By Brian Warren Jr., Virginia '04, Executive Director

SigEp has been exploring new sources of revenue to invest in the programs and services offered our undergraduate members. This effort began as we considered ways to offset the significant reduction in programming dollars and a general decline in revenue brought on by the economic challenges of the past few years.

Program participation needs to increase
In the 2007-2008 academic year, more than 20 percent of our undergraduates attended a SigEp leadership program. This was an all-time high for SigEp. That next year, the percentage of members participating in a regional or national program dropped significantly. Since fall 2009 we've steadily increased the quality and reach of our programs, but not at the same pace as our growth in total membership.

Twenty percent isn't good enough. We need to expand our reach and offer more brothers the chance to develop themselves as leaders, as professionals and as men. The need for these programs is even greater today, as cuts in federal and state funding are forcing our host institutions to make tough decisions that will ultimately affect out-of-classroom programming.

Feedback and program evaluation tells us that SigEp's programs impact our brothers well beyond their undergraduate years. Our members need quality, relevant, well-executed programs. They need SigEp.

Strategic partnerships offer an important avenue to help
This is why SigEp has formed carefully considered strategic partnerships with key service providers. These partnerships differ from a typical licensed vendor relationship. Licensed vendors have contracted with us through a vendor management company (Affinity) to meet certain service standards and share a small percentage of sales with the Fraternity, in exchange for promoting themselves as licensed SigEp vendors.

Partnerships, on the other hand, are arrangements where SigEp contracts directly with a service provider to offer SigEp-only branded services. Right now, we have two such partnerships, with Nationwide Insurance and Bookrenter.com, a textbook rental service. Nationwide offers SigEp members special discounts on several types of insurance and Bookrenter.com allows students to rent their textbooks at a significant discount over purchasing them.

In each case, the Fraternity has carefully researched providers to assure they can provide appropriate support for our account and have measures in place that protect our members’ contact information.

For example, Nationwide is prohibited from selling our information or using it for any purpose other than sending messages which we authorize. In the case of Bookrenter.com, SigEp works with the organization to build advertisements for the web site and e-mail messages that we send out. The last thing we want to do is create a situation where our member data is used for unintended purposes.

Real value for members and SigEp
While other fraternities, sororities and universities have long engaged in partnerships, SigEp’s effort to venture into these arrangements is fairly new. We will consider future partnerships that provide real value to our members with the same assurances that member information is used according to the high privacy standards we have established.

Joining SigEp is a lifelong experience. We want members to remain engaged with our Fraternity, be proud of their association with SigEp, and continue to benefit from their membership. These partnerships are an offer to more than a quarter million members during and long after their undergraduate years.

A few members have contacted the Fraternity to request that their names be removed from solicitations sent out by our partners, and we have done so immediately. My hope is that members begin to see the value in supporting our partners as a way to obtain needed or desired services, and at the same time, support our efforts to generate funding for undergraduate programs.

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