Hey bakchoed! I loved the poem!! I think we will try and use it somehow in our membership drive for next school year.

I am afraid to say we are in the same boat. We usually are lucky enough to fill the board seats. This is done after a lot of "begging" if you will. Then we have to resort to the threat of our dissolution clause in our bylaws and we will disband if no one steps up. It's kinda crude to have to resort to such measures but it works. I cannot remember in the last 8 years of anyone running against another person for a seat on the board! I would welcome it though. I also think our next years board is going to be a weak board, if you have to resort to threats then the new board is not really "into" it. When I came on board (4 years as Co President and a year as Corresponding Secretary) I was genuinely into becoming part of a good cause and I gradually began giving more and more of myself. I now give 125% of myself! LOL. I am hoping more people see that it is time to step forward and do. Hey, I have a poem. I do not know who the author is but here it is:

Do you just belong?

Are you an active member, the kind that would be missed?
Or are you just contented that your name is on the list.

Do you attend the meetings and mingle with the flock?
Or do you meet in private and criticize and knock.

Do you work on committees? To this there is no trick.
Or leave the work to just a few and talk about the clique.

So come to meetings often and help with hand and heart. Don’t just be a member, but take an active part.

Think this over friends, you know whats right from wrong,
Are you an active member, or do you just belong?


- Author unknown
[img]smile.gif[/img]

We have had a nominating committee every year that I've been involved (5 people). They do make phone calls and talk to people whom they think would make good candidates for PTA positions. Even so, we generally do not get more than one person to "run" for each office. However, I will say, we do generally have enough people interested to cover the officer positions AND the committee chairs, which is great. At the election meeting, people are welcome to make nominations from the floor, but that rarely happens.

We try to put together a nominating committee made up of people who are not on the board, but that know a lot of people. This year, all of our nominating committee people were on the board, just because that is the way it happened. It's a short term committee commitment, and we have it so that it doesn't look like anyone is "stacking" the PTA board for the next year, for any reason -- although I'm not sure why that would happen.

We've had a little of everything. Our bylaws dictate that we have a NomComm, but it's rarely been used. I guess that's because we usually have one person step forward per office without much begging, but that's not the case this year.

This year, our president decided we didnt' need to set up the NomComm, that we could "do it ourselves". But here we are one week away from the date we are supposed to post nominations, and no one has come forward. I firmly believe that people will say yes when asked...I wish we had a NomComm to recruit good people. I'm afraid we'll have a weaker board next year, or unfilled positions, since we didn't actively recruit volunteers.

A couple of years ago we really relied on our impartial NomComm when we had a very contentious election. The NomComm wrote election procedures to clarify details like how the ballots would be counted. It was very important that year to have a neutral third party handle nominations and elections. Most years are not so exciting.

Last year was the first year we had a nominating committee. I am thinking it was made up of 2 staff and 2 parents. We also will take nominations off the floor. Not that that is likely to happen. Before that it was pretty much, "Well, there are 2 parents present, which one of you wants to take it?" LOL. We had our committee scouring for candates. Finally we cornered one and shook her down until she said yes. LOL. I like the committees because you have different people that see different angles and they are able to talk to more people. We also put the committee member's names in the newsletter, on the web page, and bulletin board and encouraged interested people to feel free to contact them.

I am at a K-12 school so we see good years and bad. Most often we have at least 2 people nominated for each of the 4 offices. Now we have an election committee that oversees the election and word of mouth for the nominations. How do we recruit? "hey, you wanna do this with me next year? OR MAN, she was a B_____, let's get her out!" HA!!!

It's amazing how much thought can and does go into this volunteer job!