Like I said, the way we motivate our dads is to bill an event as a "Dads" event. In other words, DADS put on the Halloween Carnival totally. Plus, when it's Field Day, we stress DADS as volunteers and we get some. One school whose website I looked at, had "Door Dads" and the dads opened car doors every morning and also put on a barbecue at the school.
Working folks at our school just need advance notice. Many are willing to take off work to do something, they just need some notice. Give them lots of advance notice and ASK OR INVITE for their participation. Most people won't step up and volunteer but many will participate WHEN ASKED.
Great ideas! Thanks so much for sharing. We are starting an email chain too and I think it's a great idea!!
How about having more little social get-togethers? Nothing too big, just fun things?
One idea I wanted to try was at the Hot Dog Dinners that we have just before each of our quarterly PTO meetings, I wanted to do one that was "Dad Karacoke" and another that was Funniest Home Video with a prize for the Funniest.
I think your ideas are great b/c they are all about bonding and team-building. People are more likely to freely volunteer when they like doing so instead of finding the work to be a chore.
Any other ideas for helping out to motivate "the volunteer base" ??? Any ideas for how to especially motivate working folks, and Dads? I am loving this website!!!!
One idea that I think works when you are trying to involve a wide variety of people is to sort of "divide the responsibility", if that makes sense. For example, our PTO sells refreshments every spring at a county fair as a fund raiser. Instead of soliciting from the general membership (in which you will get the same folks every time), we "assigned" each grade a particular day. Then we got the room moms to fill all the slots with volunteers from their grade for their assigned day. This way, parents felt a bit of an "obligation" because if the Second Grade had Monday assigned and couldn't find any workers, the Second Grade looks pretty bad and it makes people want to step forward. Hope that makes sense?
So, see if you can't divide jobs into "bite size" pieces. We always have all the Dads in the school to run the Halloween Carnival (a great way to involve dads who NEVER volunteer). This is their one time to step forward and they do (no insult to you dads out there--I'm sure you're different!!).
Regarding e-mail lists: I started one last year on Yahoo Groups and we only do two e-mails a week: one on Wednesdays, which is when we e-mail the school's weekly newsletter and then everything else on Sunday afternoon and that is "reminders for the week". I think it's been a huge success. Now, instead of scrounging for the school newsletter in your child's backpack, mom and dad can both get it via e-mail. It was a big job to start, but now it's just maintenance.
You know I act as a conduit sometimes for grade level news for our teachers and also put emails out to the teachers (the ones not members) via the school email system. I suspect I would allow teacher emails IF they were vetted through me but I too wouldn't give them my roster. We also bcc everything so no one gets anyone else's email to ensure that we don't get solicitations started.
Anyway--Diane can definitely send some examples..but need your email address...dianna
