Thanks, JHB. Your response was very helpful. I more or less took your second suggestion, combining announcements about the two charity collections in one posting, along with another PTA message. I described the two holiday collections as being the projects of the school community, hoping thus to discourage dozens of other people asking me to post messages about their favorite causes. I do think we need a policy, though.

I run into a similar problem with a list I administer in my job. I would suggest two possible courses of action:

1) Make a policy about the type of announcements allowed and stick to it. It it's not directly related to the mission and activities of the PTO, then don't post it.

OR

2)Set a time (whatever is appropriate for your list - once a month, once a quarter, twice a year, etc.) and send out ONE combined message of "Public Announcements". Title it clearly and let anyone who wants to post a public announcement do so. Again, you'll have to set some policies. Probably at a minimum, non-commercial postings.

You can preface the message with an explanation to your audience. If they know it's coming in a limited fashion and easily identifiable - then they probably won't care. It's much better than you sharing their emails with someone (not that you would).

What our school has done to resolve such an issue is ask that a request be submitted and the event will be looked over (reviewed) to assure there are no potential conflicts.

I know one ore form but it really has helped keep the foyer clean of extra flyers (keeps just anyone from leaving flyers etc) and the school calendar managable.

The challenge is do you just set a standard $50 for anyone that asks or go case by case? Do you offer 5 volunteers? Do you just say "No, this is not part of our mission?" The service group my husband was pres of a couple years ago took each request and voted on it fairly. When the vote was done and three or so were chosen a set amount was given...period. I know that wasn't a PTA/O but their mission is to help kids also and they stay close to that mission.

My parent group has an email listserv thru Yahoo that about 1/3 of the parents are part of. Individual parents often ask if we will post messages from them to the school about their pet issues and we mostly say no, because it is really for PTA events and issues.

With the holiday season approaching, a teacher and a parent have separately asked that we post announcements about the charities they are collecting for. One is the teacher's project -- its a Catholic charity, a very good one, but still, this is a school with lots of Jewish and Muslim families. The other is a food bank, nondenominational -- it is the project of one fourth grade class. Should we just say no? Should we say yes to the nondenominational foodbank and no to the Catholic charity (collecting presents for families in a shelter)? Should we just do it and hope that no more teachers, parents, staff, etc. have charities they want to publicize? Any advice is appreciated.

By the way last year some parents did complain about the listserv being overutilized to send information not related to the school or PTA activities.