Your chapter facility needs minor or even extensive renovations.  You are thinking about developing a scholarship and leadership fund.  You need the finances to support a complete building project for a new chapter house.  These are the most frequently articulated reasons why fraternity alumni groups use companies like Affinity Connection, Inc. (affinityconnection.com), and have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in doing so.  Now, rather than spending more than $100,000 on a fundraising firm for your project, we're encouraging you to Do-It-Yourself – investing only in resources that you need – saving money you don't have and seeing greater results through a well-engineered grassroots effort.  Affinity Connection is releasing a comprehensive help guide and tool-kit later this summer to help you do just that.  In the meantime, consider these following steps in preparation before you go jumping into a capital campaign that should completely transform your fraternity and members:   Create (or improve on) a dialogue with your members   Develop an annual giving program   Test, clean, and ensure the accuracy of your member data   Establish multiple annual signature events   Create (or grow) your board to be representative of your membership   Develop a comprehensive strategic plan for your organization If you are unwilling to or uninterested in employing these strategies prior to beginning a campaign, we recommend that you seriously re-consider a decision to move forward with a major fundraising project.  Much of the success of a capital campaign is determined by the legwork, planning, and “salting of the market” done prior to ever making the first ask.  Create (or improve on) a dialogue with your members. Starting an alumni relations program for your chapter or alumni association is a key to cultivating your members and stewarding your donors.  The first time your members hear from you in 10 years should not be with a request to give $10,000.  You must be willing to take at least 12-18 months to start a communications initiative with the goal of re-building a relationship with your members.  If you already communicate with your members regularly (4 or more times per year), we recommend that you evaluate the quality of your communications program by asking the questions:   How are we communicating anything of value to members?   How are we actively engaging them in dialogue?   What do our members want to know from us that will engage them?   What stories do we share with members?   What action are we encouraging them to take? Develop an annual giving program. We believe a critical component in moving towards a capital campaign is getting your members into a habit of adding the Fraternity to their annual philanthropic recipients.  We call this developing a “philosophy of giving” within your membership.  Creating an annual giving program also allows for you to acquire valuable giving data on your membership.  Being able to see who cares enough or has high enough affinity for our Fraternity to make a regular gift is extremely helpful in the assessment and audit phase leading up to a major fundraising effort.  Lastly, creating an annual giving program allows you to scale-up your alumni relations program.  A strong annual giving program should enable your alumni relations program to pay for itself.  Test, clean, and ensure the accuracy of your members' data. To engage your members' involvement in a strategic initiative or even solicit them for a gift, you first have to know where they heck they live, what their email is, maybe even a phone number.  Many groups have bad addresses for nearly 20-35% of their members, especially those that have not maintained regular contact with them.  Start by combining 2 or more data sources (e.g. one database from TKE Headquarters, another from your university), and having a volunteer crosscheck the records provided by both sources.  Make sure you acquire a “source date” or “last updated” field with the data you receive.  After you have done some “cleaning”, it is time to test your data through your next alumni relations mailing.  Make sure you capture any returned mail, and then you can use a professional data service firm or online resource to find the most accurate information.  The 2009 TKE Membership Directory efforts will be providing this service to your chapter for free.  Be sure to take advantage of this resource and communicate to your members the news of this new directory. Establish multiple annual signature events. Events are a major key to FUN-raising and FRIEND-raising prior to a capital campaign.  Furthermore, they help an organization create a brand and image that it wants to convey to their membership.  If you are not hosting at least one annual event, that's a bad thing.  To strengthen the affinity of your membership, we recommend creating and hosting 2-3 annual alumni events that can become recognizable with your chapter.  If you host it… they will come.  Examples of great alumni events or concepts that some of chapters succeed with:   Annual Golf Outing & Awards Banquet – pretty much says it all.  Consider including funny awards or recognition for the worst of the worst.   Alumni Reunion Weekend – sometimes includes a golf tourney, but can include a social at the house, tour of a new university facility, and hosting of a keynote speaker.  Find something unique to your organization that will get people back.   Chapter Scholarship and/or Awards Banquet –groups that have a scholarship through the TKE Educational Foundation or university or national foundation will host a nice, formal awards banquet and invite all undergraduates, parents and alumni back for it.  