From the NPC Chair: State of the Conference

Dear friends,

During the recent NPC Annual Membership Meeting held April 29 in Carmel, Indiana, NPC Chair Cheri M. De Jong and NPC CEO Dani Weatherford, J.D., shared a State of the Conference report on behalf of the NPC Board of Directors with the Council of Delegates. Following the event, they recorded a video version of the report so all NPC family members and stakeholders could hear the message.

In the State of the Conference report, De Jong’s portion focuses on noting the board’s strategic framework which includes:

• Growing our Panhellenic communities
• Championing the sorority experience

She outlines membership trends, the challenges many member organizations face with declining enrollment and the board’s role in supporting staff. Additionally, De Jong addressed the upcoming leadership transition as the biennium comes to a close at the end of June.

Weatherford then reports on many strategic framework initiatives over the past year, noting detailed analysis and results from the campus-based digital marketing campaigns to an overview of the national marketing campaign with Carnegie. She also reports on the data analysis program and ongoing efforts of campuses looking at alternative recruitment models.

You can watch the recording of the State of the Conference here.

Interfraternally,

Cheri M. De Jong
2021-23 NPC chair

From the NPC Chairman: The State of the Conference | April 2022

Dear friends,

The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) recently held its Annual Conference, March 31 – April 1, in Louisville, Kentucky. This was the first large in-person gathering of Conference and member organization leaders, volunteers and staff since October 2019, prior to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this Annual Conference, NPC CEO Dani Weatherford, J.D., and I shared a State of the Conference report on behalf of the NPC Board of Directors. That report recapped the work of the NPC board and workforce (volunteers and staff) and offered insight into our current efforts and future focus. I'm pleased to share with you edited excerpts of the report below.

Interfraternally,

Cheri M. De Jong
2021-23 NPC Chairman

The State of the Conference | April 2022

Speaker: Cheri M. De Jong, NPC chairman 

It is a privilege and honor today to be a part of providing the state of the National Panhellenic Conference. NPC has had many achievements over the past year, yet there continue to be a variety of challenges that all of us are facing together. 

Today I will discuss the work of the board this past year, various initiatives that the board has directed and how that is defining our focus in the coming years.

These incredible women that make up the NPC Board of Directors bring forth broad professional expertise, countless leadership experiences within the fraternal community, assorted professional skills, different perspectives and knowledge within NPC, and unique thoughts and ideas on improving and enriching NPC and how we advocate for the sorority experience. 

As this board began their work of the Conference nine months ago, we determined that with a change of leadership, a still-new governance structure and the many challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic brought, it would be essential to engage in a listening tour of our constituents. This listening tour had each of our board members reach out to member organization leadership teams that consisted of delegates, inter/national presidents and executive directors to discuss their strategic interests and priorities, challenges and feedback on NPC activities. These meetings with member organizations provided clear and direct feedback for the board on the Conference's priorities.

The loud messages were compiled, and the board reviewed the information, keying in on areas that member organizations believed NPC could make a difference and how those issues align with our strategic focus areas. It was determined NPC should remain committed to two main areas:

• Cultivate Strategic Growth of Panhellenic Communities.
• Champion the Sorority Experience.

The key focus for this board is the growth and promotion of the sorority experience through marketing and public relations efforts. Growth is of utmost importance for our member organizations. Additionally, marketing about the sorority experience is also a top priority to create awareness of sorority life that can benefit all of our recruitment efforts.

Our organizations also have many challenges and opportunities:

Housing. If there is one thing that so many member organization leaders have voiced during the past several years, it is housing and the inability to fill some of your houses due to lower membership numbers. As a former national president, I understand and sympathize with each and every one of you. These financial burdens weigh heavy on your organizations and potentially drain resources that could be deployed elsewhere. …

Declining college enrollment in some regions of the country is significantly impacting many of our collegiate chapters. The changing demographic is perhaps the bigger issue of students enrolling in college. …

 Alongside this is declining interest in our organizations and questions about our relevancy to young women in today’s collegiate experience. The world is changing, and so are our potential new members. Our organizations are making changes too, whether it be to legacy or recommendation policies, acceptance of transgender members and creating more diverse and inclusive membership opportunities. Our communities are transforming, and this is a moment of adjustment for all of us. … 

Each of these challenges is being felt by all our member organizations, and we realize that these challenges create opportunities for NPC to help grow our Panhellenic communities, promote and advocate for our sorority experience and continue to be a convener for our member organizations to work together on campus-specific needs or engaging in issues that we all face. …

So where do we go from here?

