We have a few incentives that go along with membership. One, all members receive a discount on the back of our membership card for the local pretzel factory. Two, we offer an incentive for joining H&S before the end of September. Those families that join early are entered into a drawing and they receive a gift card to a local store. It seems to work very well.
We send home a volunteer form early in the school year to be returned for those interested in helping us out. We gather the information and we have a Volunteer meeting (breakfast) to go over everything with those people.
I'm so sorry, I hadn't seen any replies to this until just now.
Yes, "Reach For The Stars" is exactly what we used, and as recently as today I added new members to our wall. We also mentioned in the school's newsletter (coming out this week) that it isn't too late to join, and the principal wrote a really nice paragraph about all the work we've been doing right on the front page.
We also made sure to contact people who wanted to volunteer as soon as possible so no one felt like we were ignoring them. Even if we didn't need them for anything specific, just a "Hi, thanks for volunteering, don't forget to register online, here is the web address" message lets people know you're paying attention.
I sent out the Give me two to each parent in the school. I was so excited with what was returned. I am still getting them back. I will now load them on the PTO managers data base.
I have several volunteers that said call for anything. I do and they come in. One thing I know for sure. I will let them know how much I appreciate them by having a volunteer appreciation dinner. When it starts to grow. I will ask the teachers to help me, with it, or ask for donations from the local businesses. I know the funds we raise is for school, but, I firmly believe the volunteers feel appreciated, with a little acknowledgement.
Just my thoughts.
Our PTA was starting almost from scratch this year since membership hadn't been promoted for 2 years, so we die cut blue and yellow stars and made a wall by the cafeteria with our members names on the stars. Blue is for faculty and staff, and yellow is for parents and guardians.
Not only is membership up to almost 200, a teacher told me today that she sees parents who come for lunch with their child searching for their names on the wall (if 2 people join for the same family, I make a point of separating the names so they have to find both of them,lol). I know teachers look at the wall too, because I ran out of the stuff we use to hang the stars before I got all the names up and several of them asked me why they weren't up there. Now when I'm speaking to a staff member who hasn't joined yet I mention that I'd love to add their star to all the others.
The backs of our membership forms list events we need help with so parents can check off what they are interested in, so I made a spreadsheet from all of the info we received and shared it with the volunteer coordinator at the school;between the 2 of us we are contacting people who want to help out, and many people from the school have mentioned how many volunteers we already have, even though it's early in the year.
