The very first meeting (6 years ago) that I attended was a marathon meeting that seemed to go on forever. I noticed quite a few parents lost interest and even left. The Treasurerer at the time went through every line item in the budget which again was tedious. We have since addressed this issue. You definitely don't want your first meeting to be too long and too detailed as you will quickly lose new members. We submit a draft budget for review at the first meeting, along with a list of fundraisers and dates, we also provide a list of activities for the year with a brief written description of each (this is also sent home with the students) then at the next month's meeting we vote on the budget (as our main fundraiser has concluded at that point) and discuss upcoming activities and fundraisers on a monthly basis and establish committees. Several years back we felt our by-laws needed to be revised so we established a committee and gave the general membership one month to review the committee's recommendations and then we held a discussion and voted. We are all in a time crunch and sitting through long meetings discussing every detail at the first meeting will surely discourage new members. We try to keep our first meeting to around an hour and a half. We also send our agenda home prior to our meeting along with a monthly newsletter listing upcoming events and giving recaps of activities. Hope this helps.

I am sure there is a common sense way of doing this but right now I am drawing a blank on my first meeting's agenda. It isn't until August 8, but I can't seem to get anything together anymore.

Our first meeting will be even longer because we will have our Title I and FRC people as guest. Title I has to do this sort of thing to be in accordance with the law and it is needful that the FRC is there to explain their services. Then there is the matter of the PTO. Ha Ha. This is the first FULL year that the PTO will be operating. We are in an outdated building with a school that was started last year with little help from the board. We have alot to discuss. I'll quit babbling and get to my question. Do you discuss everything you want to accomplish for the year including going over budgets? We also hope to have our by laws finished. I think we need to read those and have those approved by the general members. Since we have about 1 fundraiser per month (only one selling kind) I was going to go over those and explain committees but I don't want to be there until midnight. Would it be appropriate to just hand out a schedule of the fundraisers and describe them or should I go ahead and explain everything? Pretty much I am needing hints on how to shorten the agenda and I don't know how to ask. Any advice would be appreciated.