This is a part of the Strategic Plan 2025 series.

July 2022 marked the beginning of the new fiscal year for Phi Kappa Tau. The time period of July-October was focused on:

Realizing the initial returns from our growth focus

Vocalizing the value of membership that Phi Kappa Tau has the potential to provide

Evolving the brotherhood journey with an eye towards greater lifelong ties

Establishing a regular quarterly cadence to advancing achievement of the 2025 Strategic Plan

With the departure of Tim Hudson as CEO in August, there was a lot of work to be done in solidifying the workflow at the executive offices and ensuring staff members and volunteers were supported in their efforts. While the organization is still actively seeking the next CEO of the Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity, there was substantial progress made in all areas of the strategic plan during the July-September quarter.

*The reestablished Epsilon Nu Associate Chapter.*

Realizing the Initial Return of Growth Focus: A strong focus was on building on the success of the inaugural Growth Summit in May and executing a strong fall semester recruitment. The fraternity took a proactive approach to recruitment, offering new recruitment services to each chapter through the newly hired staff recruiters. Additionally, our growth department became fully operational again with a team of four recruiters hitting the road this past semester. This resulted in a remarkable success at Clemson University by reestablishing the Epsilon Nu chapter. While our opportunity at the University of Minnesota did not go as planned, vital lessons were learned in expansion planning and the department was able to pivot and seize opportunities at Wright State University and the University of Dayton.

Newly developed recruitment marketing materials were published and accessed by hundreds of brothers, providing a more brand consistent appearance for our local chapters to leverage. Furthermore, analysis was completed to learn more about retention and attrition causes from association to graduation which will better inform the support available to chapters and membership strategies. Lastly, the fraternity developed a historical and future predictive membership forecasting model to inform our planning for future years. So far this semester, chapters have recruited over 700 new members.

Vocalizing the Value of Membership: Providing brothers with the ability to speak quantifiably about the impact of Phi Kappa Tau is essential in advancing our vision. That is why through assessment efforts we were able to develop the initial version of a new speaker toolkit focused on the benefits of Phi Kappa Tau membership. These talking points are now available and provide brothers with statistics and impact statements on the positive value of Phi Kappa Tau for use at recruitment events, anniversaries, or any chapter engagement. This analysis was gathered by research from the North American Interfraternity Conference, our recently rolled Graduate Exit Survey, and general polls regarding the value of membership.

*2020 Presidents Academy, 2023 will see this program turn into “Zenith Officer Institute”*

To provide more value to our membership a review of our educational programming was conducted, leading to the development of exciting new educational programs that will take place in 2023, such as the Zenith Officer Insititute. Additionally, the chapter services team has conducted a review of the Borradaile Challenge, both the metrics and the reporting structure. This will help the fraternity more accurately assess the needs of the undergraduate chapter operations.

Evolving the Brotherhood Journey: A new and formalized Membership Journey has been defined as an organizing mechanism to focus our strategy, analysis, and initiatives to the specific areas that can most improve the membership experience. This new journey design maps the storyline of how members of Phi Kappa Tau progress through our brotherhood experience, as well as the touchpoints the national organization has with them along the way. It helps put us in the shoes of our members, so that we can see and understand the progression of their experience, as well as identify needs and areas of potential improvement.

*Click image to explore the membership journey.*

A key piece of this journey identified for improvement is the graduation process. An enhanced experienced will be rolled out this semester to more smoothly transition graduating brothers taking their first step into their post-college life. This was informed by the graduate exit survey and by some very practical steps that will make life easier for recently graduated Phi Kappa Tau members.

Another area of focus the development of our new membership orientation program, which is progressing towards a pilot rollout this coming spring. We also kicked off our new partnership with Dyad Strategies with the Phi Kappa Tau Brotherhood assessment, which will provide useful information to better tailor services to chapters in the years to come.

Establishing a Quarterly Planning & Execution Cadence to Achieve the Strategic Plan: In the most recent quarter a strong commitment was placed on regular check ins and leveraging our technology investments with programs like the Perdoo OKR tracking software. With the team engaged, it was possible to get a lot done in a brief period of time. This has also allowed for us to have increased transparency across departments and stakeholders with the progress made on the Strategic Plan. You can check out the Q2 goals by clicking here, which are currently well under way.

There’s still a lot to be done, but we’re well on our way to achieving our strategic goals by 2025. If you would like to check them out you can visit phikapptau.org/strategicplan. If you have feedback or would like to learn how to become involved with any initiatives, please contact communications@phikapppatau.org.