The Interfraternity Council, in conjunction with the Panhellenic Council, the Greek Letters Organizations and Societies office and the Dartmouth Center for Service, has announced plans for an annual Greek Philanthropy Competition that it hopes will excite Greek members about service, enhance intra-organization community and add structure to current philanthropic efforts on campus.
The new program will focus on philanthropic events hosted by Greek organizations, IFC service chair Peter Gips ’16 said. Rather than measuring service hours contributed by individual members, this competition will emphasize the role of entire Greek organizations in organizing charitable events, especially fundraisers, he said. Organizations will compete with one another to see who can host the most successful events and raise the most money for their causes.
“The Greek system presents a really huge source of potential collective action, and the more we can incentivize that, the more we can tap into that source,” Gips said.
Most Greek organizations already host these sorts of events, but the Philanthropic Competition will provide a better structure for measuring their effectiveness, he said. Organizations will be scored using a standardized rubric measuring participation, hours put into the event, money raised, campus attendance and possibility of growth for the event, among other factors.
The winning organization will be awarded a trophy, Gips said. In addition, the IFC and its partner organizations are working out the specifics of what other prizes, if any, will be given. He said that IFC hopes to organize a meal with College President Phil Hanlon and his wife Gail Gentes, director of action-based learning programs, for the winning organization, though this has not yet been finalized.
Discussion about organizing the event began last spring, Panhell vice president of community and outreach Carene Mekertichyan ’16 said. She said that Panhell is focused on giving the event as much support as it needs, specifically by working with sororities to get them involved. Panhell is also working on integrating the new competition with their existing philanthropy events, she said.
The competition will hopefully encourage students, especially new members of Greek organizations, to get out and participate in philanthropic events, Gips said.
“The more we can encourage people to get out there and do service, the more likely it is for someone who’s never done it before to try it through their Greek house,” he said.
In addition, the competitive nature of the event might motivate Greek organizations as a whole to get more involved with community service, Mekertichyan said. In doing so, it might also build a sense of community within organizations, she said.
New member recruitment made it difficult to roll out the event this fall, Mekertichyan said. She emphasized that since this is a year-long event, students still have plenty of time to get involved.
In addition to the Philanthropy Competition, Greek organizations will continue participation in GLOS’s Million Minutes of Service Initiative, piloted last year. Million Minutes of Service is a competition between Greek organizations to see who can devote the most hours to community service.
The ultimate goal is for the Greek system to spend a collective million minutes performing community service across the year.
The contest’s first year was a success, Gips said. Last year, the Greek system exceeded its goal and spent more than a million minutes doing service.
“This year, we’re going to try to keep up the momentum and have another good competition,” he said.
While the Greek system was able to exceed its goals for the Million Minutes program last year, it is unclear how much the program has increased service within Greek organizations. For example, while Sigma Phi Epsilon spent almost 400 hours on community service last spring, most brothers were not concerned with winning the competition, Sigma Phi Epsilon vice president of membership development David Berg ’16 said.
“The focus wasn’t the competition, the focus was simply tracking the hours we were already completing,” he said.
Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity service chair Alex Bulteel ’16 said he thinks the College student body is moving toward wanting service to be a larger component of its education, without or without the challenge.
“I think we as a brotherhood are generally very interested in doing service,” he said. “I don’t know that the Million Minutes campaign itself really changed the amount that we did.”
Going into year two, there will be an increased focus on publicizing the Million Minutes of Service competition to Greek organizations, Gips said.
In addition, organizers will try and make it easier for organizations to record their service hours, as there were problems with this last year, he said.
Ultimately, Gips is hopeful that both the Philanthropic Competition and the Million Minutes of Service program will motivate Greek members to participate in community service for years to come.
“I hope that I can come back and visit as an alumni and see that they’re still going on, and that people are participating in service,” he said.
