If you are skeptical about entering contests to bring in some money for your school, talk to Linda Golden. This PTA president just won a $100,000 education grant for her school, Fountain Woods Elementary School in Burlington Township, N.J., from a contest hosted on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show’’ and sponsored by Target. Golden said she is like many of us who have little hope of winning. She had entered other contests with no luck. Still, she decided this one was worth a try. School officials are obviously thrilled and now have the enviable task of figuring out how to spend the money. The New Jersey school was one of 50 to receive this Target grant. This contest is the latest in a series of education initiatives underway at the retailing giant, which reportedly plans to donate about a $1 billion to education by 2015. (Also, Target is the sponsor of our Family Reading Night kits.) Contests like this are becoming increasingly popular. We recently posted a story about how parents are responding to  social-media driven contests. As Linda Golden can attest, they’re certainly great when you win!

Something a little different for this tip. I believe that goals that you write down or speak aloud or make public are much more likely to be achieved, so I figured I’d get us started on the right foot in this new year. I’m going to share my goal, and I’d love you to share yours (details below). Let’s inspire each other to make some progress.

For me, the PTO goal is to find a minimum of three brand-new volunteers who will step up into starting leadership roles (chair a committee, help run an event, take on an important function). I fear that our group is becoming too content with experienced vets.

What’s yours?

We have two ways for you to share and to see what others are thinking:

• On our message boards: Use this message boards thread to share your 2012 goal.
• On our Facebook page. Visit our Facebook discussion here and add your perspective.

I look forward to seeing what you’re working on and hearing all about your success!

Parent groups are using new ways to make fathers feel welcome. Want to get more fathers involved at your school? As these groups show, it helps to make an appeal for volunteers aimed directly at dads.

Dads’ Night at the Movies

The Huntsville (Ala.) Council of PTAs, together with some local churches, sponsored a PTA Dads Night at a movie theater in September, allowing fathers to purchase reduced-price tickets. The selected film, Courageous, follows four police officers and focuses on their roles as fathers. Parents from 17 schools attended, along with the superintendent and school board president.

Specific Requests

A San Antonio PTA found success asking fathers to volunteer at school on their child’s birthday, giving them the chance to enjoy lunch with their child. During meet the teacher night at Canyon Ridge Elementary, one father signed up about 60 other men to volunteer.

While researching programs to get more fathers involved at school, Canyon Ridge PTA president Lisa deBonoPaula learned of another area school that keeps a “honey do” list at the front desk. Dads can tackle tasks like moving heavy furniture, helping the PE teacher during gym class, and hammering nails into walls.

Just for Dads

Other schools have had success with dads-only parent groups or programs such as Watch D.O.G.S. and All Pro Dads, or by forming father’s committees that are a part of the parent group. The Mountainview Elementary PTA in Saugus, Calif., has an active Dads Committee. The group meets monthly and hosts a golf tournament and a rummage sale and helps with other PTA events.

Read more: Dad involvement article archive

Well, it’s January and the holidays are squarely behind us. Every January I do the same thing: I sit down and regroup about how Christmas and New Years went. I write down what went well and what I would change. I jot down decorating ideas, fun family event ideas, and reminders of what made me crazy this year. I think back-to-school season for PTO, PTA, HSA leaders is a lot like the holiday season. You do your best to be organized, and then you dive head first into this insanely busy time. Have you regrouped with other volunteers on how your back-to-school season went?

What would you like to do differently for back-to-school 2012? How can you make it better? Now is the time to think about it. I bet getting more parents involved at the very start of the school year is TOP on your list!

Here’s where PTO Today comes in. Make your back-to-school life a whole lot easier and productive — sign up for our Back2School program. It just kicked off and boy, are people signing up quickly! They know that participation in our FREE Back2School program is a fantastic way to get helpful tools and resources to make a great first impression on parents this fall. That first impression can make or break your year, in terms of involvement!

