Responding to OmegaFi’s Partnership with the NPC

Since the NPC Annual Meeting in October 2024, OmegaFi has spoken to many different International Presidents, Delegates and Executive Directors. From those conversations, it became clear there may be some confusion and misinformation about OmegaFi and the project we planned to work on with the National Panhellenic Conference. We’ve written this blog article to try and clear up misperceptions and address any concerns directly. 

If you would like to explore any of these topics in more detail, please email partnersupport@omegafi.com. OmegaFi would love to sit down in person or virtually with you and your leadership to talk about our company and our common commitment to increase sorority participation. 

Until then, please find some of the major questions and concerns brought to our attention outlined below. 

OmegaFi’s Commitment to the Industry. OmegaFi has spent 32 years serving fraternities and sororities. We have financial, technology, and recruitment partnerships with dozens of inter/national fraternities and sororities, including 11 different NPC organizations. We were the only company to waive our software subscription fees for all campus partners and ICS customers during the COVID pandemic. We consistently support – financially and with our time – the NPC, NIC, FFE, AFA, the FSPAC and Amplifying Sorority Campaign. We’re committed. 

OmegaFi’s Commitment to Growing Communities. The entire idea behind the original technology partnership project was all about growing communities and NPC member organizations. We have a shared vision for how to grow campus recruitment. Let’s focus on the big picture. 

• Growth is important to every national organization, and for the health of every chapter.  

• • The reality: Collegiate sorority membership is down 15% since its peak in 2017, and new membership is down 11%. Collectively, our community has lost more than 125 chapters in that time, with the vast majority due to declining membership. 

• • Only 1 in 4 high school women say they're interested in joining a sorority; and 1 in 11 (9%) of college freshmen say they “know they will” join.  

• The right technology partnership would allow you/NPC – in real time – to benchmark a campus Panhellenic’s registration numbers and how they are tracking (up or down) and know if greater support is needed to market recruitment.  

• • We know what NPC volunteer teams can do when they have clear data and a charge – think about RFM, Total Setting, campus marketing coaches, and beyond.  

• • This is another way to evolve and grow our communities, providing expertise and coaching when they need it most.  

• There are many campuses that simply lack staff support to help them get registration launched, which is inhibiting their ability to grow or even maintain.  

• • Just one example, each winter, a large percentage of deferred campuses don’t even have registration open by Jan. 1 – within weeks or the month of recruitment starting.  

• • To be able to market the experience … to be able to drive PNMs to a place to show interest … and to be able to bring people into the community and chapters, this is a basic need and something we must solve!  

• • Many small and medium-sized campuses need this support, at no cost, to be able to optimize their potential for growth.  

OmegaFi’s Commitment to COB. OmegaFi’s tools help communities and chapters grow year-round through Continuous Open Bidding. With NPC evolving the Total Setting Method, as we all know, there are real opportunities in growing the community through COB. Having an interest process through ICS that funnels leads to chapters with spots available gives communities and chapters a tool to grow year-round. 

Data Security & Privacy. We have industry-leading data security and certification practices. Our security systems are inspected and validated by independent third parties. 

• Today, OmegaFi maintains records on more than 300,000 college students and more than 3 million fraternity and sorority alumnae/i members. We never have and never will sell personal information. Our Privacy Policy prohibits it. Our contracts with customers prohibit it. It’s not the way we want to be treated, and we know it would be a bad business decision. 

• • Many states and their public institutions – Arkansas, Georgia, and Virginia, for example – require additional standards like compliance with the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA) and will not allow recognized student orgs to use platforms that are not FERPA compliant. We meet all of these standards.  

• • Individual universities - Baylor, Bowling Green, Miami, Texas, Tulsa, etc. — also impose additional FERPA and more stringent standards.  

• ICS and OmegaFi are PCI compliant. This is the gold standard for compliance to protect personal and payment data. This level of security is why more than 200 universities trust ICS and OmegaFi.   

• We have several key certifications (HEC-VAT, TX-RAMP). You’re seeing states — like Texas — put in additional security requirements – on top of PCI even – for software use at public higher ed institutions. Again, this is one reason why public Texas institutions feel most comfortable with their choice in ICS … and why a national partnership with a non-certified vendor simply would not work.  

• We do annual penetration testing and quarterly penetration scanning, to pressure test our products like ICS.  

• ICS has the benefit of being in the OmegaFi family – meaning security and product development are well funded to continue to evolve to new requirements as well as new customer needs.  

