Adam and Christopher interview Hunter Kidwell and Anthony Nissen, collegiate officers of the Lambda Gamma Chapter at Eastern Illinois University, about the Fraternity's Founders' Month of Service. The Lambda Gamma Chapter was the Fraternity's 2021 Service Contribution Award winner. Hunter and Anthony share the secrets to their success, and Adam and Christopher provide additional tips and strategies for improving chapter-level service efforts.
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The Gavel Podcast - Ep 16 – Founders’ Month of Service with Hunterkidwell and Anthony Nissen (Eastern Illinois)
[Intro Music]
0:00:42.5 Adam Girtz: Hello and welcome to the latest episode of The Gavel Podcast. I'm Adam.
0:00:46.3 Christopher Brenton: And I'm Christopher.
0:00:47.6 Adam Girtz: The Gavel Podcast is the official podcast of Sigma Nu Fraternity, and it's a show dedicated to keeping you updated on operations of the Legion of Honor and connecting you to the stories from our brotherhood.
0:00:58.3 Christopher Brenton: To find out more from the Fraternity, you can always check out our website at sigmanu.org. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @SigmaNuHQ, or by searching for Sigma Nu Fraternity.
0:01:08.9 Adam Girtz: Christopher, it is a very exciting month for Sigma Nu. It is April. What does April mean to Sigma Nus?
0:01:18.5 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, so we are right in the thick of the Founders' Month of Service, which is... As the previous Director of Chapter Services, now that is your role, this is a little bit of our baby. So we've had... I think that the Helping Hand Initiative, of course, was founded in 2004 by the 61st Grand Chapter, and that is kind of what the Founders' Month of Service is kind of born from. It was... The Founders' Month of Service was established around the same time, but this is kind of our month dedicated to engaging chapters and alumni in community service activities, really calling upon them to go out into their local communities and provide service, extend a helping hand, if you will.
0:02:06.6 Christopher Brenton: And so it's always really exciting to get to this time of year to see what our chapters are doing, but of course, to really try to engage in the spirit of the month and try to encourage chapters who maybe don't have anything planned to get out into the streets and find activities that are going to match their passions to, again, extend that helping hand.
0:02:29.9 Adam Girtz: So a really cool opportunity, like you said, for our chapters to live out our values, to be that helping hand on their campus, in their campus communities, really to make that impact felt. I always say to our chapters, "We... One of our greatest strengths is the fact that we are an organized group of young men. You can get out in your community and do so much good." And this is one of the great ways that we can do that. So like you said, this is my first April as Director of Chapter Services. So this is my first Helping Hand Initiative, kind of centric Founders' Month of Service. So I would love to ask you some questions about it in place of our audience...
0:03:19.8 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, absolutely!
0:03:21.1 Adam Girtz: So we can learn a little bit about it. So a lot of fraternities have... fraternities and sororities, Greek organizations in general, have a national partnership. Maybe they have one organization that they typically either do service for or fundraise for, and that is their national partnership, and that's awesome. We don't have that necessarily for Sigma Nu. Why is that?
0:03:48.8 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, so the national organization has never had a specific focus or a specific call for the national organization to focus on any one particular cause. For some organizations, I think that may be rooted in a prominent member or a prominent group of members who felt passionate about a particular cause, petitioned their national fraternity at their legislative conference to consider the adoption of a national philanthropy. The Fraternity has never really gone through that, but we have had some periods in which we've engaged with the idea of, one, how do we encourage our chapters to participate in community service, because we see that as a personal development benefit for our young collegiate members. But then also, is there a way that we can direct some of our efforts collectively so that our impact is felt at a greater level, and we've kind of varied in how we've approached that.
0:04:54.8 Christopher Brenton: So in 2004, as I mentioned, when the Helping Hand Initiative was originally established, there were a group of partners. So you had St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, you had Habitat For Humanity, the College Charity Ball, which was an organization primarily run by our Epsilon Xi Chapter at the University of Mississippi. That was kind of a... actually a larger nationally managed or naturally concentrated effort to direct funds into that. We've adopted over time the Wounded Warrior Project, Character Counts, which is a collegiate high school essay competition. The list goes on.
0:05:42.3 Christopher Brenton: And there have been debates over the years of, "Do we add on more partners to that list? Do we subtract partners to that list?" And that all came to a head in about 2016 when the Fraternity actually decided to reverse course. So where a lot of national organizations you would think would kind of move in the direction of centralizing around one particular cause, the Fraternity actually decided to take a step back, decentralize that effort, because the data showed that our chapters did not struggle with identifying causes that they were passionate about. In fact, the national organization really felt like the Fraternity, if anything, was encumbering or preventing potentially chapters from finding their true passions by directing or by...
0:06:29.4 Christopher Brenton: Or with chapters maybe feeling like the national organization was not allowing them to choose causes that they were passionate about, but instead was kind of dictating their hand, or dictating the types of organizations that they could support. And so where the organization is today is that we really feel like we want chapters to do the work of talking to their members collectively to identify what are those causes that those members are passionate about, and then to engage in service and philanthropic work to support those causes. And so different local communities are going to have different needs, different chapter members are going to have different passions, and so you're going to see just a mosaic of support from all of our chapters where they're choosing maybe different partners year over year, maybe some chapters have long term ingrained relationships that have dated for decades now. And that's, I think, a really cool texture to the fabric of our larger effort during the entirety of the year, but certainly during The Founders' Month of Service which we're going to talk about a lot today.
0:07:38.9 Adam Girtz: Yeah. That is kind of the subject of our interview today with our members from Lambda Gamma Chapter. Could you tell me more about The Founders' Month of Service? That is, the month of April for Sigma Nu Fraternity is our Founders' Month of Service. What are we encouraging our members to do this month?
0:08:00.7 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, so real quick kind of a historical context. So the Founders' Month of Service was created way back in, again, 2004 around the same time that all of... everything was coming together for the Helping Hand initiative, and the Founders' Month of Service was kind of a catchall that gave chapters credit during our accreditation process, Pursuit of Excellence. And so what we had established at that original point was that charters had one of two options to get credit for participating in the Helping Hand Initiative. You could either volunteer or contribute towards the organizations that had been identified as a part of that collective group of Helping Hand partners, or you could do something during The Founders' Month of Service. And if you were able to do something during the month of April, you would get credit, regardless of if your support for those other organizations existed. Today, the Founders' Month of Service is a little bit detached from any sort of requirement.