The board has embarked on several initiatives as a result of the priorities previously discussed and is driving our future focus. (Those initiatives include:)

• Opportunities to partner with researchers to support our marketing messages with strong relevancy data. …
• The Growth and Marketing Pilot currently underway … to target campuses to increase recruitment of potential new members … 
• A full audit of the NPC Manual of Information to streamline the information and strengthen accountability to Unanimous Agreements, policies and best practices. … 
• Diversity, equity, inclusion and access with the board’s focus shifted to including and incorporating access and equity in our conversations, resources and communications for our College and Alumnae Panhellenics to use. … 

The NPC Board of Directors wants to see all of us working together toward the same goals: focused marketing and other initiatives to grow our Panhellenic communities and consideration of ideas to break down the barriers to membership in our organizations.

If we want to survive and be relevant in five, 10 or 20 years, we need to do this collaboratively. I hope you all feel that we are partners in this critical work. We want to dive into the issues and create the best possible solutions to ultimately provide an inclusive, values-oriented, affordable and relevant membership experience to as many collegiate women as possible. And together, we can make this happen. …

Speaker: Dani Weatherford, NPC CEO

 This was a year when we were able to return our focus to the Strategic Plan after pausing almost all of that work from spring 2020 to spring 2021 to respond to the COVID pandemic and anti-sorority activism. As a reminder, the plan prioritizes three major areas:

Priority number one is to Cultivate Strategic Growth of Panhellenic Communities. I think of this bucket of work as direct and tactical support of our College and Alumnae Panhellenic communities. Providing them with the tools and resources needed to function appropriately and focus their efforts on bringing more women of various backgrounds into the community. (Work in this priority includes but it not limited to:)

• Our flagship opportunity to train College Panhellenic officers is the College Panhellenic Academy. … 
• New recruitment resources and education for College and Alumnae Panhellenics.  … 
• Providing resources related to creating a more inclusive recruitment process. … 
• A new partnership with Phired Up to provide a three-part marketing training series to current and incoming Panhellenic marketing and recruitment officers. …
• Nearly a full year of work dedicated to recruitment reform. …
• Our Growth and Marketing Pilot to provide targeted coaching to Panhellenic communities in the most need. … 
• Several other projects and work groups supporting our College Panhellenic communities. …

Priority number two is Champion the Sorority Experience. I think of this priority as our advocacy work mostly done at the national level—promoting our brand and protecting the experience—but we also do this at the local level. (Work in this priority includes but it not limited to:)

• The work of the NPC staff in managing campus concerns. …
• The promotion of the sorority brand through awareness campaigns, including direct advertising, national marketing partnerships and pipeline program partnerships. …
• Advancing our legislative agenda through policy advocacy work, engaging on such topics as freedom of association, anti-hazing initiatives and tax parity. …
• Research partnerships, including our renewed collaboration with Gallup and a partnership with Dr. Patrick Biddix. These efforts are focused on the impact of sorority membership. … 

Priority number three is Leverage the Collective Strength of our Member Organizations, along with our industry partners, to continue advancing the sorority experience. (Work in this priority includes but it not limited to:)

• NPC volunteer recruitment, development and accountability, including for the volunteers supporting 583 College Panhellenics and 171 Alumnae Panhellenics. …
• Growing the NPC Partner Program. …
• Convening (virtual) NPC Family Gatherings to share data and information with internal stakeholders. …

Thank you for what you do to advance the sorority experience and to create a community that is kind and welcoming to all women who want to be a part of this extraordinary sisterhood.

From the NPC Chairman: The State of the Conference in 2021

Per the Bylaws of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), the Board of Directors shall submit an annual report to the Council of Delegates during each Annual Membership Meeting. During the 2021 NPC Annual Membership Meeting, held virtually on April 10, the board delivered its annual report of the activities and financial position of NPC. Following is an edited version of excerpts from the chairman’s portion of the report, presented by NPC Chairman Carole J. Jones.

During the June 4 (2020) Council of Delegates call I shared a quote from Cora L.V. Hatch – “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

This past year has certainly been a year of adjustment as the NPC Board of Directors continuously assessed the changing winds brought on by the pandemic and anti-sorority activism, and carefully and thoughtfully adjusted our sails in response. When the pandemic hit and students were sent home last spring, the board’s focus had to quickly shift from conversations about the future of sorority and Project 2029 to how to protect sorority members and the sorority experience in the moment of a very real and ongoing crisis. I am humbled by the support of our member organizations, inspired by what we accomplished together and energized by the potential for big things to come.

