Podcast (Final)

Delta Phi fraternity, also known as St. Elmo's Club, is a non-profit organization at Rutgers University. They use charitable events to generate funds and help the community. They measure their impact and success through service hours and philanthropy funds. Challenges include allocating funds correctly and getting participation from different organizations. Their culture and values focus on being well-rounded and giving back. They collaborate with other organizations and donate to causes like the Alzheimer's Association. They are currently working on projects like volunteering for community events and organizing a charity golf tournament. They have a budget sheet and fundraising strategies. Members can interact with communities through newsletters and events. They would like more funds for philanthropy and more involvement in the community. How are you doing? I'm sitting here with Dr. Matthew Kowalczyk. Today I will be proposing a non-profit promotion for Delta Phi fraternity, and our audience will be you, as well as students on campus, and teachers, faculty, anyone else that falls in that category. To start, my first question will be, can you tell me more about the organization's mission and specific impacts it aims to achieve? Yeah, so we are Delta Phi, also known as St. Elmo's Club, and we are an on-campus organization here at Rutgers University, and we are a non-profit, so technically we cannot make any profit based off of our chapters, the different chapters in the country, so what we try to do is to use several different charitable organizations and different philanthropy events to help generate money and to help our community at the same time. Sounds perfect. My second question is, how does the organization measure and track its impacts or success? Yeah, so definitely. We have an Excel sheet that we use, and also the IFT and the OFSA, the Office of Sorority and Fraternal Associations, they give us a service tracker that helps us log our service hours, our philanthropy hours, our philanthropy funds, so that definitely helps us when it comes to brother service hours that we record. Sounds fantastic. So, what are the main challenges the organization is currently facing, and how do you address them? So, some challenges, per se. I wouldn't really say that we have any challenges. It's more so allocating funds to go in the right spots that we feel setting up the correct charitable events and giving it to the correct charitable organizations that we feel fit the need of what we have for our values in the St. Elmo's Club. In addition to this, it's more so getting participation from different organizations to help us set up these events. And, yeah, I wouldn't really say there's lots of challenges, but it's just hard to get everybody on the same page all at once, in my opinion. That's actually a perfect segue to my next question. When you say find the perfect needs that you think fit our fraternity and could benefit other people, can you describe the organization's culture and values? Yeah, definitely. So, what St. Elmo's Club and St. Elmo's fraternity set its values on is first being a well-rounded young man and being able to give back to those who are able to get you to where you are today. And based off of that, we try to find organizations who help find and attribute these goals towards our fraternity and help meet these goals of our brothers as well. My fifth question is going to be, how does the organization collaborate with other stakeholders, communities, or partners to achieve its goals, for example, St. Elmo's and the Alzheimer's Association? Yeah, so definitely. What our organization does here at the Epsilon chapter of St. Elmo's is we collaborate with our national board and they help us determine what organizations, what events we should hold based off of our core values as St. Elmo's organization. And along with the Alzheimer's Association, for example, we determine that this organization is a great cause and that's something that we want to contribute to. So, through our philanthropy events and through our philanthropy funds, whenever we raise money, the Alzheimer's Association is something that we always look to donate towards. I would now like to take a brief moment to introduce our PSA. If you are a Rutgers student looking to get involved on campus, check out Delta Phi. They are dedicated to fostering an environment committed to brotherhood, morality, and service. Delta Phi seeks to contribute to philanthropic efforts, mainly focusing on their contributions to Alzheimer's Association. Some of the most successful events include Dunkin' Donuts and Pi Phi. The fraternity works has greatly benefited both the members of the St. Elmo Society and patients and families affected by Alzheimer's disease by bringing awareness, raising money, and increasing involvement throughout the university. Come follow them on Instagram at Delta Phi Rutgers and support their journey. Moving on, my next question would be, what initiatives or projects is the organization currently working on and how can this contribute to those efforts? Yeah, so right now we are working on different projects at the same time. One current one is we're trying to get a bunch of volunteers to help out with the Rutgers Big Chill event that's going on December 9th. It's a great event where Rutgers hosts a big community outreach day, basically. We're trying to get as much volunteers for that as possible. And along with something that I'm working on on the side, which is an inaugural event type of ordeal for our fraternity itself, the Epsilon chapter of St. Elmo's, whether it be like a golf 18-hole round tournament style where a bunch of our alumni can come back, we can raise money, do sort of an auction charity type of ordeal, and just have a great day with our alumni and use philanthropy with that at the same time. Sounds like a great idea. Moving on, can you provide more information about the organization's financial stability and fundraising strategies? Yeah, of course. So just like any type of business or anything along those lines, we have a budget sheet that dedicates a certain amount of money towards some social events we have, philanthropy events we have, and that money comes from member dues. So every active member within the fraternity pays a certain amount of dues, and we have a master Excel sheet, budget sheet, that just tells each section of money allocated and how much and where it's all going, just like a regular business would. That sounds fantastic. What other opportunities are there for members to directly interact with communities or individuals that the organization that we serve, such as St. Elmo's or the Alzheimer's Association? Yeah, definitely. So dealing with St. Elmo's and the Alzheimer's Association, of course it's easier to go through us, the St. Elmo's Epsilon chapter here at Rutgers. But if a member wants to do it on their own, they can always sign up for the newsletters that our nationals have at our headquarters, along with the Alzheimer's Association newsletter. And they have their separate events that obviously we're not able to participate in every single time, but it's much easier for one person to do it if they have the time, so they can look it up and join any events that they're having, any fundraising opportunities. So it's not as hard as somebody would think to get involved in these. Lastly, in your expert opinion, is there anything you would change or make adjustments to? Change or make adjustments to? Well, obviously I would like to have more money allocated towards philanthropy, but I'm sure everybody is on the same page as that. But maybe just having more events, being more involved, just helping the community around us, whether that be through the Alzheimer's Association or more local events, such as helping local food pantries or stuff along those lines. Going to middle schools, helping out with aftercare, or events just like that. Last week, we just had our philanthropy week here at Rutgers, and we set up food boxes, set up toiletry supplies for people in need during this holiday season. So it's just good knowing that you're being able to give back to those communities that help shape the place around you. Thank you very much for your time, Akai. We understand that Philanthropy is very important and has a lot of things going on, but we appreciate you, Time Management, getting this in for us to help promote your non-profit. Appreciate you, and hope you have a wonderful day. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Matt. Thank you.