Thanks for the information and the links. I never thought there was anything wrong with charging dues since it has been like that for as long as I have been at the school. I will have to pass this information on to the board and see what they think about it.
I've belonged to both types of organizations, those that had dues/those that didn't.
Either can work well and there are, in fact, some (non-financial) benefits to conducting a membership drive and charging nominal dues.
So my stance is "Whatever works for you" AS LONG AS you think it through, weigh the pros and cons and all constituents are free to be involved/attend/volunteer whether are not they are "paid" members.
Here's a pretty in depth
discussion
we had on this subject awhile back:
I haven't seen any research on higher priced dues leading to drop in membership, but it certainly won't lead to *more* membership. The only data I have is from national PTA, where membership is down roughly 20% as a whole since a series of dues increases went through in the past decade. But that's far different than one local group.
More importantly, in my opinion, is the message you're sending to parents with dues that high. I actually advocate for no dues for PTOs. I can never understand why we charge parents to belong to the parent group at their children's school. More on that topic in this column I wrote:
Our dues went from $20 per child to $10 per child and for the upcomong year we are creating a PTO card that will come with local perks. This card will be an incentive for parents to participate more with the board. The Vice President and I will pound the pavement this summer visiting local businesses and places like Wal-Mart, Target, Smiths, etc.. to see if they have a standing coupon that is offered or targeted toward schools.
I was elected president for the 2010-2011 school year and I noticed the membership dues for the pto has been 5 dollars per family for 10 years and we only have 100 members I was thinking about raising the dues to 8 dollars a family but I would like to know if anyone as seen a drop in membership after raising dues.
