Originally posted by <been there B4>:
There must be a reason that more school parent groups are part of National PTA than ALL OTHER GROUPS COMBINED!!!
Huh? Yes, I'd say there is a pretty obvious reason: PTA is the only thing that groups that choose to be part of something can be part of. All of the rest are independent. That said, more than 75% of groups choose independence.
National PTA has more members than The Lions Club, Rotary, and Kiwanis COMBINED!!!
Again, this is a quite misleading statistic. Of the 5.75 million PTA members, how many even know they're part of the national PTA? What % sent in 5 bucks to their kids' school because the flier came home asking for the $5. If the acronym said PTA or PTO or HSA or PDQ -- they would have sent in the $5.
We know this to be true, because when a group makes the switch from PTA to PTO (or from PTO to PTA), the membership numbers are almost never impacted. If the group had 200 members asa PTA, then it almost always gets 200 members as a PTO. And vice versa. It's because the parents (in their minds and intentions) are joining "their local school parent group", not some far-reaching PTA.
Contrast that to, say, the NRA -- where every single member joins individually. It's a huge difference in connection.
Tim