0:09:00.3 Christopher Brenton: Again, we have decentralized that effort. We're now providing a lot more recognition and we're highlighting chapter efforts across the spectrum of support for different philanthropic causes, but the Founders' Month of Service still exists as a time where we want to direct our chapters towards various community service and philanthropy projects. The month of April was selected for two reasons. One, April tends to be just from a calendar perspective, year over year, one of the busiest months for our collegiate chapters, potentially a little bit of procrastination kind of playing in there as our chapters are kind of maybe waiting till the last possible month in their academic year to get their community service and philanthropy events in.
0:09:46.7 Adam Girtz: That's also spring, right? It's also...
0:09:49.2 Christopher Brenton: It's also spring. People are coming out of their houses; they're unburying themselves from their snow...
0:09:54.9 Adam Girtz: [laughter] Let's go to a philanthropy event. We're excited, it's...
0:09:56.9 Christopher Brenton: Right, we're excited.
0:09:58.2 Adam Girtz: We can actually go outside, yeah.
0:09:58.6 Christopher Brenton: Exactly, exactly.
0:10:00.0 Adam Girtz: Or maybe I'm impressing my Midwest Collegiate experience at North Dakota State on there, where you can't go outside. Maybe University of Mississippi or some of these other schools you might be able to get outside a little bit earlier, but anyway...
0:10:16.0 Christopher Brenton: Yes, that's exactly right. It is... That's exactly right. So you've emerged from your hibernation dens, you're coming out, you're able to get back into your communities and actually do work. So whatever the reason is, April tends to be an incredibly busy month for our chapters, And so there is a little bit of... We selected the month that kind of already has a lot of chapters that are already engaging with community service and philanthropy work. But April 1st is Greenfield Quarles, our founder's birthday, and so it was like a tip of the hat to one of our founders just to coincide with his birth month, that the Founders' Month of Service would be established in April. So all month long, we are highlighting chapters who are doing good community service work. I know you have been engaging through email with chapters, giving them tips and assistance on how to improve their chapter efforts around community service and philanthropy, our consultants for those chapters that they are meeting with in person, again, are having these conversations. So we're really elevating this conversation to make sure our chapters, one, are doing this work, but then, two, are doing it well.
0:11:34.3 Adam Girtz: So as we get into and get through the month of April here, our Founders' Month of Service, are there any ways that we're going to be highlighting any of our chapters in their community service and philanthropy efforts through social media or our other communications?
0:11:55.5 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, so definitely be looking to the Fraternity, our social media accounts, primarily Instagram and Facebook. We're going to be doing lots of highlights of chapter activities. Usually, we're going to do a recap every Friday of just the week's worth of community service effort just so we don't kind of clutter the social media stream, if you will, but we're doing that. We also are really focused on making sure that these stories get captured in The Quarterly, which is our digital publication, that includes chapter and alumni news. So if you miss the month of April, always look for The Quarterly. We're constantly recapping community service and philanthropy work for our chapters in addition to other accomplishments that are worth celebrating. So those are the two primary ways in which we are doing highlights for chapter activity.
0:12:46.9 Adam Girtz: Very cool. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing some of those. I love the Instagram stories, and posts, and everything that we're able to see of our chapters out there enjoying themselves and you doing good for their communities. So if our chapters wanted to get in touch with headquarters and supply some of the pictures or stories that they're living through there, how can they do that?
0:13:15.1 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, so the best way to do that is through news@sigmanu.org. So N-E-W-S and not N-U-S, N-E-W-S @sigmanu.org. That is our primary account for sharing information and news stories with the General Fraternity. I monitor that account. And that is not exclusive for just the Founders' Month of Service, of course, any time that you have a chapter or alumni story that you want to share for inclusion and social media, for our other publications like The Delta, The Quarterly, that's the place to do it. We have a consistent stream of chapter and alumni news coming in, so we can't guarantee that if you submit something that it will immediately be shown, but we're constantly thinking about ways in which we can slot content into play. So definitely send something on to us whenever you have that chance, to give us the opportunity to make sure that that gets highlighted.
0:14:11.5 Adam Girtz: Awesome. So it's really great that we're able to highlight so many of our chapters and their community service and philanthropy efforts, but we're today can focus on one chapter in particular, that one... Our 2021 Community Service Contribution Award. Could you tell me a little bit about the Community Service Contribution Award?
0:14:34.9 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, so this is an award that exists in conjunction with the Philanthropy Contribution Award. And these awards were created around, I think 2016, and they are intended to highlight individual chapter achievement. So our chapters on the philanthropic and the community service side who are just really going above and beyond even our Excellence-level criteria for the Pursuit of Excellence. So just really blowing it out of the water in terms of doing really great work for various charities and/or engaging in community service efforts for their chapters. The way that we evaluate the Community Service Contribution Award, is we look at it at a per member average, per semester. So we're looking at both semesters, if you're a semesterly school or the quarters, if you're a quarter school, and we're looking at the entire year's effort, but we're breaking it down into how does that... How does each individual chapter look, when you look at it at a per member, per semester basis? And so our Lambda Gamma Chapter from Eastern Illinois University was last year's winner with an average contribution of 20 hours per member, per semester, so almost 40 hours per member for the entire year, which is outstanding.
0:16:01.5 Adam Girtz: Yeah, excellent.
0:16:03.1 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, absolutely. And the philanthropy award is evaluated similarly, it's on a per dollar basis of course, a per dollar... Sorry, dollars raised per man, per semester. But the one other caveat that I'll say is that, if you're a chapter that's listening to this or an alumnus who's listening to this and you're like, "Surely my chapter had more than 20 hours of community service last year," there is a little bit of a caveat we do expect that chapters who are applying for the award have submitted documentation. So during the Pursuit of Excellence process, we're not asking chapters to fill out any separate application, but when they're filling out their booklet, they do need to provide some documentation of the hours that were achieved. And so if you are affiliated with a chapter that you know is crushing it, doing 40 hours per member, per semester, but they're not submitting any sort of documentation to confirm those numbers, unfortunately, we can't give the award.
0:17:06.2 Christopher Brenton: We still appreciate and still want to give them a round of applause for their effort, but that piece is important for us just on the award consideration. So if you're a chapter who's listening to this and you're in charge of filling out Pursuit of Excellence, I implore you, please make sure you're providing your supporting documentation so we can make sure you get acknowledged and awarded appropriately.
