Find Your Best Rush Sources by Chatting With Your Chapter Data

Every chapter has a story it tells about recruitment. Instagram is where we get everyone. The BBQ is our biggest night. Referrals are dead. Most of those stories are hunches.

Your chapter already has the data to check them in its rushee list, but nobody has time to export it, pivot it, and chart it in the middle of rush week.

Chapter Agent removes that step. You tag PNMs with where they came from, then you ask a question in plain English and get a funnel back.

Before You Start

• You need the Admin role, because Chapter Agent is admin only.
• Chapter Agent has to be enabled for your chapter under Admin → Manage Chapter → Beta Features → Chapter Agent (Pulse Chat). Once it's on, it appears in the sidebar as GC Agent.
• You need an active rush with PNMs in it. The more of them that are tagged, the sharper the answer.

Step 1: Tag Every PNM With a Source

Open any PNM (rushee) in Applications → Rush and add the Source row. Two fields matter here.

Primary source is a single dropdown with five fixed options. Event: you met them at a rush event or tabling. Social Media: they came in from Instagram, TikTok, a story, or a DM. Referral: a member or an alum brought them. Word of Mouth: they heard about you secondhand, with no specific referrer. Other: anything that doesn't fit.

Attribution tags are free-form labels you type and press Enter to add. This is the finer grain: Fall BBQ, Rush Week Night 2, IG Story 9/4, Jake T. A single PNM can carry several.

Primary source answers "what kind of channel." Attribution tags answer "which specific thing." Use both. The five sources give you clean buckets you can compare across rushes, and the tags tell you which BBQ was worth the money.

Tag each PNM when you add them, not later. A source you reconstruct three weeks after rush is a guess wearing a data costume.

Step 2: Let QR Codes Do the Tagging For You

Manual tagging breaks down on a busy night, and you don't have to rely on it.

Open a rush event in the calendar and you'll find a rush application QR code with the event name already set as the attribution tag. Print it, put it on the table, and every PNM who scans it and applies arrives pre-tagged with that event's name. The shareable public rush link carries the tag the same way.

Event-sourced PNMs tag themselves, and your team only hand-tags referrals and DMs.

Step 3: Ask Chapter Agent for the Funnel

Open GC Agent in the sidebar and ask for it in normal language:

Show me a Sankey of PNM source to bid status for the active rush.

Chapter Agent pulls the live rushee list, groups it, and renders the diagram inline. The left side is where PNMs came from. The right side is where they landed: No Bid, Denied, Rejected, or Accepted. Band thickness is headcount.

Other phrasings that work:

• Which rush source has the best bid acceptance rate?
• Break down this rush's PNMs by source as a pie chart.
• Compare attribution tags by how many accepted bids they produced.
• How many PNMs have no source tagged?

Step 4: Read Volume Separately From Conversion

Read the diagram in two passes, because volume and conversion often tell different stories.

Pass one: volume. In the example funnel, Social Media is the fattest band on the left: 10 PNMs, more than any other source. If you stopped here, you'd conclude social media is the program and pour next year's effort into it.

Pass two: conversion. Follow each band to the right. Those 10 Social Media PNMs produced 3 accepted bids and 5 who never got one. Referral brought only 3 PNMs, but 2 of them accepted. That's 30% conversion against about 67%.

The two sources call for different responses. Social media is a top-of-funnel channel that fills the room, so measure it on how many people show up. Referrals are a closing channel with low volume and high quality, and they're probably under-used because nobody asks members to make them.

Then there's the No Source band. If it's thick, the problem is tagging discipline, so go back to Step 2 and let the QR codes carry the load.

Step 5: Keep Slicing

The Sankey is a first question. Follow-ups stay in the same conversation and use the same data:

• Of the Social Media PNMs who didn't get a bid, how many attended at least one rush event?
• Which attribution tags show up most among PNMs who accepted?
• Show the same funnel but only for PNMs who were interviewed.
• Who referred the PNMs that accepted bids?

If your event-sourced PNMs convert three times better than your social-sourced ones, that's a reason to move next semester's budget from ads to food.

Turning It Into Next Rush's Plan

• Protect the closer. Referrals convert best and produce the least volume, so make them an assignment: every member brings one name, tracked, before rush starts.
• Re-scope the big channel. Keep social media, but hold it accountable for attendance at the first event, not for bids. Tag those posts so you can prove it next time.
• Tag every event separately. "Event" as a bucket is too coarse to act on. With per-event attribution tags you learn that the BBQ produced bids and the game-watch produced foot traffic, and you can plan around that.

Common Questions

What if we didn't tag anyone this rush?

Chapter Agent will show them as No Source. Start tagging now, even mid-rush. A partially tagged rush still beats an untagged one, and your next rush will be clean.

Can Chapter Agent make up numbers?

No. It's required to pull every factual claim from your live chapter data before answering, and it re-pulls on each question rather than reusing an earlier answer. If it can't find something, it says so.

Can I change a PNM's source after I've saved it?

Yes. Open the PNM, edit the Source row, save. The next question you ask reflects the change immediately.

Who in my chapter can use this?

Admins only, and only when the beta feature is switched on for your chapter. There's also a daily cap on questions per chapter, so spend them on the questions you'll act on.

Does it work for anything besides rush?

Yes. It also answers questions about events and attendance, polls, tasks, the member roster and profile completeness, points and check-ins, expenses, and alumni.

Next Steps

• Open the Rush End Report and check the Source Tag Effectiveness table, which shows total, accepted, and conversion rate for each attribution tag without asking Chapter Agent anything.
• Add a QR code to every rush event before the semester starts so tagging is automatic from night one.
• Re-run the same Sankey question at the end of rush and compare it to the mid-rush version.