Convention Wrap-Up

Hello sisters!

I apologize for the delay in the wrap up blog. I returned from convention and life got away from me.

Convention was amazing! It was wonderful to meet so many great sisters and be apart of something so big for our organization. I know everyone says this, but it is definitely something you have to experience at least once in your life!

On that note, my first big announcement is that our 2014 National Convention will be taking place in Palm Dessert, California! A perfect location to get as many of our Portland area sisters down for a weekend of sisterhood. It's a fair distance from the coast, unfortunately, but you can take a direct flight from PDX into Ontario, California which is the closest airport. Hopefully many of you will be there, I know I will.

Next, I'd like to touch on a few of the things we voted on at convention.

First, we elected our new national council, lead by Diane Blackwelder, National President. We also voted to seat the new National Nominating Committee.

We also voted on a few changes to our ritual. First degree will now be refereed to as the New Member Ceremony and 2nd degree will simply be termed Initiation. Our new member stick pin will now just be called the New Member Pin, as the pin is no longer a stick.

During this time we were also given the state of the enterprise address and, I'm happy to say, Alpha Chi Omega is in FANTASTIC shape. A few highlights:

- 75% of our chapters carry over a 3.0 GPA
- We colonized one new chapter at High Point University and have several colonizations and re-colonizations in the works for the next couple of years.
- Major increases in recruitment and retention fraternity wide
- Number of donors and amount of donations to Alpha Chi Omega Foundation have increased

Speaking of the Alpha Chi Omega Foundation, we were introduced to a new campaign, the For Now, For Ever campaign. This initiative is attempting to raise 7 million dollars for the Foundations and programming. Currently, with very little effort, they have hit 6 million dollars of this goal! Each collegiate and alumnae chapter was given an amount as a goal to dedicate to this initiative. For more information or to make a donation, go to http://www.alphachiomega.org/index.aspx?id=2618 and take some time to watch the video. Delta Omicron President, Jessica N., is featured in the video.

Last, but not least... I am very pleased to announce that Delta Omicron was selected to receive 2 national awards. The first was in the area of Financial Management. The other is the National Progress Award, awarded to the chapter that has shown the most quantifiable progress of the previous academic year. The women of Delta Omicron worked incredibly hard for this award and are very excited about it. We will be having a celebration in honor of this award on September 22nd. If you would like to get on the Xi Xi mailing list to get more information, email xixi.alphachiomega@gmail.com.

That's it from convention! I'm happy to share more and answer any questions you may have. Feel free to contact me at the Xi Xi email address!

Loyally,
Brynn