0:17:28.1 Adam Girtz: Oh, absolutely. The most exciting thing about your Pursuit of Excellence season every year is getting to see all of the awesome stuff that our chapters have been able to do, and that's something... When I work with chapters, it's trying to be impressed upon them, this is not the headquarters office just making you do a bunch of busy work, this is your opportunity to show how much you shine this year. So yeah, let's make sure that you credit where credit is due, right? Yeah, so Lambda Gamma... I got to brag a little bit. One of the chapters that I have been primarily working with as a consultant last couple of years, so very, very proud of them, but would be proud of any chapter that we have. But a special place, I know how hard they work for this, and I think, apparent in our interview with them, how proud they are of their membership and how much work they've put in to get where they are, especially in a very difficult couple of years. So Christopher, any other information or plugs or anything else before we dive into the interview?
0:18:43.1 Christopher Brenton: No, I'm excited that we get the chance to feature Lambda Gamma. I would just say for chapter officers and advisors, if you are primarily the ones listening to this episode, definitely listen to the end, when we get back from the interview, we want to have Lambda Gamma be able to speak to their success and what contributed to that. But Adam and I are also going to share some best practices and tips for improving your community service and philanthropy efforts at the chapter level. So if that's something you're particularly interested in, make sure you stay till the end to hear those tips.
0:19:18.1 Adam Girtz: Excellent. We'll see you on the backend.
[Transition Music]
0:19:41.0 Adam Girtz: We have with us, our 2021 Community Service Award winners for Sigma Nu Fraternity from Lambda Gamma Chapter, Hunter and Anthony. It's great to have you guys with us.
0:19:51.0 Hunter Kidwell: Thank you for having us.
0:19:51.8 Anthony Nissen: Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
0:19:53.5 Adam Girtz: To dive in guys. Would you care to just introduce yourselves? Your name, position, your time in the chapter?
0:20:00.8 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. My name is Hunter Kidwell. I'm a sophomore I've been here for almost two years. And currently I'm the Commander.
0:20:08.6 Anthony Nissen: My name's Anthony Nissen. I'm the Lieutenant Commander of Lambda Gamma Chapter here at Eastern Illinois. I'm currently, it's... What is it? This is my third year.
0:20:18.7 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:20:18.8 Anthony Nissen: About my third year, almost three. Love every second of it. Yeah, it's been awesome.
0:20:24.3 Hunter Kidwell: So amazing.
0:20:25.4 Adam Girtz: Cool. Well, we're very, happy to have you guys with us here to talk about community service this month. So, I guess to start off with congratulations, to Lambda Gamma Chapter, on winning our Community Service Contribution Award for 2021. So, taking a look at what you guys were able to accomplish this last year, looks like 20 hours per man, across the chapter, truly an impressive accomplishment for the chapter. So, could you just highlight for us some of the chapter's community service efforts from the year?
0:21:00.5 Anthony Nissen: Yeah, of course. So a big one for us was definitely Habitat for Humanity, they're like a local nonprofit organization. I think they're all over Illinois or.
0:21:10.0 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah, they're... It's like a nationally, yeah.
0:21:12.1 Anthony Nissen: Right.
0:21:12.4 Hunter Kidwell: They're very...
0:21:13.1 Anthony Nissen: But they have a thrift store, like literally, three minutes away from here. And, it was the easiest for us to do because you can literally just walk in anytime and they're always looking for people to help them out. All you got to do is sign your name and you just start working. Then they tell you what to do. You can stock shelves or clean the back or do whatever. And that... That was a big one for us, but that was probably the most... The organization we worked with the most by far.
0:21:37.2 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. because it was very flexible with everyone's schedules.
0:21:39.4 Anthony Nissen: Yeah. You can go in literally at any time, like obviously you have your times where like, they don't really need your help and you just... They kind of send you home, but more times than not, we would stay there and help them out.
0:21:50.3 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. It was nice. because like we could go as groups, individuals, it was very flexible and that's what made it more... That we could do more with it. So that was our biggest one.
0:22:00.7 Anthony Nissen: Yeah. That was our biggest one. And the... Our other... We work with the school a lot too. Like we did blanket making with the school.
0:22:06.7 Hunter Kidwell: That's a huge one.
0:22:09.2 Anthony Nissen: Knitting, which is kind of like the same thing, but wasn't exactly. We did Panther pals, which was basically like we would sign up and help the freshmen freshman move in. We would show the freshmen freshman around campus, stuff like that. What was another one? Panther bash and that's basically just like a whole entire week of different things. Gosh, what was it here? We have like bowling, bingo...
0:22:31.4 Hunter Kidwell: All kinds of Stuff.
0:22:32.7 Anthony Nissen: Just all kind of stuff. Kind of introducing...
0:22:34.6 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:22:34.6 Anthony Nissen: The freshmen to the university.
0:22:36.8 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:22:37.6 Anthony Nissen: And it's also a great recruitment tool for us because we can show our faces to the newer guys on campus. So we definitely took advantage of that. And we worked with a local church, like literally like a 30-second walk from our chapter house. We like coordinated games with them. It was like a bunch of Latino kids who immigrated here to Charleston.
0:23:01.2 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:23:01.6 Anthony Nissen: So they were... They really like soccer, basketball. We even taught 'em... A couple times taught them some English.
0:23:08.8 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. No, really.
0:23:09.9 Anthony Nissen: That was pretty cool. Helped our teaching skills. Yeah. And a lot of guys want to be teachers.
0:23:13.5 Hunter Kidwell: because I worked as... For that church he was was talking about, I was a tutor for them too. So like I'd go and like volunteer, like tutor them. It was super fun. And, like he said, it's a very, like the church is very diverse, but it's primarily, Latinos. It was awesome. It was a great experience and that's kind of like how we got the guys like more involved in it. But that's the key stuff. That's the key ones.
0:23:35.9 Adam Girtz: Yeah. It's really cool. It sounds like you guys have kind of spread out and really gotten involved in that community. Not just campus community but local community as well. How has that affected the chapter's connection, I guess to either, campus community or local community? Do you guys feel like more a part of the town that the university resides in?
0:24:03.8 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. We definitely feel more like, I'd say closer to like... Compared to everyone else we're definitely more closer to the community. because we do so much with them and like we're very like... I feel we're very known too. And yeah. [laughter] I definitely do feel like we are closer to the community. I know all the guys would say the same thing. because we have guys who do like other things within like at other organizations too. I don’t know if you have anything to say on that.
0:24:32.0 Anthony Nissen: Yeah. And especially Charleston's not the biggest town either, so it really helped us build a bond with the town. And I know a lot of other, fraternities on campus aren't really taking advantage of that. And I think that's something that we really did well especially with...
0:24:45.2 Hunter Kidwell: The pandemic.
0:24:46.4 Anthony Nissen: And stuff like that.
0:24:46.5 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. We definitely use like the opportunity to... We had a lot of free time with like, kind of the pandemic. So we kind of used that time and opportunity to, make the best of it, especially in a small community like this.