The challenges of this past year offered us an opportunity to test changes to the ways in which we recruit and to begin eliminating barriers to membership, including some financial barriers. In response to the relevancy research conducted last summer and presented to the NPC family last fall, staff and members of the board have been engaged in considerable conversations about the findings and appropriate responses to them.

As announced earlier this year, we have launched an examination of the cost of sorority membership with the context of growing over-arching concerns about college affordability. As part of this yearlong project, data has been gathered and reviewed regarding the costs associated with Panhellenic membership recruitment and we are already at work incorporating what we’ve learned. …

Knowing that NPC can more effectively tell its story when it is backed by data, the board has been committed to partnering with research experts. For example, we partnered with VOX Global for the 2020 relevancy research. Those research results have informed our current and future marketing efforts, such as Join a Sorority Week and new quarterly campaign templates for College Panhellenics. And, we’re beginning to roll out updated NPC messaging and proof points – supported by the relevancy research and other sources – to help us focus on our strengths and improve public perceptions.

We are also pleased to partner with the Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research and Reform as we embark on two companion research studies that will evaluate cultural competency and diversity, equity and inclusion within NPC-affiliated sorority chapters. The two studies will measure the level of cultural competency among sorority women at both minority-serving institutions and at predominantly white institutions. Researchers will also identify best practices for strengthening competency and enhancing inclusion within sorority chapters and communities. …

But it hasn’t only been the pandemic that has influenced the board’s work and the work of the Conference and its member organizations. As part of the strategic plan, the board had begun strategic discussions regarding racism and inequity within Panhellenic organizations prior to the pandemic and the conversations about racial injustice. This has helped bring greater clarity to these topics and set us on a path to create a more inclusive, equitable and accessible Panhellenic sorority experience.

We appointed the Access and Equity Advisory Committee, and they have been diligently working in three areas:

• Auditing of Unanimous Agreements, policies, best practices and template documents. …
• Consulting on inclusion of diversity factors for NPC workforce recruitment focusing on creating an accessible and equitable recruitment, hiring, application, selection and onboarding process as part of our commitment to building a diverse and inclusive workforce, both staff and volunteers
• And third, identifying barriers to access created by norms and practices at the campus level. Data from College Panhellenic area advisors, chief panhellenic officers and member organization chapter services staff has been gathered and reviewed to develop a better and broader understanding of barriers that exist on the campus level.

We know that collegiate members seek to hold NPC and inter/national leadership responsible to make changes within current policies and practices in response to the demographic and attitudinal shifts that will continue to happen within the collegiate environment. Moving forward, as we work to create positive change toward access and inclusion within our organizations, the Access and Equity Advisory Committee will be focused on recommending potential pipeline programs for recruiting a more diverse group of high school women and helping to educate them about the Panhellenic experience, identifying barriers to sorority membership based on social identities and reviewing Resolved to Educate resource documents in order to provide recommended edits to include more inclusive language.

And, finally they are working to recommend a process for reporting bias and discrimination by Panhellenic community members, recognizing that adjudication of such incidents would likely be handled by individual member organization chapters.

As we lived through this uncertain year, I believe there is a silver lining as it has helped us make change faster than anyone ever expected. The spring task forces led the way in ensuring Panhellenics could operate during the pandemic and prepare to welcome new members last fall. The need and desire to make aggressive and significant changes to the way we offer membership, removing barriers to the cost of membership and responding to questions of diversity, inclusion and gender identity that reflect our values and respond to the expectations of our members and prospective members all fit into the larger whole of visioning the sorority experience in 2029.

We continue to discuss and examine ways to help our Panhellenic communities reflect the diversity they would like to achieve, consider and work to change the systems and norms within the Panhellenic community that have historically benefited and centered the experiences of women of privilege and empower our members and volunteers to openly discuss race and racial injustice. …

We have learned this year that we cannot predict what the future holds, but rest assured our commitment to our mission will not waver. Together, we will continue to build upon a stronger, healthier sorority community. Each of us are concerned about our organizations’ survival during this time of uncertainty. We are all grappling with complex challenges, but it is crucial that we understand how these challenges and our responses to them affect the greater good of our Panhellenic communities and the Conference as a whole.

One example, and a great win for the sorority community, was our win at Harvard. It took two years of legal maneuvers and the issuance of many public statements condemning the school’s actions, but Harvard women once again have the opportunity to celebrate sisterhood. We look forward to rebuilding that Panhellenic community to be stronger than ever.

However, the fight to protect the fraternity and sorority experience is far from over. Many institutions seek retribution against our membership organizations for a variety of reasons. So, the value of fraternity and sorority life must always be at the forefront of our mission.

