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Best Practices For Chapter Recruitment During COVID-19

Recruiting new members for your Chapter can seem like a challenge, but especially now. Chapters large and small are revamping their current membership tactics to retain and recruit new members. Take a look at the tactics and ideas below to help your Chapter recruit new members even during COVID-19.

Let’s Get Personal!

Social media posts and mass email messages to your members are great, but it isn’t enough. This is the perfect time to create personalized messages for your current and potential members. Students want to feel wanted in an organization and reaching out to them personally through social media direct messaging or an email will make them feel like they belong in PRSSA.

• Create a personalized email template for your Chapter that can be tailored for individual messages. Utilize different design platforms such as Canva, Adobe Spark or InDesign to add some creative elements to your email.
• Send personal social media messages to current PRSSA members to encourage engagement!

Reach Out to New Audiences! 

Don’t be afraid to reach out to students in all majors and minors! There could be potential PRSSA members in a variety of majors, so make sure that you are taking the time to share your recruitment messages with everyone. Currently we are not able to continue the traditional efforts of recruitment such as tabling and handing out flyers, so take advantage and incorporate new innovative tactics to reach a larger audience.

• Contact other student organizations on campus and cross-promote your Chapter events with their audience as well.
• Share your Chapter meeting promotional materials with journalism, media, entertainment, advertising and other communications majors.

Talk To Your Professors!

Both inside and outside of the classroom, your professors are one of the best resources your Chapter can use. Many professors are part of larger communications organizations such as PRSA and are big advocates for PRSSA. Don’t be afraid to ask your professors to share the importance of PRSSA and their experiences participating in professional organizations.

• Ask your professors to promote your Chapter meetings and events during all of their classes and to post the information on the class website.
• Suggest integrating attending PRSSA Chapter meetings into a PR or communications assignment or as extra credit.

These Chapter recruitment tactics are just a few of many tactics that can be utilized during COVID-19. Think outside the box and get creative because you never know where your next member can come from. What innovative ideas could you implement to increase membership for your Chapter?

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