0:25:00.1 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, no, that's great to hear. I mean, I think for, you know, our listeners who are unaware. The fraternity really has an approach to wanting our chapters to become more engaged in doing community service. Service and philanthropy is a function of leadership development. It's how we transform our chapter members into servant leaders. And I think being able to engage with the community recognize how fortunate we are to be able to be in these communities. Whether we're just... A thing for the university or, we have, just kind of the local community that's, providing us with, access to resources and all that kind of stuff. It's really great to be able to kind pay that back. So for the Community Service Contribution Award, of course you were given the award because the chapter recorded one of the highest, if not the highest number of hours per man on average for the academic year.
0:26:01.6 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:26:01.9 Christopher Brenton: And so that was 20 hours. For a lot of our chapters, you know, we hear complaints or concerns about it, you know, it's like pulling teeth to get our members to show up to anything, let alone...
0:26:14.3 Hunter Kidwell: Oh yeah.
0:26:15.1 Christopher Brenton: You know, for a chapter to get 20 hours out of the men that are quality hours done with...
0:26:21.5 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:26:21.5 Christopher Brenton: With organizations that are really benefiting from your impact, you know, thinking about your chapter, experience, the membership, you know, how do you feel that Lambda Gamma has uniquely encouraged and enabled its members to participate, you know, in service activities.
0:26:37.2 Hunter Kidwell: And the big thing is communication and like... And just kind of being... You got to be proactive, like you really have to like be communicating with the guys at all times constantly, like reminding them, because guys get very busy and that's a big part of... Because a lot of our guys do a lot of different things. So that's a big part of... Like I used to trying to pull teeth. And sometimes, you know, sometimes you do have to pull teeth a little bit, but...
0:26:58.6 Anthony Nissen: Oh yeah.
0:26:58.9 Hunter Kidwell: For the most part, like the guys were very like open because we did. Because we also talk a lot about... Like I'm very big on like career development, you know, networking all this and that. And like building your resume and a big thing that helps on your resumes, what you do around the community when it comes to volunteer work and everything like that. So I know I push it, Anthony pushes it and we're very big on like, you know, okay, if you want to, you know, help the community, if you want to help the chapter. If you want to help yourself you know, go out there, do what you can do. And no, it seemed to work out it seemed to work out after everything but...
0:27:38.4 Anthony Nissen: Yeah. We also have like a point system.
0:27:40.8 Hunter Kidwell: Oh yeah.
0:27:41.9 Anthony Nissen: To that...
0:27:43.4 Hunter Kidwell: We do have that.
0:27:44.2 Anthony Nissen: So you basically like every month you need a certain amount of points to participate in like social events, and community service we made that like a big part. Like you would have to go to community service or else you wouldn't get the points in order to come hang out with or like do brotherhood events or stuff like that.
0:27:57.7 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:27:58.1 Anthony Nissen: So that was also a big driving factor, but...
0:28:00.2 Hunter Kidwell: It was big yeah.
0:28:00.6 Anthony Nissen: Like you said, like there's obviously going to be times where you have to really go out of your way to get the guys to go to these service events. Like I would... I can't tell you how many times I would wake up at like seven o'clock in the morning and have to bang on everybody's doors and go to the guys that live off campus and they're literally sleeping in their bed and, "I'm like, get up, we got to go." And they're like, "No no." I'm like, "Come on Justin, we got to go."
0:28:24.2 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:28:24.4 Anthony Nissen: Yeah.
0:28:25.6 Adam Girtz: That's the good old group accountability coming.
0:28:27.9 Anthony Nissen: Yeah.
0:28:28.7 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:28:28.9 Adam Girtz: That's good. So it strikes me that hearing you know, you guys list off all of the different places that the chapter has been involved in that, you know, and especially with you like Habitat For Humanity and stuff like that. That you know, once you get the momentum going and once you get the guys having those first few experiences and they find something that they connect with, if they find something that they enjoy going to and, you know, spending time with their brothers, that you get that momentum built behind it. I mean, which... I guess which outreach would you guys feel that you had, or the members had, you know, the most fun or the... I guess enjoyed the most or what was the most popular thing with the chapter guys?
0:29:12.0 Anthony Nissen: Ooh, that's an interesting question.
0:29:14.7 Hunter Kidwell: That's interesting. because so many guys like different stuff.
0:29:18.2 Anthony Nissen: I think the church one we did when we played the games...
0:29:19.8 Hunter Kidwell: That was fun.
0:29:20.2 Anthony Nissen: Because that was pretty fun.
0:29:23.2 Hunter Kidwell: It was less work and more just like fun.
0:29:25.1 Anthony Nissen: Right.
0:29:25.6 Adam Girtz: Yeah.
0:29:25.6 Hunter Kidwell: So it made it seem like it was effortless and just we enjoyed it more.
0:29:28.9 Anthony Nissen: And like, yeah, I would probably... And the move in day with the freshmen, that was pretty fun.
0:29:32.7 Hunter Kidwell: Because you do just a lot... A lot of talking anything that's more just like fluent and you're just kind of like talking to people and stuff. I think the guys seemed like, obviously to enjoy that more because they were just, it didn't seem like you were doing anything besides just like making connections and have fun with people. So...
0:29:46.6 Anthony Nissen: Yeah.
0:29:46.8 Hunter Kidwell: I'd say anything like, yeah, those probably the most.
0:29:49.2 Anthony Nissen: Yeah but even like Habitat, like...
0:29:50.4 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. I mean.
0:29:50.9 Anthony Nissen: It's obviously boring at sometimes you just cut open boxes.
0:29:54.7 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. But when you're with the guys, like it makes it more fun. because it's a good brother bonding too.
0:30:00.7 Anthony Nissen: Yeah. We love our brothers, you know?
0:30:02.3 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:30:02.6 Anthony Nissen: And it's always good to spend time with them. And I Just... Yeah.
0:30:06.4 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. I always pitch to chapters that Habitat actually makes a really good recruitment event. You know, you're limited of course, based on the site build of how many people can come, but if you maybe reserve a few spots for prospective members... Just the fact that you're doing team building, you have time obviously to talk with people that working with, you know, and then you kind of leave the service activity with this kind of like warm, fuzzy feeling, you know, that you associate with the chapter. Right? And so, yeah, I think it's a really excellent recruitment tool, you know, just because you are having fun, you are doing stuff and you have tangible skills that you walk away with. Like, you know, you now know how to use, you know, this random power tool that you weren't aware of prior to going to that service event.
0:30:49.7 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. And that's something we've really been pitching in recruitment to is like our service and like what we do in the community.
