LOOK BACK KAPPA HISTORY
From left: Meeting Hall, 83rd Grand Chapter Meeting, 2017 Orlando, FL. The 2025 Grand Board of Directors Meeting.
“ONE KEY CONSIDERATION FOR GCMC IS MINORITY REPRESENTATION WITHIN CITY LEADERSHIP, THE CVB, HOTEL MANAGEMENT, AND THE CONVENTION CENTER. ”
GCMC allocates these groups with the requested space and incorporates their respective events into the Grand Chapter Schedule of Events.
REPUTATION Kappa Alpha Psi is well-known
throughout the hospitality industry for hosting one of the best-produced, planned, and executed national conventions. Among the Greek-letter organizations, Kappa Alpha Psi is one of the most desirable organizations for cities to bid to host our GCM. When the Fraternity publishes an RFP, the GCMC anticipates that 20 or more cities will vie to host the Con- clave. For example, 27 cities submitted RFPs for the 88th GCM, scheduled for 2027. The GBOD ultimately selected Baltimore, MD, as the host city. SELECTION PROCESS The RFPs are published to interested prospective GCM host cities years in advance. This ensures that the
Fraternity meets the Constitution stipulation that GCM host cities are determined five years in advance. IHQ collects the responses to the RFP from cities. The next step is for the GCMC to determine whether or not the RFP responses meet Kappa Alpha Psi’s defined specifications, such as providing a 3,000-4,000- person meeting hall, 20-30 breakout rooms, accommodating 12 province caucus rooms, facility costs, financial incentives, airline service, availability, and proximity of hotels to convention center, availability of hotels during the prospective Conclave Week, and hotel
costs, including room rates. Another factor considered is the viability of a Conclave candidate city as a desired location for the brothers and their families to travel to. The challenge for the GCMC is to narrow the number of cities required to present to the GBOD. To meet the challenge, GCMC, in response to the RFPs from CVBs, creates a comparative matrix that compares cities against one another using defined criteria, such as hotel room rates, hotel availability, the number of hotels within walking distance of the convention center, convention center rental space costs,
52 THE JOURNAL ♦ SPRING 2025
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