My Crazy Side Gig: Frat House Corporation President (Pro Bono)

By Brett Boehm

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“How hard can it be? It’s just a little frat house.”

That is what I thought when agreeing to help form a house corporation for my son’s fraternity and serve as its president. Turns out this volunteer side gig was like taking on another full-time job, for a while. Here is the back story of what happened.

My son entered my alma mater as a freshman last fall and pledged a relatively new fraternity on campus. The only drawback was they didn’t have a frat house yet, and I knew from experience in a fraternity decades ago that living together in a house creates lifelong friendships.

My son enjoyed his new fraternity over the school year. In a wonderful coincidence, I learned that the same property owner of the same house my own fraternity had leased years ago was seeking new tenants. Out of love for my son, I reached out to the property owner via LinkedIn to confirm whether the opportunity did exist. That is where I thought my role as volunteer leasing broker would end.

Not so fast, said the property owner. There are other fraternities and sororities without homes on campus that might be interested, too. The property owner remembered me, trusted me and wanted to work with a mature adult with business experience throughout the lease term. I agreed and enlisted the help of friends who also were parents of fraternity brothers.

Our first order of business was forming a not-for-profit house corporation, which would be responsible for issuing licenses to fraternity members to live in the house under certain guidelines. The house corporation also set about raising money in the form of substantial security deposits from fraternity members. These steps were necessary because the fraternity has a small national footprint and doesn’t yet have the liquidity to guarantee leases and oversee housing like many larger fraternities do.

I have been so grateful for the support of the fraternity brothers, their parents and their executive board, and the volunteer work of the other board members of the house corporation throughout this entire process. The seven members of the house corporation board consist of three other parents who have sons in the fraternity; three alumni of the school who started the fraternity’s chapter on campus, including its original president; and me, serving as house corporation president.

One of the biggest hurdles was negotiating lease terms, not because of the fraternity house lease but because of a complicating factor. A number of fraternity members were currently living in an apartment complex and, even though it was only March, had already signed leases to stay in the apartments for the upcoming school year.

We needed most of the fraternity brothers in the apartment, and most of those living elsewhere, to commit to the new frat house to make the finances work. So, I had to convince the apartment property owner that it was early enough to let them out of the new leases, without requiring them to sublet.

To accomplish this, I had to find other students willing to lease all the apartments affected. I contacted the fraternity that was vacating our new house when their lease ran out in May, realizing undergraduates living there would need another place to stay by fall. Dealing with the students and parents involved was quite a feat, but enough students signed apartment leases that we could take that off our to-do list.

Since then, our house corporation board has been busy. We filled the position of house director, obtained sufficient insurance coverage, secured a cook and food service to prepare meals, got utilities in order, set up a web platform for managing finances and continue to handle other necessary tasks.

My son has assisted me throughout this experience and gained some real-world business skills in the process. While he was a freshman this past academic year and not on the fraternity’s executive board, he helped set up and attended meetings related to the new fraternity house. He was my “right hand” in getting things done on campus and assisted with communications among everyone.

The fraternity recently moved into the house and, yes, my son is grateful. He says he will owe me for the rest of his life.

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