Any member can attend our monthly PTO meetings, but board members only can vote. A member must attend two consecutive meetings to be eligle to become a board member. With about 25 board positions, usually there is an opening for a new board member. If a board member misses two consecutive meetings, they lose their voting priviledges until they have attended two consecutive meetings again. Works out quite well.
Maybe the membership dues for PTO is a carryover mindset from years ago when most parent/teacher groups were PTA. I'm not dissing the PTAs, it's just that I don't see any need for a PTO to charge membership fees since they are independent and don't have any state or national organization to answer to.
Our PTO does collect dues but by no means do we get rich from them. We have collected $75 for the 04-05 school year. Our dues are $2.50--I am not sure why they are this amount--I have only been at this school district for 3 years and a member of the PTO since then and thats what they were when I came. If you pay your dues you are a voting member of the PTO--you can attend a meeting if you do not pay dues only you have no vote. For those of you who do not collect dues---how do you decides who gets to vote--whoever is at the meeting that night?? We have the same people at every meeting and usually its only like 8-12 people--(including the 4 of us on the board) but some meetings its been like 6 people.I honestly believe if we didn't have a way to say ok you are a voting member because you paid dues-- a few people would show up only to vote on a certain issue and never attend another pto meeting---did that make sense LOL!! I really see no need to collect dues myself if there was a way to go about the voting---let me know how yours work!! Thanks
Our PTO does not collect dues and quite frankly I think if we did, it would contribute to the demise of our PTO.
To my knowledge, I don't believe our PTO has ever collected dues since it began in the '80s.
Every parent is a member of our PTO whether they volunteer or attend PTO meetings. Parents can't vote at PTO meetings if they aren't a board member though. I don't think we would have much luck getting parents to volunteer at fund-raisers if they weren't considered part of the PTO and knew they would be hit up for dues.
Personally, I don't see why dues would be necessary for a PTO and I would think it would be a turn off for many parents. If our PTO collected dues, it would probably only be the board members who would pay, and we are the ones who are doing most of the work anyway.
We always carry money over at the end of each year and the profits from fund-raisers are so much more than any membership dues, that it wouldn't be worth our effort to collect dues.
Our school also doesn't allow any type of fund-raisers that involve the students selling products and soliciting products, i.e., no gift wrapping, cookie dough, candy bars, types of selling. The PTO only does two major fund-raisers a year also, not including the ongoing free fund-raisers.
I think it's a mindset sometimes and that may be hard to change if you have always collected dues. I applaud you for trying to come up with innovotive ways to increase your PTO participation. I certainly don't think paying dues enhances a person's feeling of belonging to something. For the non-PTO organizations I belong to that require dues, it does not make me feel any more that I belong to the group than if I didn't pay dues.
Paying PTO dues may be somewhat of a district or local attitude and custom too - I don't know of any PTOs in our district that do collect dues - only the schools that have PTAs do.
If your group decided to eliminate dues, I think you could easily make up the difference and/or be able to budget without the membership dues monies.
We are a school of 600 students and we only have 88 parents that paid dues to become PTO members. The last fundraiser we had, I noticed some of the parents that volunteered were not PTO members - they were just parents wanting to help in any way possible. Our actual PTO members are not always available to volunteer with the fundraisers (or don't answer the phone) so we rely on non PTO members to help out. When I asked the president the reason our PTO collected dues, she said that when people pay, they feel they are part of something. From reading posts on this site, I noticed some PTOs don't collect dues - how was this agreed upon? I'm the new secretary for my PTO with lots of different ideas (mostly borrowed from this site)and roaring to revamp our failing PTO. I really think this would be a good start in creating a positive image for our PTO...
