I would privately stress the point to these old chairs that you are trying to generate more new pto volunteers. Be blunt in private and tell them the new people where hurt by the lack of trust these older members have in them. If they come back at you with attitude then you will know how blunt you will have to be in a public meeting. Print up a small brochure naming all chairheads for this function with phone numbers so everyone is clear who is in charge. You can play off this rather blunt point by stating it is a great way for all members to rely on others if questions come up. Keep pushing for those new volunteers. And make sure you are not intimidated by these older members too, if you don't stand up for your organization who will?
Don't worry about sounding petty, stand up and set the record straight. Be sure your chair people know who they are and what responsibilities they have. In addition, make sure they know the chain of command and who they report to. As you stated, this is the 46th year of doing this and unless this mother was there to start it, it can run without her.
A little story from our fair earlier this year, I told the chair people that they are in charge and that they could pretty much do what they wanted as long as they included the basics that were done each year but things could be added or changed. Well the chairperson went and lowered all of the prices in the kitchen, some of them by 50%, she figured that a lot was donated and she would feel better. Well a family came in with not much more than $5 for the group and they were able to eat and participate in some activities with this amount of money. If the prices were not lowered they would not have been able to anything.
It makes us think and remember why we do this, at the end of the day I really did not care how much we made, just that the kids were able to have a good time.
since your the pres. call a meeting and pass out a job list of who doing what making sure everyone has a copy of who's doing what job than if this lady has a problem with this tell that someone else request to do this job and that the BOARD feel that everyone should have a chance to do different jobs this year. GOOD LUCK I know this is going to be a rough job.
It seems as if I am having a bad flashback from the beginning of this school year...anyway...We are in the process of planning our 46th Annual Winter Carnival. I am the president of the pto and have many chair people for this event (manpower, kitchen, games and prizes) it has come to my attention that the lady who is chairing our kitchen committee has been pushed out by our former president. At our last meeting our former Pres. announced that she is changing food prices due to costs (she then gave me a list of what everything would cost and she is not even trying to get a good deal on anything for example $7.00 for a 12 pack of pop...when many stores have it for $2.99 on sale). (I wanted to find good deals on the food and lower the prices and am very willing to do all the shopping). She also informed our man power chair that she and our former treasurer would be selling tickets...the new board had already decided that the only people who will handle money is an officer or teacher (for reasons I don't want to get in to No ONE wants these ladies handling any money). My question to you fellow PTO'ers is how do I tactifully get this lady to back off and quit scaring away our new volunteers without looking like I am being petty? This is the first year in many that we have new faces because people were intimidated by the former board and I hate to see these new ones get frustrated and give up...Thank You:)