Here’s what Back2School participants receive:

• Jump In! magazines and coupons
• Back-to-school event planning guide
• Chance to receive parent sample packs
• And more!

If you are not familiar with our Jump In! magazine here’s the scoop: It’s a magazine that’s brought to you by the same team that produces PTO Today magazine — for you to pass out to parents at a back-to-school or parent/school event. Parents love the insightful articles that are meant to help parents bridge the school-home connection, as well as high-value coupons from family-friendly brands.

If you’d like to hear what other parent group leaders thought of the Back2School program, check out their testimonials and photos. If you still have questions, visit the Back2School FAQ. Sign up is here.

So, what are you going to do differently for back-to-school 2012?

Ever wonder when it is worth speaking up about something in your role of PTO leader?  This question may be on the mind of Kristen Pierotti, PTO president at the Lincoln-Hubbard Elementary School in Summit, N.J.

Recently, she raised concerns about a school uniform issue to the local Board of Education. The response? The board clearly indicated it had more important items on its agenda. Ouch.

This story started when Kristen Pierotti heard that some parents had raised a question about adopting school uniforms. “I was never trying to dictate what the district as a whole should do, ’’ Pierotti said in an email discussion with PTO Today.

Pierotti said the PTO decided to do a survey to determine if the issue of school uniforms really was important to parents. She said she sent out more than 200 surveys and had a 50% response rate – and 75% of those parents said they were open to the idea of holding a pilot program to see if uniforms would really work.

The issue was then forwarded to the school board, which, in published reports, essentially said it had bigger fish to fry.

“I appreciate that there are initiatives of greater consequence, however, I don’t see that in itself is a reason to close the door on something [for which] there may be a majority of community support,’’ Pierotti added.

So, apparently, a public put down will not deter this PTO. Pierotti said her hope is the school board approves the idea of Lincoln-Hubbard piloting school uniforms so it can be a “test run for the community at large’’ in the near future.

Fundraising fatigue is one of those alliterative terms that newspaper editors love. And the story of parents tired of getting hit up for more dollars seems to appear in one paper or another almost every month.

But is it true? And can your group overcome it?

I wrote a longer column on this topic, but in a nutshell, I think fundraising fatigue is way overstated and — where it does exist — most often self-inflicted.

It’s simple: If you want to have parents who complain less (and support more), then fundraise less but fundraise better. Stick to that mantra even when your budget gets low and even when the next neat idea is proposed at your meeting. Groups that have a higher fun and involvement quotient almost always raise more dollars, too. And groups that seem to fundraise all year long almost always see diminishing returns and a less effective parent group in the long term.

As you start thinking about your spring fundraisers or start reviewing choices for your next big fall fundraiser, check out these resources:

1. Our Fundraising Yellow Pages on ptotoday.com
2. This article on choosing the best fundraisers for your group
3. This additional column I wrote on ”profit percent” (and why it can be a bad measuring stick)

Good luck!

These best practices can help your committees run themselves, efficiently and without conflict:

Give committees a job to do. Every committee should have a specific purpose, clear expectations, budget, timeline, and milestones. Don’t establish any committee without a definite idea of what you want it to accomplish.

Focus on the goals, not the process. Once you establish the goals and parameters for the committee, let the committee itself decide how they will do the actual work. Micromanaging is more likely to undermine the work than to move it forward.

Set milestones. Committees should report their progress to the board at regular, predetermined intervals. Use these check-ins to make sure the committee is progressing as you expect and has all the resources needed to effectively execute their work.

Get all members involved. It’s up to the committee chair to divide the milestones into discrete jobs and to make sure everyone is involved in moving the committee toward its goal. Keep in mind that people participate because they want to make a meaningful contribution, not just to do busywork.

Don’t wait until the end to say thanks. Celebrate when milestones are reached along the way, even if you haven’t completed the entire job. Giving people encouragement will help keep them energized even for long projects.

