I tried to make this as short as possible, while still conveying the whole situation. Sorry this is so long!!

The background: I am the President of a small town PTO. Our school has 166 students with 11 PTO Members - 9 parents/2 faculty. This year our school was affected by the transitioning of our 5th and 6th graders to a middle school, leaving us a Pre-K (new this year) through 4th school. With the transitioning, we lost a lot of our veteran parent volunteers, while gaining new Pre-K and Kindergarten parents. We have reached out to them, in hopes of making them feel welcome and encouraging them to either join our PTO or become parent volunteers. It is SO hard to get new parents to step forward and become part of an unknown. We also lost all of our PTO parents with the transitioning with the exception of me and I campaigned hard to organize a new PTO. So far, it has been what I would call, very successful: Going from 1 to 11 members since May with a 2 1/2 month summer break in between is awesome. I am thrilled!

We are all new to working with each other and are one week from our annual Back2School Night and Book Fair. Despite sending home volunteer requests for the events and making personal calls to all 166 student's homes, we have only 13 parent volunteers for the main night while we need 24. Of the 9 parent members of our PTO, 3 will be out of town, leaving us with 7 to work the event. Being optimistic with those numbers, we might be able to get by, but there is one problem.

The problem: What I have is three of the members feel that they should only have to work one shift of the three 45 minute shifts that need to be covered. I don't feel that I should have them cover only one shift, but expect my other 3 members to work the whole time, as this is unfair. I have three different sections to be covered - Meal serving, Cashier's Table, and Book Fair Floor. I scheduled each member to work 2/45 minute shifts with 2/3 parent volunteers, with a 45 minute rotation out to classrooms with their child to visit with their teachers. I did not include myself in the rotation out to classrooms. Because the classrooms open at 6:30 p.m. - 30 minutes after the meal and book fair start - I have only an hour and a half period to rotate these 6 people to classrooms. These women only want to work the first shift when the classrooms are not open, which will leave us with only 4 PTO members (including myself) to work the rest of the evening. Judging by last year, the majority of the families begin to arrive at 6:30 p.m. and that is when the book fair and meal gets really busy. If these three women only work the first shift and I still rotate the other women out, we will be woefully understaffed. If I had the 24 volunteers are needed their request would not be an issue. Last year we did it with only 4 PTO members, but we had 24+ volunteers. This could potentially be disasterous! I shudder to think about it!! And I can't even call on teachers to help out because they will all be in their classrooms visiting with parents and students.

I have been told that if these 3 HAVE to work 2 shifts, then they will quit. They feel that being on the PTO should not interfere with their time with their families/children and that they should be able to work when they want to, because they are volunteers. While I AGREE with the premise of that statement, the fact it, we don't have enough parent volunteers to cover the event as it is and to pull this event off successfully, we NEED them to work 2 shifts - 3 shifts would be even better, but I'm not going to ask of them what I am asking of myself.

Please tell me how I can explain this issue to these members that are new to PTO without futher alienating them or making them angry? I desperately want this event to be a success, but I don't want to lose new members! I also don't want small town talk to get around if they make it sound like if someone doesn't make a whole committment then its not good enough. I could lose potential new members if that happens! I have always believed that parents join the PTO because they want to make a difference for their school and realize that sacrificing some of the time enjoying events comes with the territory. Is it wrong to feel angry and upset that these women don't seem to see the difference between being a parent volunteer and being a PTO Member because they actually "put on" school events and while they can enjoy them, working the event is part of the equation?

I feel as if I'm in between a rock and a hard place - being short on help, short on time, and furthering alienating these 3 women. I would really appreciate some good advice!

Thank you!