GSA Fall Updates
The heat continues here in Indianapolis, but Gamma Sigma Alpha knows that fall is right around the corner. Students & advisors are planning fall semester and we want to be a part of it! Please take a look at a few exciting updates we have for fall! As always, feel free to contact us with questions or concerns.
Dues Increase: Effective August 1st, 2011, national membership dues will increase to $35 per student. Please plan accordingly. Many of our chapters add a ‘local dues’ option when collecting payment from students, this is a great for building some resources to support academic achievement or other programs on your campus. We know that each chapter is different and only you know what rate students on your campus will pay for membership in an honorary and we ask that you keep this in mind when adding a local dues to the national fee. This is the final stair-step increase our Board of Directors approved three years ago. Honor cords will remain $10. We will do our best to keep this fee consistent over the next few years and avoid another increase. The primary reason for the increase is heightened costs for services, increased number of services provided and the growing cost for operational expenses.
You Spoke…We Listened: Based on feedback from our Member Services Survey we conducted in the Spring, we will be undertaking a few projects this fall. The first will be an online submission tool that will allow advisors to input names electronically and pay via a secure site to enable the fastest and the most accurate processing we can provide. We are partnering with WebGreek to use cutting-edge technology and are hoping for a seamless piloting of this processing option in August. More details on this will be distributed in the next couple of weeks.
In addition, we will launch a newsletter to communicate with advisors concerning scholarship processes, award deadlines, chapter profiles, program ideas and other valuable information. Stay tuned for the debut of this new communication tool. If there is something specific you would like to see highlighted in an upcoming newsletter, let us know!
We will continue to grow the Gamma Sigma Alpha website and blog with resources to help you differentiate Gamma Sigma Alpha with other organizations on your campus, grow your chapter and excel academic achievement within your fraternity/sorority community. We know that many of our chapters operate as a recognition society and that serves our mission and is a great program for some schools, but many others want to develop the chapter into something more than that and we want to help. Friendly reminder: our membership should never be ‘capped’ at a certain number of students—if they meet the qualifications and pay the membership fee, they should be granted membership–our goal is to recognize as many academic achievers as we can.