0:30:55.4 Adam Girtz: Yeah. I mean, and that's... What a great way to kind of really show like, yes, we might talk about, we have this set of values that we believe then, and you know, every, chapter is going to try to communicate that you know, at those recruitment events. But to truly be then like living it out actively while you are in the process of recruiting is a... I think, a good reinforcement of you backing up what you believe in, what you say you believe in.
0:31:22.8 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah exactly.
0:31:24.8 Adam Girtz: So part of the reason I ask, you know, what was popular among the chapter guys? One thing I'm curious about for our audience it was just made up of alumni, but on top of that, our active chapters and our active members and, you know, hopefully out there. Actually I know for a fact out there that there are, you know, leaders and future leaders of our chapters that are listening in. So if you had any advice for a chapter that is looking to increase its community outreach or its community service, in their community, what advice would you have for them?
0:32:00.5 Hunter Kidwell: The biggest thing, don't be afraid to be annoying. Really reach out...
0:32:04.8 Adam Girtz: Annoying to who? [laughter]
0:32:05.4 Hunter Kidwell: Like to organizations, you know in like a good way. Don't be afraid to send emails, make phone calls, even if they don't answer, you got to be...
0:32:16.7 Adam Girtz: Persistent.
0:32:16.7 Hunter Kidwell: Persistent yeah, exactly. You got to be persistent. And folks talk about like communication is key. The communication is key, the communication with your members is very vital, and definitely just reach out to anything and everything and build your networking. because if you network with professors and faculty and they could give you some input on services that maybe aren't really promoted that much, they get involved in and those are really key ways I'd say that can really help a chapter increase their community service.
0:32:52.9 Anthony Nissen: Yeah, and obviously, you're going to get a lot of nos like, gosh we wanted to work with the local animal shelters, there's like three or four in the area, and all of them, they're like, no thank you. Basically, so that was kind of... But actually, we're going to work with them this semester.
0:33:09.9 Hunter Kidwell: We got it. We finally got one of them.
0:33:11.9 Anthony Nissen: And not just spring break, we are going to do some... And that's definitely cool.
0:33:12.9 Hunter Kidwell: We were persistent. Finally got one.
0:33:14.5 Adam Girtz: Yeah there you go.
0:33:15.2 Anthony Nissen: But yeah, just literally go on your school website, whatever university you are part of, and just go to the civic engagement tab, and they should just have a bunch of organizations there. And just everyone that you seem interested in, just write them an email, make it sound formal and just... Yeah, just go through them all. That's what I did. And have your committee help you as well. And definitely, you don't have to do a point system, but get a way to make your guys come to these events and... Our point system works so well because guys want to hang out with guys on Friday night Saturday night obviously. And if you don't complete these points then you're seriously not coming. We've been really stern on that. And we've had to tell guys, "Hey you're not allowed at this. Sorry, even though you're my best friend it is not going to happen you didn't complete your points." So you got to really set a line and follow it to a tee.
0:34:14.4 Adam Girtz: Oh, yeah, and I think... We talk about this and consulting a lot is... In consulting with our active chapters is a point system or something like that, a formalized written accountability mechanism can be very helpful for visualizing some of the stuff that you guys are doing anyway, because... Right? When you say, we're waking up and making sure that guys are getting up and getting the motivation to get the ball rolling, you get out to the event that is... That informal accountability? You guys are doing this anyway, and you guys are holding each other accountable to... Two of the things that we say we want to do, and I'm sure most of those guys, once you get them out of bed and rolling and get them at the event they're like, "Okay, I'm glad I'm here this is where I want to be," and all of that. So really the points and things like that, kind of become a secondary thing to all of that.
0:35:12.0 Christopher Brenton: Well, real quick.
0:35:13.4 Adam Girtz: Yeah go ahead.
0:35:13.6 Christopher Brenton: I want to emphasize a point that Anthony just made about turning to your university or your college. Anthony you kind of talked about this of maybe going to the university website or finding the community service or civic engagement tab or section of the website. Or if you are familiar with the office on campus, going by it and visiting the staff who are responsible for administrating that office. I have found very few universities and colleges across the country that don't have some sort of Alternative Service Break program, aren't organizing community service activities on campus for students.
0:35:57.4 Christopher Brenton: And what often happens is you have various local organizations who are partnering with the university or making the university aware of their needs, "Hey, we need canned foods, we need volunteers, we need mentors to come to our after-school programs." That's a really incredible way, and I'm glad that you brought that up because I think it goes so under-utilized. I think a lot of our chapters just feel like they have to do... They have to struggle alone. They're trying to figure it out on their own. They're scouring Google trying to figure out where are these community service activities. But your university often has a really great set of resources for you that if you take advantage of them, they'll lead to really great connections and opportunities for the brothers.
0:36:43.5 Anthony Nissen: Yeah, absolutely, like you said, like you can literally just go to the office, that's how we got the knitting and the blanket making going. I just called them up because we were not really desperate, but we really want to do something different besides Habitat. And they're like, "Oh yeah, okay. In the quads today, we're having blanket knitting." I was like, "Oh sweet." So right away I hit up everybody like, "Hey... "
0:37:02.8 Hunter Kidwell: Sacrifice a little bit of your time.
0:37:07.8 Anthony Nissen: "This organization is having blanket knitting in the quad," and it really helps to just go... Especially to go there in person and show your face, it makes a big difference.
0:37:14.0 Christopher Brenton: And that's awesome too because... Yeah and because I feel like if you probably polled the chapter and said, “What’s a community service activity we could do?" Probably blanket knitting or blanket making probably wouldn't have been top of mind, but there's that need there, right? So it's great that you had the top of mind to be like, "Hey, what are other ways that we can get engaged?" Reach out to the university, university provides an option and the brothers find new and interesting ways that they can provide service to the community that they may not have thought of otherwise.
0:37:47.2 Anthony Nissen: Exactly, Yeah.
0:37:51.6 Hunter Kidwell: Exactly. 100%.
0:37:51.7 Adam Girtz: So guys, I think one important thing here is noting the time period that this took place in, right? So winning the 2021 Award means that this is your community service effort that was put in during the 2020-2021 academic year. So obviously, during all of that, we've had all kinds of changing in-person social restrictions, social distancing, masking, all of that kind of stuff that has logistically complicated chapters efforts in really every sphere, community service being one of those. So how did that affect you guys this last year? And what were some of the chapter's, your ways to... Still, obviously, you guys achieved it right? You got to the 20 hours per man. So how were you able to achieve that in this difficult environment?
