Summer Leadership Retreat has always been my favorite meeting; as a board member it allows me to be able to spend time getting to know our chapter leaders on a more individual basis.
This year SLR has held at the beautiful campus of Southern New Hampshire University, home to Kappa Chi Chapter. We started off Saturday morning in small groups participating in team building games led by board members. The goal of the team building activities were to help emphasize the importance of working together and communicating how it relates back to leading at the chapter level. After groups were able to complete the activity we added a twist to make the games harder, for example, no talking. Next, we reviewed the Chapter Operations Guide to make sure that they were up to-date, had a delicious lunch, and dove into the business meeting.
During the business meeting, we read a letter from our representive Shamera Simpson, from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In the letter, she highlighted that our donation at Convention has provided education to over 2,000 individuals and hasprovided resources to those who have lost a loved one to suicide. We also passed out goodie bags of promotional items available to you to help raise awareness and funds for the AFSP. She also challenged us to keep making a difference in our communities and to keep striving to do more.
After our business meeting, we began the presentations. This year we chose to extend the opportunity to one of the undergraduate women in attendance, to lead a presentation on recruitment to her peers. One thing that I loved about all the presentations were the Kahoot games at the end and watching how competitive everyone was in order to win some Kappa swag! During the Philanthropy presentation we discussed the importance of individuals and chapters submitting their philanthropies hours so we can have an accurate depiction of what our sisterhood accomplishes during the school year. We also discussed working towards a record setting donation for our organization and raising $26,000 this year for our National Philanthropy, the AFSP.
We finished up Saturday with our Pie-A-Board Member Fundraiser, which we raised $2,000 with, putting us well on our way to our $26,000 goal. In the weeks leading up to SLR we collected donations and tallied the votes for which 3 board members people wanted to see get pied by our membership. Alex, Andrea, and myself were the 3 lucky winners. We also surprised those in attendance by announcing Liz would be pied too, but only if the group could come up with $100. I have never seen $100 materialize so fast in my life! I personally can’t wait to make this fundraiser bigger and better next year!
We wrapped up Sunday with discussing Risk Management as a group and the stories we have seen in the news about other Greek organizations and the challenges that we encounter because of those stories. Afterwards we split into groups based on our positions, to discuss the challenges that we face in our positions and how to tackle them. All in all it was a wonderful weekend of sister bonding, learning from each other, and becoming better leaders that, as always, went by way too fast!
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