Do you have a Booster Membership card? We charge for ours, but you don't have to. You could hand out membership cards with your meeting dates/times/info on them to parents at all your functions.

We also make an effort to attend the various athletic parent group meetings run by the coaches to talk about the Boosters.

Our Boosters also run the Spirit Shack as well as Concessions. We have a sign up date for the coaches to volunteer their parents for game days to help in the Concession stand.....we offer their group a portion of the profits for each game day if they provide the volunteers.

We provide scholarships for our students. Talk to the school counselors about promoting your scholarships. If your school offers a College Night, have a table set-up with information for families about the scholarships your group provides and what the criteria is for applying.

As for Spirit Wear.....I really like the idea of a fashion show.....we have talked about having the students who run announcements in the morning wear some of the spirit wear to showcase it....we have video in each classroom for announcements.

We try to tie in with events already happening in the school. If the Art Department has a Craft show fundraiser, we have a Pancake Breakfast before it.

Last year, we gave away decals with memberships. This year we are handing out magnets with our meeting dates on them. And on all of our membership forms we ask for e-mail addresses so we can send out reminders for our meetings.

Getting parents involved in middle school/high school is so much more difficult than elementary.....everyone has different activities they are involved in. Good Luck. I will check back to see what results you have.

Hmmm.....no responses......
Here's what we've come up with so far:

1. Create a Facebook page - after reading posts on here, it seems like the perfect thing for our group to do.

2. There is a Welcome Night/Open House for 7th grade parents mid-September. Our group will sponsor and organize the event (maybe an ice cream social) since it was very disorganized last year. We will talk about our group for a bit and then have a fashion show (with our kids) from the clothes we sell at our school store. As our kids are modeling, we'll introduce them and talk about some of the activities they are involved in at the school and parents can ask them questions afterward. We'll also have the store open to sell items.

3. For our first 2 or 3 meetings, we'll have an executive/officer meeting 1 hour early to take care of business (boring stuff) and make the actual meeting time more welcoming and fun, yet informative.

4. We'll wear nametags at all events, meetings, etc. We are also looking into have group t-shirts made.

It's a start and it gives us some direction and specific things to work on. It's very different from elementary school, but middle school and high schools still need the parent support.

If anyone has additional thoughts, I'd love to hear them. I'll try to post back in a few months with our results. I did get many of these ideas on these boards

We are a Middle School/High School Parent Group. Our main focus is that we have built a portable school store to sell school spirit wear (T-shirts, sweat shirts, blankets, lanyards, polos, pajama bottoms, etc.). We set up mostly at school sporting events, but also do Open House, Key Club Spaghetti Suppers, etc. We also open 1 day each month during lunch for kids that don't go to after-school events. The store has been very successful!

We are now having a tough time to find volunteers (there are only 5 of us and we all work outside the home) to help out at the store. We are also looking for ways to get more parents involved in other things we'd like to do. It is very different from when I was involved in elementary school parent groups - we don't "do" fundraisers per se or have family involvement nights. I guess I'm looking for suggestions to get parents involved at this level (MS/HS).

We are a non-profit 501c3 organization. Teachers or school organizations can request funds from us (field trips, ice machine for the athletic dept, etc) and this year we gave out 4 scholarships to HS seniors! But only a few take us up on this?!

For parents of MS/HS students - what would make you want to be involved with our group? What would you like to see a MS/HS group do? We'd really love some ideas. Thanks!