0:38:51.1 Hunter Kidwell: The big thing is the community we live in. So we know restrictions were different everywhere. The community we live in, especially the restrictions were lower. So we were able to do more in-person stuff, we were able to do a lot of organizations we had to choose... We got to choose from, like the blanket making and knitting that we did. The university put that on, it was just masks, but we were all spread out. So there was a lot of... Obviously, we still did abide by a lot of the guidelines, especially for school stuff, but they still... This was... It's been two years of the pandemic. So they were at that point where they still... They want to... The community wants to do some stuff with, the school community service, all this and that. So, it definitely, wasn't as difficult as I would have imagined because the community we live in wasn't as strict on it. So it made it a little more possible.
0:39:46.4 Anthony Nissen: Yeah, obviously, we had to spread out into smaller groups and stuff like that, but it wasn't like we literally couldn't find anything to do. It wasn't as hard as you might think it would have been from maybe other universities. But yeah, we just had to... I think it was groups of five, six maximum for Habitat, and then like you said, the knitting, we were all spread out. So that wasn't really that big of a problem. It's just basically, wear a mask and just keep your distance. That was the main thing. But yeah, like I said earlier with the animal shelters, they were... They didn't want us because of COVID. So it was a give and take kind of thing. There was organizations that were willing to do things, but the ones that we worked with were, so...
0:40:33.0 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah.
0:40:33.2 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, well, I think that really shows your resiliency too, of, "Hey, the organizations that we're really interested in working with at this time period aren't looking for volunteers or are in need of our service. So we're going to find other opportunities." So it wasn't just, if this one opportunity doesn't work... Or maybe, if the chapter was involved with the Humane Society prior to COVID and then suddenly, you lost a partner, you just didn't give up, you said, "How are other ways in which... What are other ways in which the chapter can get involved?" Which is really, I think, encouraging to hear. That you had that adaptability and flexibility mindset.
0:41:11.1 Adam Girtz: It was a model that that... I hope... It seems like you guys have truly learned, but that I hope, all of our chapters, can take moving forward is that persistence, right? And you're not just giving up because the first door is closed, but going and checking the third, fourth, and fifth doors. And truly making sure that you get the things done that you want to get done.
0:41:38.2 Hunter Kidwell: I agree 1,000%. Keep trying and keep going.
0:41:42.7 Anthony Nissen: Just keep going, man. Just keep going. Just because you fail once doesn't mean... Failure is part of success.
0:41:45.6 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah, exactly.
0:41:47.4 Anthony Nissen: So you just got to keep pushing through.
0:41:49.3 Hunter Kidwell: It's nice having a bunch of brothers to help you through.
0:41:50.0 Anthony Nissen: Yeah. Yeah.
0:41:51.1 Hunter Kidwell: Our committee was very helpful.
0:41:55.8 Anthony Nissen: Yeah, absolutely.
0:41:56.5 Adam Girtz: Excellent. Well, what a great place to end it off at the quote there, "Failure is part of success." And how many times we have to face setbacks and push through those to be successful? Well, you guys, truly were very successful this last year. And I very much hope that continues in the future. It seems like you guys have plans in place for that.
0:42:22.4 Anthony Nissen: We're looking to top it.
0:42:24.3 Hunter Kidwell: To top it. Yeah.
0:42:25.4 Adam Girtz: Looking to top it. I was going to ask, What's next for Lambda Gamma.
0:42:28.9 Hunter Kidwell: I just had a meeting with the director of a big campus for special needs kids, it's like 30- ish minutes away. So it's still in the community. And we just formed a partnership, where we're just going to be doing a lot of different stuff together a lot of community service. We look to get a lot of hours there. And they have a lot of opportunities for us. And we're very honored to have this opportunity to be working with them. It's called Camp New Hope. It's an amazing camp. We've done community service with them for the past couple of semesters. And now we've formed a partnership where we're going to do even more with them.
0:43:06.9 Anthony Nissen: We're going to have a consistent schedule. The director even gave us an opportunity to, say, you're a construction management major, for example, you can even have a little project, build something there. He's so open and he's so cool. So we're really thankful for that. Yeah. It's going to be awesome.
0:43:28.1 Hunter Kidwell: So we've got that, and then obviously, we got... We're able to work with some animal shelters now so we're trying to branch out and try other things.
0:43:34.6 Anthony Nissen: Yeah, walk some dogs.
0:43:37.4 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah, walk some dogs.
0:43:37.5 Anthony Nissen: We all like dogs, right?
0:43:37.6 Adam Girtz: Nice.
0:43:37.4 Anthony Nissen: Just making it more interesting. That's our goal.
0:43:38.3 Hunter Kidwell: Yeah. We're trying to make it interesting. I work over at the elementary school I coach basketball so I've been trying to get some... Figure out some plans for us to do stuff in the schools to... More like the Charleston Public School System. So we're really trying to branch out and do bigger than we did last year.
0:43:54.3 Christopher Brenton: That's awesome.
0:43:54.8 Anthony Nissen: If you think about it 20 hours a week is only like... Not a week, a year is only...
0:44:00.8 Hunter Kidwell: 10 hours a semester.
0:44:01.3 Anthony Nissen: Yeah literally 10 hours a semester and that's like a part-time... Like where you work in a part-time job...
0:44:06.4 Hunter Kidwell: In a week.
0:44:08.0 Anthony Nissen: Just one week. We think we can do a lot better. Even though we won the award we're still going to push through.
0:44:11.4 Hunter Kidwell: You can always do better, so...
0:44:14.2 Adam Girtz: Excellent, guys. Well, that's really cool to hear. Always aiming for that next mountain top. Well Hunter and Anthony, thank you guys so much for being with us on the podcast. It's a pleasure to hear all of the awesome things that Lambda Gamma has done and like you said, sounds like a lot of awesome plans in the future here. We're very excited to see what you guys are able to accomplish next.
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0:45:11.4 Adam Girtz: Alright everyone welcome back. Christopher, what did you think of that?
0:45:15.2 Christopher Brenton: I love that. Any time that we have the chance to highlight our chapters, I think is really cool. I think this is one of the benefits of this podcast, that we give voice to chapters who, maybe other alumni, if you're not from their chapter, ever really get to hear from, and certainly, I think a large percentage of our most concentrated and intense period of fraternity engagement is at the collegiate level, of course. And so, certainly we have a lot of alumni listeners, but I think just getting to hear about the student experience is really important, so glad that we get to shine a light on those guys and celebrate their success.
