Love your post. It speaks directly to two things we've developed that may be of service:
1. Our 2 Hour Power program (www.ptotoday.com/2hourpower
), which includes as a key first step asking if and how parents may want to help; and
2. Our PTO Manager/Volunteer Builder software (www.ptotoday.com/manager
) which allows groups to track all those answers and then easily search for (and email out to) volunteers interested in helping with X, Y or Z. System will even show you how many hours those volunteers have already worked, so you can ask those who haven't helped yet before leaning back on your old regulars.
I know that I've had some parents question me about when the teachers will be requesting volunteers. Most of ours don't start using classroom help until the middle of Sept at the earliest because they are trying to use those first couple of weeks to just figure out their schedule and their students. I always tell the parents about this timeframe and then advise them to speak directly to the teacher, so that he/she knows that someone is interested in helping.
This message should probably be something we include in our pamphlet or at least in our first newsletter. I'm going to pass that tip on for next year!
As a former PTO president (who has incredible amounts of free time on her hands now!!!) I wanted to put out a reminder to everyone to make sure that you have a system set up to contact all those volunteers you receive at the beginning of the year.
I was in the school office last week and two different parents told me they had filled out the volunteer form that was sent home, but they hadn't heard anything from anyone. I assured them that they would hear from someone later in the year when the programs get up and going and explained to them that usually the best way to get involved is to talk with their child's classroom teacher.
This served as a reminder to me that there really are parents out there who want to get invovled, they just don't know how. They fill out the volunteer surveys that we send home, but then most of the time, we put those forms in a folder and only call those people when we really need them (in our case it's usually not until Teacher Appreciation Day in May). By then, they've found something else to do since we didn't really need them in the first place.
In the business world they say that it costs more money to acquire a new client than to keep a current client. Let's work on keeping those parents who've signed up and then we wouldn't have to complain so much about the lack of volunteers.
