Supporting your Internal Cabinet: Goal Setting

Just like with any other role in the chapter, goal setting is part of the foundation for success. As the internal vice president, you assume the role of a manager for your committees. Therefore, when setting goals for any position, you should always determine the metric that you can use to appropriately determine success or failure with your work. Because the objective as internal vice president includes ensuring progress toward and ultimately successful completion of all goals set related to internal operations, you must determine metrics that will allow you to determine success or failure when your position is complete in addition to giving status updates while performing the duties as internal vice president. Put simply, you want to determine how you can best judge whether the chapter is accomplishing these objectives.

With that evaluation, you can begin to make assumptions about how to appropriately accomplish this objective. You can easily assume that holding weekly committee chairman meetings and properly managing your committee chairman to ensure they accomplish the goals for their committees effectively will fulfill the first objective. Nonetheless, this means that because you are a manager of the committee chairman, your goals are dependent upon each committee chairman achieving their goals. This leaves you with your main goals for the internal vice president position and allows you to easily get a weekly update on how the chapter is performing with internal operations so that you may make changes or corrections if necessary. You should take note of these goals that you have now set and continually revisit them on a weekly basis. The goals you set with your cabinet may include:

• Alumni Relations
  • Create a comprehensive alumni database that includes all pertinent alumni contact information
  • Organize and hold a minimum of one alumni phone-a-thon to update database
  • Organize and hold one major alumni event
  • Create and distribute a minimum of one physical alumni newsletter with an electronic supplement
  • Work with the executive council on a monthly basis to organize and maintain a six-man Alumni Advisory Board
• Brotherhood
  • Organize and hold at least one brotherhood event per month
• Fundraising
  • Organize and hold at least one fundraising event per semester/quarter
• Historian
  • Take photos/video/written accounts of every chapter event
  • Compile all forms of multimedia by creating an accurate account of the chapter member experience through a chapter yearbook
• House Manager (if applicable)
  • Work with alumni members to establish and maintain a Housing Corporation.
  • Attend Housing Corporation meetings and represent the chapter as the chief liaison with the Housing Corporation
  • Educate student members and new members of the chapter’s housing policies and procedures
  • Facilitate the assignment of rooms to student members and new members according to the chapter’s housing policy
  • Obtain executed room contracts
  • Collect damage deposits from individual tenants prior to the date of their contract
  • Conduct room inspections when tenants move in and move out of rooms
  • Collect and distribute room keys to each tenant
  • Establish a routine cleaning and maintenance program for the chapter facility
  • Secure and prepare any chapter property for any extended closures
  • Create a summer maintenance program
  • Conduct, at least annually, a workday event involving both student members and alumni members
  • Create and maintain a uniform house manager handbook including guidelines, ideas, and suggestions for future house managers
• Scholarship
  • Implement and maintain a scholarship program that:
  • Rewards chapter members for positive scholastic performance including chapter awards, prizes, monetary gifts and other incentives
  • Applies circumstances to chapter members for negative scholastic performance including attending tutoring services, attending study hours, complete class attendance forms and other circumstances
  • Incorporates posting notifications on a scholarship bulletin board
  • Notifies chapter members of services and awards on campus offered by the institution
  • Notifies chapter members of Pi Kappa Alpha international awards and honors
  • Allows chapter members to get involved with an inner-chapter tutoring program
  • Recommends chapter members to attend frequent study hours
  • Offers course study files that include notes, previous assignments, previous tests, etc. for reference (if applicable)
  • Allows course/faculty evaluation for chapter members when a course is completed
  • Achieve a chapter GPA above the all-fraternity average, above the all-men’s average, and rank as the top fraternity on campus in GPA

SET THE BUDGET

When setting the budget for internal operations, you must take into consideration all of the possible expenses that may be incurred by your committees and then work with the treasurer to allocate the correct amount of the budget to the committees within internal operations. Here in a non-exhaustive list of those general expenses to get you started:

• Alumni Relations
  • Alumni phone-a-thon expenses
  • Venue expenses for alumni event
  • Food expenses for alumni event
  • Miscellaneous expenses for alumni event
  • Alumni newsletter printing and mailing
• Brotherhood
  • Paintball
  • Super bowl
  • Poker tournament
  • River float trip
• Fundraising
  • Supplies for raffle
  • Supplies for service event
  • Supplies for golf tournament
• Historian
  • Camera supplies/rental
  • Yearbook expenses
• House Manager (if applicable)
  • Cleaning supplies
  • Kitchen supplies
  • Furniture
  • House repairs
• Scholarship
  • Scholarship Incentives
  • Scholarship Circumstances
  • Study Hours
  • Study Files
  • Faculty Evaluations

Once you have determined what the expenses will be by discussing this with your committee chairmen, you can then begin to work with the treasurer to ensure the correct amount is allocated to the internal operations budget. The best way to go about working with the treasurer is to submit this information with the approximate corresponding amounts into the treasurer on the committee budget request form. This form can be found online at www.pikes.org in the financial documents of the officer resources.

Goal setting is an important first step, and will dictate your overall success as internal vice president. You only have to do it once, so do your due diligence now to identify the things you want to accomplish for the year!