To start off your year right, take time to have a meeting with your officers. Hash out your goals and then visit with your principal to involve her/him with what you want to achieve.
If you can plan to have a PTO table at enrollment, it can help you promote "an open door" and allow you to get to know your parents. This will create a comfort zone when you call on them.
A must during your enrollment is to have a form for parents to select what they are willing to help with. Let them choose what committees they want to serve on, what class events they want to help with, etc. Also list the goals for the year. You will get more involvement from parents when they know what the goals instead of just raising money.
Make sure you list/display what your PTO uses your funds for.
Also in your welcome packet, you might list websites such as
www.schoolfamily.com" that can be a tool for parents looking for answers. You might include the normal set in stone fundraisers and the date of your first meeting. If you let parents know there are door prizes at your meeting that can create turnout.
Getting email addresses at time of enrollment will also give a resource for constant communication so parents can always feel like they are in the loop.
At your meetings set an agenda, stay on task and keep your meeting brief and no longer than an hour. Follow Roberts Rules of Order. You can find that on PTO Today!
Use committees to delegate for events and fundraisers, your success will depend on how many people you get involved and how willing you are to include them.
We don't hand out welcome packets per say. During our enrollment, we will hand out candy to the kids, collect surveys, and give a brief couple of pages of info. A great handout would be a listing of your officers with contact numbers & email addresses. Then go to the pto today website and pull off several articles on how parents involvement makes a difference to their children. There are several brief stories that you can use and it will hit home that you want them involved.
When I took over as President, our meetings would have 10-15 people and half of them would be teachers. I took that approach and our kickoff meeting we had almost 90 parents and about 20 kids in the gym playing with our local colleges Basketball team. We had them agree to "baby sit" inadvance. We had a awesome year and raised $38,000. to redo our playground.
You can turn it around in a year. Create 3 ring binders for your officers with copies of the bylaws, the events held in the past, and what info you have. This can be handed off each year to knew officers.
I really could go on but I am going to stop and let you digest. The PTO Today website will have a lot of stuff you can give your parents for motivation. Start at enrollment!!