Wow thank you all for your great insight and ideas! I've taken some notes and I think some of these ideas are very do-able. I am the 1st president to implement a newsletter and I wrote it/copied it and gave it to teachers myself. But I am having issues with getting it translated as we are mandated to offer a spanish version for bilingual students and none of our bilingual teachers are willing to translate it. If I can't get it translated, I will not be allowed to send out any future newsletters until I can.
Thank you everyone who posted such lengthy responses. You are so generous! I appreciate you!
A.

sounds like you need to do more on improving the communication between the PTO and the parent population. Send out newsletters about all PTO sponsored activities, put the minutes to your meetings on line so parents that cannot attend due to work schedules, lack of babysitters, disabilities, etc. can still keep up with what is going on. Create a letter to parents explaining what the PTO does for the school on an annual basis, what the plans are for the year (new stuff) and listing the dates and times of your meetings.
Many new parents to the school, may not know what a PTO does. I didn't know when I had a Kindergarten student! I thought the board of education paid for school trips, assemblies, field day, etc. So you need to educate your parents. Don't be frustrated; but rather look at it as an opportunity to make an improvement and correct a problem that was brought to your attention.

Lots of great info here...I'll add this as an idea to get the word out...

At our Curriculum Night, we invited all parents to a "PTA Get-Together" 30 min. prior to the start of the night. We set up tables, each advertising/explaining different aspects of the PTA. At our "events" booth, we had a carnival game set up, some props (prizes) for the Carnival, and posters for each event highlighting what it is and how it helps - just a few short bullets. We also had a membership booth, Spirit booth (t-shirts and such), Fundraiser booth, literacy booth, community involvement booth (boy/girlscouts, karate, etc) and a few others. We served popcorn for free and parents were able to just wonder from booth to booth. They could read the posters and flyers and ask the coordinators and reps questions. Oh, we had a budget booth too! It was a HUGE hit. We doubled our membership that night!!! AND, over the next couple of weeks we sent home newsletters and flyers and the volunteers keep coming.

To help with the volunteers, we established a Master Volunteer list (Excel) with all contact information and checked the boxes for the events they were "interested" in. I personally emailed each "group" of volunteers to say welcome, explain just a bit about the event and to thank them. It is working wonders!

Good luck.

I can tell you that we publish and display information all over the place and we still get the same types of feedback from time to time.

There is only so much you can do. Make an effort to see that information is available and easily accessible, but you can't make people read.

We also tried doing more frequent, smaller communications that would be quicker reads (e-mails and bulletins), and people thought we were contacting them too much.

I'd also cut your membership person a lot of slack. You can't make people remember things or make them interested in listening.

I also have noticed that in my communication, I sent the exact same newsletters to parents and teachers. I think that when I said "Our PTO" maybe the teachers felt excluded, that the PTO was more of a parents group.

I decided to make two different newsletters, in the parents I still use "our" but in the teachers I use "your PTO" or "your school" in hopes to that they will feel welcome and take some ownership in the PTO. The parents newsletter is done in one color paper and the teacher is a different color. NEVER WHITE!! You want the paper to be one that catches the eye and not just something that gets shuffled in with everything else.

Also, I totally agree that you have to thank the volunteers every chance you get. Last year I sent out an end of year letter letting parents know what we did and also did a "generic" type thank you with a volunteer poem that I found on the internet and it had all the parents names listed. Then I made up thank you cards with a different volunteer poem and sent direclty to the parents. I had more of them say thanks for the thank you and how nice it was.

I agree, all great suggestions and ideas. Most PTOs feel the same way. People complain, yet dont want to do anything to lend a hand. After being a PTO President for a few years and then event coordinating for 2 also, I am now handling our school/pto newsletter. I have reserved a section every month that says RECENT PROFITS. I want everyone to know how much money we raise and where it goes. Yeah, we only made $38 on Recycle Rewards, but maybe posting that reminded some parent to send in thier empty ink cartridges. Posting the budget is a great idea too. I am sure parents have no idea that the PTO is responsible for all of the student planners, class trips, field day, etc. Not to mention the teacher breakfast & luncheon and also we give the teachers a certian amount every year to buy supplies (that one really burns my butt LOL) It' s a thankless job, but know we are not alone..and yes, we do it for the children