0:45:55.1 Adam Girtz: But like I said, on top of all, I think it shines through how proud they are of their chapter membership and how much work they put in to accomplish this and I think well deserved. So we wanted to talk about a couple of your best practices available to chapters, maybe just some tips that we have as alumni, alumni experiences and tips that we have for our chapters. So I guess we'll start off with finding opportunities. So I know that you mentioned it a little bit in the episode, but what are some of the best ways for chapters to get connected and find opportunities for community service on their campus?
0:46:42.0 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, well, you heard the guys talk during the interview about partnering with the university, I think that one's a huge one that often goes missed. If your university, especially has a community service and engagement office, or community service and leadership office, talk to them. A lot of times those universities, especially if they're public institutions do a lot or even have maybe a mission to partner with local organizations. And it's not infrequent for those organizations to reach out to the university specifically because they know that students are interested in potentially engaging with community service partners. And so if they have work to do, the university may actually be the first ones to know about it, and so that's a great way for the chapter to identify what are the needs in their community. So that's a huge one that I think is really important.
0:47:39.3 Christopher Brenton: And the second one that I would add is just talk to your members. Find out what they're passionate about. College is a time for exploration, and certainly, if you came up through high school doing a lot of community service work, you may have been exposed to some various types that you may be passionate about. But there's also a chance that your members have not done community service or may have not done community service activities that they find engaging or challenging or enjoyable, depending on what you're interested in getting out of that community service experience. And so I think that one, assessing your chapter members to identify what are they passionate about, but also identify what would they be interested in doing is going to be really important. And then you can go into your community and find those opportunities.
0:48:31.4 Adam Girtz: One thing I think we touched on in the interview that I think is really important is redefining and re-visualizing how we perceive community service in our chapters. And one thing that I think happens sometimes, like we talk about with pursuit of excellence, it's perceived as, this is a chore. Or this is a box we have to check, or even just calling it, hey, community service hours, implies that there is a certain minimum... Although there is a minimum expectation, that we have to hit this minimum. And that's our job, that's what we're here to do. And I think we would like to try to re-define that, right? Seeing it as something that the chapter can do to make a difference in their communities. How might a chapter go about you redefining that or getting its members to understand and reflect on you the value of service.
0:49:35.6 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, well, funny that you mentioned value. I always like to do a little bit of a revisionist history lesson on community service in regards to Sigma Nu specifically. What I'm about to say is not a permission slip for chapters to not do community service. Hear me very carefully. But if you think about Sigma Nu’s founding documents, our Ritual, etcetera, there is nothing that is core to the origins of Sigma Nu that calls us to engage in community service work. A lot of our language, our values really speak to the support of one another. You know, how we help our brothers who are in need or help to support them.
0:50:24.8 Christopher Brenton: Certainly, there are calls to be good citizens, and there's maybe a little bit of community service that goes along with that, but there are a lot of other national organizations that have much more explicit calls for community service work or for engaging with their communities or for supporting particular causes or efforts that just doesn't exist with Sigma Nu. And I think because you have a little bit of a social norming that happens, and this one is for good within the Greek community, Sigma Nu is certainly an organization that is expected to engage in community service work like all other Greek organizations have become expected to do. It's a little bit part of our cultural identity as Greek students or Greek members on most college campuses.
0:51:17.7 Christopher Brenton: That doesn't mean that we shouldn't engage in community service. Let me make sure that I'm clear about that. But, where the effort comes from with us is going to be a little bit different, because we don't have those explicit calls to action or directives. When the fraternity views community service, we view it through the lens of leadership development, specifically servant leadership development. And we believe strongly that members who engage in the community who engage in community service or philanthropy who think about this deeply are going to be better servant leaders, are going to come out with more ethical development, are going to come out with a greater understanding of their personal values. And so we want our chapters to not only engage in community service but to do reflection, to think about why they're doing community service, such that they're gaining from that servant leadership development aspect which we think is central to their candidate experience, their experience as a brother and hopefully their transition to carrying with them those values and attitudes into their existence as alumni. So that's a really important foundational piece.
0:52:27.0 Christopher Brenton: And I would also say too that for your point about not viewing service as a chore, again one of the social norming pieces is I think you have a lot of college campuses that have quantified what is a good chapter in terms of like the number of hours that you do. We are of course, giving out an award, the Community Service Contributions... Or Contribution Award to award the chapter with the most hours. Our Pursuit of Excellence program has a minimum number of hours that you need to be held in the Acceptable category. And maximum or kind of also a higher number that you need to achieve to hit the Excellence criteria. So I'm not saying that we're not guilty of perpetuating this. But I do think that sometimes chapters get stuck into this rut of, well, this is just something that we have to do.
0:53:19.9 Christopher Brenton: And I really want chapters to think about, from Sigma Nu's perspective. We've actually taken a very conservative approach to how we ask for chapters to do hours. The Acceptable requirement is three, the Excellence requirement is six. So when you're thinking about the number of hours that we're asking for chapters to do, if at the minimum standard, it's less than an hour a month that we're asking for chapters to engage in community service. And most times you can knock out those three hours in one particular activity. So you're doing one community service project for the entire semester and that knocks out your minimum hours. So we've really tried to pull back on what we think is this creeping number of chapters who are getting into doing 10, 15, 20 hours per member per semester. Which certainly, if your chapter is at that place where their members are engaged, passionate, enthusiastic about doing community service and they can't get enough of it, I 100% want chapters to continue doing more of that. I think that's certainly a really excellent point. But if it's difficult to get your chapters to do community service, it's like pulling teeth. [chuckle]
0:54:38.5 Christopher Brenton: I think there's a little bit of an evaluation that has to go into a place of like, "Does your requirements match your capacity?" Maybe instead of saying, "We need to do more hours." Maybe pulling back a little bit and saying like, "Hey, let's reduce that number, but make sure we're increasing the quality. We're finding projects that match our passions. We are doing more reflection at those community service projects to make sure that our chapters are engaged. We're inviting in the speaker or inviting in the organizers for these various community service activities into our chapters to speak about why our impact matters." All of those things are going to create a deeper and richer connection to the work that we're doing. And I would argue that one hour of that, that's deep, intense, that's well thought about and reflected upon, is going to be greater than five to 10 hours of something that you're just doing that just to check off a box. So I really strongly believe in chapters engaging in the servant leadership aspect of community service and not just doing it to... Because you feel like you're obligated to.
