Here are some ideas:
If you have a festival if you show your card,
twenty to fifty cents off of your total bill.
If PTO sells T-shirts - you can get $2.00 off when you purchase 3 or more.
Anytime you have a PTO event - you can give something off of the total bill.
I think that it great to give parents something for being a member.
Tried to introduce to our PTO - got show down.
Times are changing everyone wants something for belonging to a organization.
At my son's elementary school, memberships are $2.00 each and it is suggested that grandparents and family members make this "donation" to the school. The classes that have 100% membership, get a party. (100% membership would be, a class of 20 kids equals 20 memberships. This helps to make up for the parents that just don't participate.) For the past couple of years, the party has had a movie theatre theme. The kids and teachers can wear their pajamas to school on that day. Class students bring in a movie to watch that is appropriate and they get pop, popcorn, and small packages of candy. Some staff even go so far as to wear their hair in rollers and their makeup masks...The kids have a blast!! If a class reaches 80%, I believe they get pop and popcorn, but no pajamas...lol. It works really well at our school and it is pretty inexpensive and you have membership funds even left over sometimes. Just an idea you may try. [img]smile.gif[/img]
I think 20.00 sounds a little high. We charge our families $8.00 to join and they receive a directory. Now one thing we started a couple of years ago was offering for parents to become "Big Dippers". Let me explain, our member chairperson always comes up with a theme (last year-stars and moons) this year it was "Be Cool With PTO" and she used ice cream cones to show members names outside of the classrooms and ice cream cones were our letterhead. We have found that quite a few families were unable to help throughout the year and liked the idea of being "Shining STars or Big Dippers" and for this they contribute extra 20.00! This is strictly up to each individual (i did not personally chose to do it because i give lots of extra time and money throughout the year.) This year out of 580 students about 45 families chose to give this extra donation. It seems to work well, everyone can join and people wanting to contribute a little have the opportunity!
We have a student enrollment of 178 students but have a PTO "paid" membership of about 40. We charge just $2.00 per family to join. This is not a money maker but to allow paid members the right to vote on any issue we discuss. This year has been our best as far as parent involvement. We had a table at school registration to sign members up and that worked well. I am sure our parents would not agree to a $20.00 fee.
