What a great idea! Electing, or at least nominating before the show! That would get the newbies so pumped up about the PTO! And it would give them so many ideas of how they might like to do things!! I love it! I was so pumped after the PTO Show! And I had so many ideas. However, I didn't have time to use many of them this year. Since I was re-elected, I hope to use many of them next year. I will have to bring this up at our June meeting! Thank you!
Yes I did attend the conference (Dallas!! WooHoo!!!) and I did get some of this from Mark Levin. I added a few of my own and personalized it for our situation. In my other job (the paying one), I work with volunteer organizations and find these tricks work in just about any situation.
BTW, we are changing our bylaws to elect new officers before the PTO show so they can attend. There's no better training anywhere.
Have to ask -- did you attend a PTO Show? Much of what you shared is dead-on with the messages at our conferences. I even did a keynote at one called: "10 habits of highly effective parent groups" and the content was really similar. Thanks. Love it.
As outgoing President, my last job was to energize next years officers, so I came up with this list. I hope in encourages others. The best lesson I learned that when I had the attitude that I was doing it alone, I usually was. When my attitude changed, so did others involvement.
1. Change your definition of parent involvement. If you are measuring involvement by meeting attendance, you will be disappointed. Parents eating lunch with their kids is involvement. Parents bringing deserts during parent-teacher conferences and teacher appreciation is involvement. A parent playing with the children at recess is involvement. A parent helping with school parties is involvement.
2. Don’t waste their time. If you have meetings just to have meetings, you are just asking for no one to show up. Have meetings as necessary and publicize the agenda.
3. Keep track of times parents are in the school. Make sure there is a sign-in sheet at the office. We keep 2. One for volunteers and one for visitors. We encourage parents to sign in the volunteer book if they are helping with recess or school parties. Some of these parents may not participate in the PTO, but we want to acknowledge their contribution.
4. Publicize. Figure those hours and publicize. Perception is sometimes the problem and you might find as we did that there is a lot more involvement than you think.
5. Ask!!! Sometimes as officers we think people should just volunteer. We did! Most people want to be asked to help. Asking them individually, if possible, will increase your positive responses.
6. Be specific. Being asked to volunteer to copy a newsletter is much less intimidating than just being asked to volunteer. We ask our parent to volunteer 45 minutes during our Hoe-Down. We get great response.
7. Realize that not everyone is a leader. Agreeing to become an officer on the board means that you have agreed to take a leadership role. There are a lot of people who will help if told what to do (See #4), but do not want to be the one to plan.
8. Delegate. Those of us who do become involved, typically as officers, have a tendency to try to do it all ourselves and then complain that we don’t get a lot of help. Most groups have lots of officers. Secretaries can do more than take notes. Treasurers can do more than finances. Give people the opportunity to succeed and you might be grooming the next President.
9. Give the destination, but not the path. Nothing can frustrate a volunteer faster than them feeling like they are at work. Everyone has their own method of doing things. As a leader, let your parent know what you need, but resist telling them how to do it.
10. Thank everyone for everything. In writing. For the world to see. Thanking those that help by name publicly is the best way to ensure they help again. We even thank the kids for their parents helping. Most parents can’t resist helping when their child say’s “But Johnny’s mom is helping!â€
11. HAVE FUN! We do volunteer work because we enjoy it and others will join us if they think they will have fun also. If others only hear complaints from the ones volunteering, it is hardly an incentive to join.