0:55:48.3 Adam Girtz: And for more information on servant leadership, check out episode one of the Gavel Podcast with Father Joe Weber, where we talked, with him about about servant leadership. Yeah, excellent points Christopher, I really think, your chapters can benefit from that and you especially, like you said, if you're going to require or you ask three hours per semester of your members, provide four hours worth of opportunities or more, right? That is the responsibility of... This is why we have a community service chairman or a committee that is responsible for you identifying and enabling our... Identifying opportunities and enabling our members to participate in those opportunities. Whether it's you're organizing your group efforts or connecting members with individual service opportunities that they can do on their own time outside of that. So, excellent. Yeah. What about partnering with an organization? I know this is... This can sometimes be a daunting... Your proposition for let's say a brand new freshman member who became a Sigma Nu in the fall, and went through elections and ran for community service chairman and all of a sudden now he's in charge of organizing a partnership with a community service opportunity or organization, where the members can go and serve and that might be a daunting task. What advice do we have for that officer, or for chapters I guess?
0:57:33.2 Christopher Brenton: Yeah. So many organizations have long standing community organizations that do work on an ongoing basis. You've got groups like Habitat For Humanity, Adopt A Highway, The Boys and Girls Club, YMCA. A range of organizations that exist in communities that are in constant need of work. Sometimes that work is seasonal, sometimes that work aligns perfectly with an academic schedule.
0:58:06.6 Christopher Brenton: And so for one, I would encourage chapters, really think about what are those existing partners that are in constant need of volunteers. Your Habitat For Humanities, for example, is a really good organization, if they exist in your community, to look to because, pretty much every weekend there's going to be some need, or even during the weekdays, there's going to be some need for volunteers. And so if you can develop a partnership with them where, each weekend you're dedicating a certain number of brothers or a certain number of brothers are going out to volunteer, and that can become a longstanding opportunity for brothers to, engage in that service work. Humane societies may need people to volunteer with their pets or their animals, to provide cleanup, provide socialization. You may need, some afterschool programs that need volunteers to come and engage with, young, young children. Adopt A Highway, you get locked into a particular stretch of road that you're responsible for cleaning and you have to clean it on a frequent basis. That's another, kind of... Another opportunity that provides long term opportunities.
0:59:29.5 Christopher Brenton: So certainly there are a lot of long term partnerships that I think chapters can establish. And we also want chapters to think about those relationships versus just trying again, to find ways in which your chapter can check off boxes with, community service. The average member... Sorry, the average chapter for Sigma Nu has somewhere between 60 to 70 members. Some of our larger chapters kind of maybe skew that a little bit, but on average, 60 to 70 members, that is way too many members likely to participate in any one particular community service activity. If you go to Habitat and say, we've got 60 members who are coming, they're not going to be able to find enough work for you to do on that particular project. For a lot of our chapters, the average chapter, you're going to need to find ways to kind of break up your chapter's capacity, the number of members that you have across smaller, more frequent community service opportunities. If you're doing something like an Adopt A Highway, perhaps, establishing shifts like every week or every other week or every month, you have a group of five to 10 guys who go out and do that project. Well, over the course of the entire academic year, perhaps everybody has at least one opportunity to go and do an Adopt A Highway clean.
1:00:52.8 Christopher Brenton: But it's unlikely that you're going to need 60 people all at once. Similarly for habitat, maybe you can establish kind of a month or a weekly relationship where, five brothers go out each weekend, and brothers just sign up to identify which weekend that they want to go. And that's an opportunity for everybody to have that chance to participate. But it doesn't overwhelm the organization, where they just can't find capacity for the chapter. We often think a lot about, "Hey, we're a brotherhood, how do we do things together?" This is one area where, perhaps, we're looking at this in kind of a long term relationship capacity versus, "Hey, let's find a service event or a service activity in which we can all participate in at the exact same time."
1:01:43.9 Adam Girtz: And like we talked about in the interview with, Hunter and Anthony, that's where it... It's fun. It's fun to go do service with your brothers and, and it is fulfilling. They talked about, once you get the momentum going and once you get the guys out there and, engaged that they find that those, increasing returns, right? They're enjoying themselves and finding that value as members from that. Yeah, definitely having those regular opportunities and regular partnerships with an organization in your community, just will continue to build that momentum for a chapter over time. Well, as director of chapter services, I got to do a plug for our Best Practices Library. We do have a community service and philanthropy section, as well as, community service and philanthropy, office or resource page, so sigmanu.org and under the collegiate members tab, you'll be able to find all of those resources. So do definitely check those out if you're looking for additional, resources yeah. Christopher, any other, plugs or any other information we want to make sure we share?
1:02:58.4 Christopher Brenton: Yeah, I would just say if you're an advisor or you're a chapter officer, who is wanting to help your chapter engage in better, community service, two opportunities. One, the community service and philanthropy chairman is often not a required, officer for the leadership consultant or consultation experience. But we do usually provide them as a kind of a menu officer. So if chapters wanted to identify them as a kind of a priority, someone to meet with a consultant, definitely let your consultant know before they arrive, so that they can make arrangements to meet with the community service and philanthropy officer, to go over their role, to provide training and support, to make sure that they know how to do their work. Chapters don't often take advantage of that “menu” enough. They just hit the bare minimums, the required officers. But those consultations can really be shaped to fit your needs. And if community service and philanthropy is one of those needs, definitely find ways in which you can take advantage of your consultant.
1:04:08.6 Christopher Brenton: The second is going to be the Sigma Nu Institutes. So those take place every, late January, early February, and now that we have expanded into our virtual format for the Institutes, we now feature a dedicated community service and philanthropy track. If you missed this year's Institute, let us know, you can reach out to Adam, or you can reach out to Scott Smith, or just, contact the headquarters inbox at headquarters@sigmanu.org and we can actually provide you with a recorded episode, a recorded, video of the Sigma Nu Institute community service and philanthropy breakout track that we did this year. And then next year, if you wanted to attend that, in person, you could do so as well. So those are two excellent opportunities to receive expanded advice and support, for this particular conversation, to really make sure that you are, fully trained on how to do this well for your Chapter.
1:05:14.4 Adam Girtz: Yeah, and I actually do know that, during the Institute, as part of that, that community service and philanthropy track, Lambda Gamma was a, pretty heavy participant and actually was able to share and, receive ideas from other chapters and was very, heavily participatory in that conversation. So that's a really big component of that. Not only just getting, the information and the resources, but, interacting with other chapters, hearing some of those good ideas that have worked for them and sharing and building and brainstorming off of each other is a really awesome opportunity that, I'm glad we're able to facilitate awesome. Christopher, anything else?
1:05:55.8 Christopher Brenton: I think that's it.
1:05:57.0 Adam Girtz: I think that's it. I love this, this episode wonderful interview with Hunter and Anthony. Again, appreciate, you guys coming in and spending some time with us, and congratulations to Lambda Gamma Chapter, on the Community Service, Contribution Award.
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