Learn more: PTO and PTA committees topic page

We are excited to let you know that PTO Today and The Savings Bank Life Insurance Company of Massachusetts (SBLI) have teamed up to celebrate school and parent group volunteers from across the country. You may feel sometimes that your tireless volunteer efforts go unnoticed. Take heart, PTO Today and SBLI think that volunteers deserve recognition beyond their school walls. Starting this month, we’re kicking off a joint program called Superstar Volunteers. As part of this program, we profile a new Superstar Volunteer and their unique volunteer story every two weeks, from January through September. Here’s the really cool part: SBLI will donate $500 to the school of each volunteer we profile.

Our first Superstar Volunteer is Sunnie Robles-Schmidt from Santa Rosa, California. Props to Sunnie who has figured out how to juggle her busy family life AND volunteer at both the elementary school and high school. Read Sunnie’s full story to learn more about what kind of volunteer work brings her joy. Congrats Sunnie, for being the first SBLI Superstar Volunteer and for winning $500 for your school!

Do you have a volunteer at your school that you think deserves a SBLI Superstar Volunteer designation? Nominate him or her today – winners get a $500 donation to their school and will be featured on both ptotoday.com and SBLI, just like Sunnie!

January, it seems to me, can go one of two ways. Best case, your officers and key volunteers come back from the break refreshed and ready to go. You swing right into the new year and build on your successes from the fall. Or, and I think this is pretty common, you have a hard time recapturing that spirit and building momentum. The feeling is more like “back to the old grind” than “let’s get rolling.”

My tip for this week, no matter which category your group falls into, is to take some time to think and reassess before jumping back into your normal active routine. Start by having a low-key social get-together with other leaders-a little bonding now can go a long way toward creating unity as you move into your busy schedule for the months ahead.

Assess your fall activities. Talk about what went right and how you can capitalize on them moving forward. And celebrate your successes-nothing is as motivating as feeling that you have accomplished something and can accomplish more.

Finally, take some time to review your plans for the next quarter and make sure everything is in place for success. Are there loose ends that can be tied up now rather than on deadline? Do you have enough volunteers, for example, or would it help to start recruiting now for future events?

For more on making the second semester a success, check out these articles on ptotoday.com:

11 Midyear Problems and Solutions
Beat the Midyear Volunteer Slump

Sonia Bergin, teacher liaison and past president of the Placer Elementary PTC in Loomis, Calif., overcame many challenges to have a big impact.

Photo by Bruce Brown

There’s evidence of Sonia Bergin’s hard work all over Placer Elementary in Loomis, Calif. Thanks to her work on the traffic committee, a paid traffic coordinator directs students before and after school. There’s a new school marquee that the PTC uses to send student birthday messages and advertise volunteer opportunities. And Bergin has accomplished a lot inside the school, too. “If it’s PTC-related, I have pretty much been involved in it in some way, shape, or form,” she says.

Mom to Allison, 12, and Jonathan, 9, Bergin first volunteered as a room parent when Allison was in kindergarten. She then served as room parent coordinator, PTC vice president, and eventually PTC president. She has chaired the group’s annual auction, coordinated ticket sales for the Harvest Festival, and maintained the membership database.

She has also implemented movie events for students on early-release days. “This gives the working parents the opportunity to have their child go to a supervised place where they can have fun with their friends and enjoy a movie,” she says.

Under Bergin’s tenure, PTC leaders updated the computer lab and funded teacher grants, a Spanish program, field trip scholarships, and an art docent program. Bergin also established monthly meetings for all district PTC presidents and the superintendent to discuss collaboration with the local education foundation.

Bergin says she loves helping kids go on field trips and seeing them smile at the Harvest Festival. Volunteering at Placer has been personally rewarding for her on another level, too. “Being in a wheelchair for over 20 years has made me aware that it can sometimes make people uncomfortable, but not here at Placer. They have all been so supportive and I finally felt just like a ‘regular’ parent, not a parent with a disability,” she says. “I have overcome my insecurities and have been motivated to give whatever I can and however I can.”