Question: Can people of the community be PTO members?

We have some people from the community who are always helping and supporting us and attend to all meetings but they don't have children in our school. Are they allowed to vote to elect new officers? We don't have anything on our bylaws about who are consider members. Thank you

Asked by sgongora

Answers:

Advice from PTO Today

Craig writes:
There's no one right answer. Different groups handle membership in different ways. Some allow only parents to be members, while others don't make that limitation. Personally, I'm for inclusion. If you have people who care and want to help, why not allow them to be members? A compromise would be to write into your bylaws that the president must have a child in the school, but not make any other restrictions. --Craig

Advice from PTO Today

Rockne writes:
Sounds like you should discuss and define this in your bylaws. PTAs typically allow anyone who wants to pay the dues to be members. If a PTO doesn't charge dues, then often member is defined as "all parents and guardians of students at XYZ school". But a PTO certainly could choose to define membership differently. My recommendation would not to have those folks as voting members. Seems like it could open up some unwanted results to me. Tim