We are all the Conference. It is not a separate entity. As we work to leverage our strengths to advance sorority, let us remember the values we have collectively committed to – relationships built on trust through transparency, accountability and mutual respect. Innovation and our core values of friendship, leadership, service, knowledge, integrity and community guide us in fulfilling our mission of the advancement of the sorority experience.

I invite you to imagine with me the impact we can have together in the years to come. The board looks forward to our continued work together as we make sound decisions and understand how to thrive in today’s ever-changing world.

From the NPC Chairman: The State of the Conference

This month’s Chairman’s Message is an edited excerpt of the “State of the Conference” address delivered by NPC Chairman Carole Jones during the 2019 NPC Annual Educational Conference.

This moment in the history of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) is one to be viewed with gratitude and pride. NPC is in a position of remarkable strength due to the collective efforts of our volunteers and staff to exceed the expectations outlined in our 2019-22 Strategic Plan. The plan’s key priorities broadly define the approaches NPC volunteers and staff will use during the next few years to accomplish our mission and drive toward our vision of Advancing the Sorority Experience.

Most importantly, the plan and the work of our NPC volunteers and staff have positioned NPC and the entire sorority community for a future that ensures our organizations, and the critical experiences and empowerment of young women, not only continue, but thrive.

NPC Chairman Carole Jones delivers the "State of the Conference" address
during the 2019 NPC Annual Educational Conference.

Stronger Than Ever

Put simply, the National Panhellenic Conference today is the most strategic and purposeful version of itself that has ever existed. As a conference we are positioned to act on our strategic plan in the months ahead, and we are equipped to be deliberate and intentional about how we chart a future for all sorority women.

Investments in NPC staff have equipped us to act on the strategic plan, and each day NPC volunteers work with campus professionals to strengthen relationships and cultivate new ones.

A re-imagined Board of Directors has the freedom to prioritize the strategic direction for NPC to ensure long-term viability and success. This new focus is a shift from our approach in years past, but it is the type of work that will move us forward – together. 

Future of Sorority

NPC’s focus on the future of sorority is arguably our most important role and the most valuable contribution we can make to the sorority community. By asking the right questions about our organizations, the environment we operate within and the nature of higher education today, the board can ensure we preserve valuable sorority experiences, while adapting and evolving to meet new needs.

• How do we best protect the sorority experience in environments that can be skeptical of our mission and sometimes hostile to our existence?
• How do we protect student rights and the right of free association?
• How do we develop new partnerships with student affairs professionals and campus leaders?
• How do we evolve and embrace questions of diversity, inclusion and gender identity that reflect our values and respond to the expectations from new members and prospective members?
• How do we anticipate and prepare for legal and legislative battles that may impact our right to operate and thrive?
• How do we continue confronting challenges like hazing, sexual assault and high-risk drinking?
• How do we define feminism and women’s empowerment for our organization and our women at a time when equality and gender equity is front and center in our national and international debate? 

These are far from the only questions we must ask ourselves, but these are exactly the type of questions that must be front and center on the agenda for the Board of Directors. While our work is just beginning, our efforts to answer these questions and more are reflected in so much of the work already being done across the conference at the staff, volunteer and board level.
   
But, perhaps our most important future-looking work lies in Project 2029 – a focused effort to imagine the sorority experience in the year 2029. This project embraces each of the three priorities of our strategic plan and honors the work of our PR & Marketing and Recruitment & Expanded Membership Model Think Tanks. If we are to not only continue to exist, but to enhance our relevance into the future, we must understand and, indeed, anticipate what that future looks like.

This work does not replace our three-year strategic plan. Rather, it is a futuristic thought process designed to ensure we are employing long-term thinking while implementing our short-term plan. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to, changing student demographics, enrollment fluctuation, increased financial need for students and new models of learning.

With student populations and expectations for membership changing more rapidly and dramatically than ever, the board recognizes we need a clear understanding of who our potential members will be in order to create conditions for their success and engagement. Project 2029 is one of the major steps we will take to achieve that goal.

Thoughtful Oversight & Open Lines of Communication
    
As a board, we are committed to providing thoughtful oversight of existing NPC activities and the execution of the strategic plan. And we’re equally committed to engaging the conference at large, seeking your counsel and your input.

How we work may change, but our commitment to our mission remains as steadfast as ever. And our vision for consensus and collaboration across the conference will continue to be central to our identity and how we advance the sorority experience together.

Panhellenically,

Carole J. Jones
NPC Chairman 2019-21