I find myself in this same position this year! What did you end up doing? What do you wish you would have done differently?

I am a parent volunteer at a brand new school. Our first, organizational PTO meeting is later this week. At this point, we have no by-laws, no officers, no bank account, etc. The tools on the website look outstanding, and I'm looking forward to trying out the PTO manager software.

How many of you have used the PTO start up book? How useful has it been? I've seen advice elsewhere on the site about the treasurer's toolkit. Has that been useful as well?

Is there any appropriate sequence of events to follow? i.e. - form a charter committee, then create by-laws, then have elections, then with a treasurer open a bank account; or, should we just dive in, elect officers right away, then do the by-laws and banking work. I see tremendous organizational advantage to the first idea, but wonder if the process might take too long and we might lose momentum. FYI, I believe that we'll have tremendous parental support because the old school was less than welcoming of the parents.

Thanks for all your wonderful help.

[ 08-23-2005, 04:14 PM: Message edited by: flsunshine ]