Today we are going to focus on a strategic plan that covers three specific areas that we feel are beneficial in the overall success of our Chapter. Increase in Membership, Fundraising, and Officer Continuity are all areas we have struggled with in the past but since implementing our strategic plan, we have seen a significant growth in the overall success within our organization.
Wichita State University is an urban University that has a vast number of non-traditional students. Many of our students have jobs and families outside of school. The majority of our classes are offered in the evenings so that our student body has the opportunity to work while furthering their education. This makes it difficult to recruit and retain members in our Epsilon Tau Chapter. Newly elected officers wanted to change this and increase membership within our organization. To accomplish this difficult task, we needed to offer our students incentives that would intrigue them enough to joining our society. After meeting with our faculty advisor, we came up with innovative and definitive ideas to achieve this goal.
First we implemented a “Meet the Firms” event. This event is held each semester and allows students to meet face to face with top management and recruiters from various industries around town. Typically we have between 18-25 businesses, attend this event. Firms like AGH, BKD, GT, and EY are all participating sponsors. The first hour of this event is strictly Beta Alpha Psi members only. We serve lunch and have the opportunity to meet and dine with all of the employers before the rest of the student body. The participating firms have made it clear that they know who they want in that first hour and as a result a large majority of our members have been offered part time jobs, internships or full time jobs upon graduation.
Secondly, we developed our very own BAP website. This website can be accessed by any individual who is curious about joining our society. However, our members have individual logins that allows them to access information regarding the latest job openings. Businesses and Firms around the Wichita area contact our faculty advisor about new positions on a daily basis. Our faculty advisor will then get in-touch with our VP of media, who will then post the new available positions online. Since implanting our new incentive based strategy we have seen a significant growth in our Epsilon Tau Chapter. In 2011 we had a total of 7 members and pledges. Last semester we grew to an astonishing 92 members and pledges.
Fundraising can be a challenge for any organization. Beta Alpha Psi Epsilon Tau Chapter is the only self-supporting society at Wichita State University. In order to support our growth we have implanted a strong and successful sponsorship package that has helped raise significant capital. This package has four different levels of contributions. The first tier is Sustaining Sponsor, the contribution is only $375 and allows the sponsor the choice of attending our Meet the Firms event or our Annual Scholarship Banquet, with two members of their organization. The second tier is Silver level sponsor, the contribution is $550 and allows the sponsor to bring 3 recruiters to either the Fall or Spring Meet the Firms and two seats at our Annual Scholarship Banquet. The third tier is a Gold level sponsor, the contribution is $725, and allows the sponsor to bring 4 recruiters to both the Fall and Spring Meet the Firms and 3 seats to our Annual Scholarship Banquet. The top tier to our sponsorship package is a Platinum level sponsor. The contribution is $975 and allows the sponsor to bring 6 recruiters to both Fall and Spring Meet the Firms, and have 4 seats to our Annual Scholarship Banquet. They also are recognized at the Annual Banquet and on our Chapter’s website. Last semester we had 18 businesses that were Platinum Status and