Hi Trisa,
I love your post! Thanks so much for sharing and I hope some other folks can "borrow'' your idea. I especially like how you displayed the purple lightening bolts and essentially ended up with a purple wall. It's stuff like this that really helps people see how much work people put in and how much people contribute. Would love to hear about what you plan for next year!
We used this program at our school this year and were very pleased at the response we have had. The challenge of getting parents to volunteer seemed a little bit easier and we never seemed to lack volunteers when they were needed.
We decided to modify this program just a bit by increasing the pledge to 3 hours. We had a banner made that hung in the school all year, and we printed business cards with date and time served spaces on the back. The logo was printed on every monthly newsletter we distributed as well as the names of each volunteer to complete their 3 hours of service. We made sure to say "Thank You" to our volunteers and by recognizing them in the newsletter, it gave each of them a sense of public recognition for their efforts.
Additionally, the purple lightening bolts were hung in a prominent place at the school, visible to everyone. Since we had so many parents volunteering more than 3 hours, we hung a lightening bolt each time they completed a 3 hour period. Needless to say, our wall is purple now - beautifully decorated in lightening bolts.
This was a great idea and I thank you for sharing it with us. We are now looking for a new program to implement in the upcoming school year. Hopefully we can continue to build and foster relationships with our parents that will eliminate the stress of seeking help and the 80/20 statistic (20% of the people always doing 80% of the work) for those that do.
We just had our fall festival and we used the 2 hour pledge beforehand. It really does work. We had more people come forward this year than in the past. We tied it to our events coming up and said could you commit to 1 half hour time slot for each event coming up.. or even one would help. We feel like we have gotten over that volunteer hurdle.
We have used the 2 hr pledge the last 2 years and it has been a great success. We have revised it to meet our needs and we send a fall sign up and a spring sign up. We include dates of the events and the chairpersons on the back. That way when signing up they already know ahead of time.
We sent out the 2 Hour Power Pledge forms two weeks ago. It has helped attract 20% more parent involvement. We are pleased with the results. Also, we are trying the PTO Manager software and I really like what we are seeing and the way it is organizing people and activities. Cannot wait until I get all the data entered to try it out.
