We are getting the three for me program going now. We have things ready to kick off for school in two weeks. I don't think that three hours for the entire school year is overwhelming, but just the opposite. Parents need to get involved and to get a commitment from parents is great.

I believe that we (parent group leaders) need to step up and use tools that help US to a better job to be inclusive to every parent. Whether your parent group wants to ask parents for one hour, two, three or more, it doesn't matter in the end. What matters is that the parent group welcomes everyone and the parent group reaches out to "all" parents (working, stay at home, grandparents, foster parents, busy parents, etc).

I don't know about you all, but I am exhausted by December with everything that I do at the school and with our parent group. I think Tim's program will be fine, as along as we don't have to become pto today members to use it, it's free, and simple. It's the same with PTA, you have to "pay dues" to use their stuff, some things you have to pay for with PTO, but we liked that three for me was free to us. We liked that the two ladies that developed the program are volunteers and parent group leaders like us. They know what worked and have been sharing it. That is pretty darn cool and they should get credit.

Tim is this going to be free to everyone, or only pto today members?

Cindy, I agree. When you approach people who have never volunteered and ask them for three hours, many people think that is too much. We asked parents for one hour this year and gave them lots of options of how to do that. We have been overwhelmed by the number of pledge forms that have been returned! I was worried that we wouldn't be able to have our annual fall carnival, but not only do we have enough volunteers for that, we have enough to do a bunch of new activities, too. Asking for three hours might work for some schools, but asking for one works for us.

I don't know why anyone would come to this board and attack Tim and his programs and ideas. That is just rude. Tim and his crew work hard to provide us with ideas that work, not to mention all the bonus tools, and the space here to talk to each other. I would be lost without PTO Today and I know many others feel the same way. We are here to share productive ideas and vent our problems. To paraphrase some old words of wisdom: If you don't have anything constructive to add, don't add anything at all.

i have to say too that three for me is a great concept also, but when I read up on it I know trying to get a lot of our parents to pledge 3 hours is intimidating. Especially to working parents.
Last year at my first meeting I said if every parent hear put in just one hour that would be over 600 hrs. You should have all seen the light bulbs go on.
An hour a working and a stay at home parent can do. Even two is great and hour in the fall semester and an hour in the spring. Great idea!!!

The whole key is to get them turned on to coming to school not turning them off. The 3 hours would turn a lot of our parents off.


Cindy

Thanks CrewChief.

Agree on the working parents deal.

And love the kudos!

Tim

The 2 Hour Power pledge program sounds very intriguing and I can't wait to read more about it. I think this will be especially helpful for recruiting working parents. There seems to be a major misconception among that demographic that they simply can't volunteer at school because they don't have the time that we stay-at-home mom's have. If they only knew the tremendous difference that just one or two hours of their time would make!

Thank you, Tim, to you and your team for continuing to develop programs that local parent groups can use. You also continually show us that there's no need to reinvent the wheel. If we can find the best examples out there, learn from them and modify them to meet our needs to improve community involvement then everybody wins.

Knock off of three4me? No. Similar to three4me? Yes.

We've discussed pledge programs -- combatting "the fear of the black hole", is what I've called it in my keynotes -- at our conferences and in our columns for 5 years. And pledge programs have been around for even longer than that. There's a paid pledge program (why paid I have no idea...) called Project Appleseed out of St. Louis that's been around for at least 7 years.

20,000+ schools? Might want to check that math.

In any case, I think folks will love 2 Hour Power when it launches in next 10 days. I think pledge programs are great involvement builders. More resources for building involvement = better.

Tim