A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHAPTER NEWSLETTERS
Chapter newsletters have played an important role in keeping alumni connected to Pi Kappa Phi and to the friends they’ve found through fraternity for many decades. Arguably, there has been no greater outreach tool that student chapters and alumni organizations have employed than the periodic publication of a newsletter.
Chapter newsletters as we know them today began in earnest circa 1920. In the 1929 official history of the Fraternity, Executive Secretary George Sheetz, Alpha (College of Charleston), commented on the proliferation of newsletters during this time.
CHAPTER NEWSLETTER PROGRAM
The Chapter Newsletter Program is part of our efforts to support local alumni organizations. National Headquarters staff partners with alumni chapters or housing corporations to develop and distribute newsletters on behalf of the alumni organization. If you are interested in participating in this program, please contact commteam@pikapp.org.
Putting together a newsletter is a four-step process:
- The chapter provides content.
- National Headquarters staff reviews and organizes the content and designs the newsletter.
- A designed newsletter is shared with the chapter for any needed edits.
- A final newsletter is distributed on the chapter’s behalf.
Timeline
It’s recommended that chapters work on gathering newsletter content throughout the year, leading up to design and distribution.
Once the chapter has submitted all content, it takes approximately one month to review the content and design the newsletter. If a chapter decides to print and mail copies of their newsletter, note that an additional two weeks is needed.
Things to note:
- It’s a best practice for a chapter to focus on providing content and letting the team at National Headquarters handle the layout and design of the newsletter.
- Printing/mailing: If an alumni organization chooses to mail newsletters to some or all alumni members, this adds about two weeks to the process. Please note, the cost for mailing and printing the newsletter will be billed to the alumni chapter.
- Content edits: The National Headquarters staff will edit written content for punctuation, grammar, clarity, etc., in addition to ensuring that Pi Kappa Phi style and brand guidelines are met and that the chapter and Fraternity are represented well.
Contact commteam@pikapp.org for support with your chapter newsletter.
ALUMNI NEWSLETTER RESOURCE GUIDE
For a detailed guide on alumni newsletters, click the button above for examples, content ideas and best practices.
If you have copies of previous newsletters, or newsletters your chapter has published recently, we want to feature them on our digital archives. You can submit them here to be uploaded.
See archived newsletters from many of Pi Kappa Phi’s chapters. If you can’t find your chapter, please consider sharing past copies to be stored in the newsletter archives.