Scholarship/Leadership Program Update

Gamma-O Alumni Brothers,

Approximately 15 years ago the House Corp and the Foundation announced to alumni of Gamma Omicron Chapter the Scholarship/Leadership Program, designed by then 5 active chapter leaders and 3 alums. While the title isn’t sexy, the program is designed to reward both Chapter scholarship (GPA) and brothers’ leadership within the chapter and “on the Hill”.

  1. The first overall qualifier is the chapter (brotherhood) must meet at least KU’s “all men’s” GPA and be current in all chapter financial obligations.
  2. The second qualifier is a brother must have at least the KU “all fraternity” GPA and be current on all obligations to the chapter.
  3. A qualifying brother’s GPA, will have an added a leadership factor (a fraction one GPA equivalent, or less, depending upon the office held). The calculation is (GPA+Factor) times the number of semester hours completed. The product of a brother’s calculation, will then be computed as a percent of the total product of all qualifying brothers, times the funds set aside by the boards for that semester, to determine his “payout”.
  4. Note the qualifiers require the “brotherhood” to be mutually successfully, before individual brothers can qualify! Not just a few, but at least a majority of the brothers should earn the funds available for that semester! It isn’t just the few earning all the “cookies”. Go to the Gamma-O web site to see calculations using a semester’s actual results modeled into these formulas.


The last 15 years has brought in $275,481 for this program, including $6,000 pending pledges. A brother had pledged $50,000 once we hit $450,000 and another $100,000 once we hit $900,000. He was frustrated with the low funding level since the pledge, so he advanced the first $50,000, now in the above totals.

This writer has been championing fund raising for Gamma-O for over 30 years, beginning with the $2+ millions funding of the rebuilding the chapter house, which we re-occupied in 1998. I am having too many family health/other distractions, so I am asking for more of you to step up your generosity soon, while we seek someone to head up this important program’s fund raising! Let me know of any questions or suggestions you may have. Gamma-O now has over 1400 living alumni and only 75 have responded to this “SCHOLARSHIP LEADERSHIP PROGRAM”!! More than 494 responded to re-building the chapter house, from then about 1200 alumni! (Top 7 donors gave $856,000 and all 37 donors at $10,000, or more, gave $1,405,000!)

To acquaint you with the current cost of attending KU, tuition works out to about $350/credit hour. Gamma-O’s house bills are about $8,000 per semester (similar to Beta, DU, Phi Delt and Phi Psi, al competitive with University Housing …… a couple of sororities are $10,000/semester!). This will dramatize the need for an endowing fund that will support at least $20,000/semester to have a meaningful incentive to reward at least a majority of the brothers, not just a few. Note, the qualifiers are intentionally not based on need, but on performance of the brotherhood and individual brothers. Also, at least $20,000/semester requires $1 million endowment earning 4%!

When we launched this program the chapter was functioning at a historically high level, academically and otherwise. At that time we warned that history tells us such excellence was not a permanent condition. Recent semesters had the chapter earning a 3.1 GPA, but slipped to 2.92 this past semester. Last semester’s KU’s all men’s average was 2.84 and the average for large (60+ member) chapters was 2.97.

This program addresses all the right issues to condition brothers’ results orientation for their careers. Please be a significant donor to this program’s making a difference in preparing brothers for teamwork successes, necessary for any company.

AEKDB

Lloyd B. Hanahan ‘56
For the good of our Order