• • If the NPC Taskforce highlights specific concerns with how data flows, is owned or is managed, we are prepared to answer and address them collaboratively. 

ICS Support. ICS provides exceptional customer service!  

• NPC’s own focus groups with campus professionals confirmed this. And we see it all the time in FSL online chatter when someone posts “what are the differences between ICS and Campus Director?” 

• We offer 24/7 customer support during recruitment seasons. When you need something, we’re there for you. 

• Our onboarding process is also streamlined and hassle-free, and many campus professionals and Panhellenic officers express this when switching or using recruitment software for the first time.  

• ICS has an uptime of 99.89% over the last 3 years. What does this mean? ICS is reliable!  

• You also simply don’t see the type of complaints or concerns about product “glitches,” issues or outages showing up on the FSL Facebook forums that you do with other products.  

Company Investors. Some have asked questions about OmegaFi’s private equity investors. 

• Private equity investors should provide a level of comfort about the financial stability and longevity of a company.  

• Many in this industry have suffered at the hands of companies owned by one or two individual founders when circumstances changed, or economic realities set in. Groopt and Celect are just two of the founder / individual-held companies that worked with fraternities and sororities at one point but then shut down suddenly with no clear answer about what happened with all of the critical data they maintained.  

• Private equity backing means we are stable, successful, profitable and have access to experts and resources that allow us to continue investing in the development of our products. It should not be scary. In fact, it’s incredibly common.  

• Billhighway, Greekbill, ChapterSpot, Upper Crust Food Service, Campus Cooks, College Chefs, Nimble, YourMembership, GiveSmart, Classy, MIP Fund Accounting, Quickbooks and cVent all have private equity investors. Almost every inter/national fraternity and sorority, and many of their affiliated entities, are working with private equity-backed companies today. 

Marketing Opportunities. Less than three years ago, NPC’s member organizations raised big concerns about the need for the Conference to elevate its marketing strategy. This has been an area of growth since that time. A potential partnership and utilization of ICS means the sky is the limit for marketing.  

• We can help NPC; its member organizations and campus partners understand what marketing truly works to get PNMs to sign up for recruitment. Through ICS utilization, we would aggregate reporting per campus and more broadly about how PNMs arrive to (and begin/complete) Panhellenic registration pages – via social media ads, referrals, organic searches, national Spotify ads, etc.  

• • Because of this collaboration and organization, you’d know more about how much time they spend, what device they use, where they stall out in the reg process … all which can lead to better data-driven marketing decisions.  

• It enables NPC (the Conference, its orgs, and members) to be able to drive PNMs to The Sorority Life – a hub that lists all/many Universities and their registration pages in one location– where they (or their parents) can both learn about the experience and register or submit interest.  

• • This simple (but currently unattainable) feature will help propel both top-of-the-funnel and grassroots marketing! Imagine if all 26 member orgs and 4 million sorority alumnae could confidently market the experience to one place!  

• Abandoned cart marketing: ICS utilization would allow NPC to market to PNMs on select campuses who start a form, but don’t finish it! That’s huge – you know it works … I know Pottery Barn always gets me when I look at something, put it in my cart, and then get reminded that I really do need that thing! 

• Marketing automation: NPC could work with campus partners to create campaigns (email and social) for those registered in select communities to share campus-specific information and storytelling that continues to keep PNMs interested and engaged through the start (or end) of recruitment.  

Download & Upload of Selection & Flex Lists. Today, chapters must download their selection and flex lists out of their voting software (either OmegaRecruit or myVote) and upload them into ICS. Some have questioned this practice and why not automate the process.   

• OmegaFi continues to maintain the download and upload process because key customers – sorority inter/national headquarters and FSL staff customers – have insisted we maintain it. For whatever reason, they do not want an automated process. Rather, they want the ability to review, correct and potentially alter votes before the selection lists are uploaded to ICS.  

• • If automation is now a higher priority, we would be happy to do it. 

• • Automating the process eliminates lists existing on individual computers. Automating the process between OmegaRecruit and ICS is relatively simple for OmegaFi because we oversee both apps. Automating the process between ICS and myVote is fairly straight-forward and similar to many integrations we have in place with other companies. We just need PhiredUp to cooperate. 

Conclusion 

Hopefully, this long article addresses some of the confusion and questions that were raised during the NPC Annual Meeting.  

Again, if you would like to explore any of these topics in more detail, please let us know at partnersupport@omegafi.com. OmegaFi would love to sit down in person or virtually with you and your leadership to talk about our company and our common commitment to increase sorority participation.