreement with this but good topic. Instead of focusing on increasing chapters dues and reducing individual intake, I’ll say flip that view. Reduce chapter dues with increasing number of financial members in that chapter.

Our issue today is the lack of member and chapter numbers that are paying dues. We have a 3k membership fraternity (or whatever the average is using the last 5 yrs average number with the intake average of same years).

Most if not all fraternal benefits are at the member level and not the chapter level. Create a link that entice members to become financial while reducing the chapter due cost. Similar to the UG approach but use buckets to separate chapter due cost. A chapter with 1-5 active members pays $x dollars chapter cost, 6-10, 11-15 (whatever the bucket is using the average of active chapter members). This will drive active membership where most benefit lies and increase active chapters but the cost of that chapter to be directly linked to chapter growth/membership performance. The fraternity will win across multiple lanes without losing total revenue. More to this, just too much to type.

It may be time we shift to performance based operations to help drive other areas of our metrics which ultimately increase incoming funds but maintain same cost or even lowered cost with every increase.

At the end, great topic and point. I’m a firm believer that when we are at the point of increasing “taxes”, we are also at the point to reevaluate our operating cost. We may needs to reduce cost instead of looking at increasing tax. Just a formula I’ve used in business that have saved a lot. In this case, not sure if its relevant but could be considered.