Doesn't need to cost a lot, and you can charge a per plate or admissions fee.   “Fraternal Fifties” – pioneered by a group at Ohio State, this era-specific event draws dozens of alumni back for a nice dinner and reunion.  Famous, reputable speakers have been hosted, and the event brings people back every year.  Find a niche for your era or generation.   “We Don't Golf but Still Have Fun Fishing Trip” – developed by a Penn State group in response to their successful golf tournaments.  It now draws a dozen or more alumni every year.  Think about something to bring all those non-golfers back.   Pig Dinner – you don't have to be a FIJI to put a pig in the ground or rotating over a fire, though a lot of FIJI groups host fantastic pig roasts.  Do something with food, lots of it… it doesn't need to still have a head.   After Work Whiskies – hosted by a group at UGA, these became a tremendous networking event during the middle of their capital campaign, which raised in excess of $3 million.  An event doesn't need to be formal, nor have an agenda, just find a way for members to get together for something casual and fun.   Regional Events – identify where pockets of your alumni currently live, many may not live anywhere close to your organization's home.  Instead of constantly bringing them to the fraternity, bring the fraternity to them.  Not everything needs to be at the house to be successful or to get attendance.  One UGA group hosted four simultaneous alumni events in four pockets of the southeast on the weekend of the Florida-Georgia game – a great success.   Alumni-Parents Move-in Weekend – involve alumni and parents together in helping to safely (to humans and the house) move-in undergraduate members for the school year.  Gives a great opportunity for alumni to meet undergraduates, and parents to meet alumni.   Alumni-Active Work Weekend – while work is often the last thing you want to do during the summer or on a weekend, getting the chapter together during the summer with a host of alumni to make small improvements or help clean the house can build great relationships.  Even if the work is minimal, you can all come away having had a lot of fun and shared great stories. Create (or grow) your board to be representative of your membership. Are you the lone volunteer for your chapter?  Do you have a group of 5-6 board members that have served for the last 75 years?  Through your alumni communications, events, and annual giving efforts try to target members to serve on your board.  While influence and prominence are important, you probably need more than just someone to lend their name.  Start with trying to find a representative for every decade.  Promote opportunities to serve, and be specific about what you're looking for or what the “job” will require.  Not providing enough detail to answer the member's question “what will I be getting myself involved in” is a key mistake.  Don't forget SELL volunteering as a fun experience where you get to give back and reconnect with old friends – don't be a “buzz-kill.” Develop a comprehensive strategic plan for your chapter. In preparing for a major fundraising initiative, you should have already developed a strategic plan for your chapter – on the undergraduate and alumni levels.  Having a strategic plan for all elements of your chapter will help to crystallize the “case” for your cause as you think about approaching prospective donors.  As you begin to ask your members through an audit or feasibility study if they will be willing to invest their hard-earned money in a project you better have a strategic operational plan to present to them.  Remember, most affluent people don't get that way by being poor investors.  Think about your chapter as your own business, and that you need to shore-up all the aspects of your business before you go out to seek investment capital.  We assure you that your members' will see it as an investment, make sure you do too.  As you develop a strategic plan, consider covering the following components:   Recruitment – chapter   Performance/Recognition – chapter   Risk Management/Safety – chapter   House Maintenance – alumni/chapter   Financial Plan – alumni/chapter   Alumni Relations – alumni   Board Development – alumni   Traditions/Events – alumni   Fundraising – alumni After all that legwork there is a number of reasons to do-it-yourself, but let us make it clear – the D-I-Y philosophy isn't right for everyone.  Just as there are some homeowners that would rather hire someone to finish their basement than do it on their own (and can afford to do so), there are some volunteer organizations that simply do not want to put in the time to lead their own major fundraising initiative (and have $150,000 just laying around).  Whatever the case, make no mistake: a fundraising initiative will require time, talent and treasure of many members and volunteers whether you do-it-yourself or not.  We encourage you to think about initiating a major fundraising project as one component that could lead toward the “total re-birth” of your chapter.  Don't forget the TKE Educational Foundation has a scholarship and special projects account already established for your chapter that allows the donors you get to receive a tax deductible gift receipt for their gift.  If you'd like more information about alumni relations, annual campaigns, or major fundraising, feel free to contact the TKE Educational Foundation or by visiting companies such as  www.affinityconnection.com at nathan@affinityconnection.com or 1-800-598-4050.    Tau Kappa Epsilon would like to ensure that we have your most current information. 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