For me as a parent, I think the possibility of wining something is not that big of a draw. Besides having limited time, if I am actually going to attend something, I want it to be informative and even entertaining if at all possible - other wise I'll feel as if I've wasted my time. A little entertainment will go a long way. This will obviously take some creativity on behalf of the organizers - but I think you"ll find if you advertise the PTO meeting and put on there the entertainment for that night as well, you will peak the interest of a lot more parents.

We have the same 4 or 5 parents do EVERYTHING every year. So this year we are going to try some new things. We are thinking about having a PTO Picnic at the end of the year for our volunteers also having a drawing for the volunteers who attended all the meetings this year. We were thinking of drawing for a gas gift card with the price of gas we thought that would be something everyone could use.

Provided you don't go nuts on the $$ value and the incentive is tied to a real goal of your group, then I think this is OK technically.

My real problem with it as that experience tells me it's just not very effective. A lot of groups do this for meeting attendance (a restaurant gift card door prize). I call that: "a really great way for the already-involved to get to Applebees". There is no one at home not involved who's going to suddenly get up off the couch because of the chance to win a prize.

Regrettably, growing involvement is tougher than that.

Whole 'nother topic (covered in a whole bunch of articles and tools on this site) about the basics of growing involvement for the long-term, but thought I'd offer my opinion onthe incentive idea.

Tim

Our PTO was thinking of this too although we were thinking of gift cards to our local grocery store, Target, Walmart something like that. I could see where having a big item might entice them more.
I am on both sides of the fence on this one. One being that the parents should just want to volunteer of their own free will and "want" to help. But I have been doing this for years and I realize that just doesnt happen. In our area and I am sure this is the same for others. The economy is so bad we have both parents working and some working more than one job. Which has really affected our PTO terribly.
As for the parents saying we shouldn't use the money to entice volunteers my justification would be then that is just the problem no one is and we need the help running our events and activities and its just getting to be too much for the officers we do have always running them.
At our summer meeting we were going to discuss doing this too.

Not sure if thats an answer to your question. Sorry !!!!

I would love to hear Tim's point of view on this one he has some great insight for problems like this.

Perhaps this is a DUH question, but since it keeps coming up at our board meetings, perhaps I need more eyes and opinions then what I can get at our school.

Parent involvement in anything at our school is usually limited to a small group of parents (maybe 5 to 10 of us do everything). It's been brought up as a way to entice parents to get involved would be to offer a prize or two at the end of the year (IPod, computer, etc.). Parents would get a ticket every time they came to a meeting or volunteered at a PTO event. At the end of the year, we'd draw a ticket(s) and those lucky parents would get the prize.

The question is, can a PTO spend a little of the money on items like this without getting in trouble legally? It's not like it's a gift for an officer (though the officers should still be eligible since they attend almost every event and volunteer too).

We've tried so many different ways to get parents to volunteer, but it always comes back to those few people who graciously give their time. I would LOVE to see more parents get involved and personally, I don't see the harm in what the other members of our board propose to do. Am I wrong? Are they wrong?