PTO Today

For years now, I’ve been talking about family events as a tool for welcoming and connecting with families. Our School Family Nights offerings are based on this concept.

And while the traditional nights — like Family Reading Night and Family Movie Night — are great and deservedly popular, this tip is about even more diverse events. I’m always so impressed by the creativity of PTOs and PTAs in developing their own unique events. At our school, we had an awesome mother-son mini-golf event in the school gym.

What have you done? We’ve started a dedicated thread on our message boards for compiling a whole list of new family event ideas for you to think about in your planning. Add your own or just be inspired. Many times, these twists on the old reliable can be just what’s needed to rekindle interest in your events. Good luck!

To kick off the New Year, I have some questions for you: Is your PTO fun? Do parents think of your group as fun? Do volunteers have fun staying involved?

If your answer is no to any of those, then you have a major involvement challenge. Light and fun work. Heavy and too serious do not. (Chime in on our message boards to add your best fun PTO ideas and read what other groups are doing to keep things more light.)

In many ways, you’re selling involvement — you’re hoping parents will choose your group and your school as the place to give their time. If that involvement is boring, or worse yet, painful or stress-inducing, most parents will choose a different option. You’re not only competing with other volunteer options; you’re also competing with American Idol, Survivor, and Dancing With the Stars.

I’m looking forward to hearing about all the ways you’re making volunteering more fun. Your efforts on that front may be your best investment for increasing involvement at your school.

Photo by: Michal Marcol (freedigitalphotos.net)

I have a request for you this week rather than a tip. Would you please take two minutes and let us know the one or two things we could do for you as a PTO or PTA leader that would be of most help?

As usual, we’re in the midst of planning for the new year, and we’d love to hear from you what you’d most like us to work on. More online tools (like what)? More programs for groups (in what areas)? More freebies or giveaways? Anything else?

Respond any way you’d like. Comment below. Jump in on our message boards. Ping us on Facebook. We’d just love to hear from you. Thanks in advance for the help.

Please also accept our best wishes for a peaceful, happy, and involvement-filled New Year.

My message to you this week is simple — thanks for everything you do. I hope these next couple of weeks bring you peace and rest and great times with your families and friends. You deserve nothing less.

A friend of mine recently mentioned that it seems we’ve been talking a lot lately of the tough parts of PTOing. Dealing with drama, tough principals, embezzlement. “Doesn’t sound like something I’d want to get involved with” was his comment. And I can see his point.

So this season, I hope you’ll remember (and be rewarded for) all the great things about this work. The smiles on the kids’ faces. The schools made better by increased involvement. The lifelong friendships that are forged on the playground you built. The teachers inspired to keep at their difficult jobs because of your support. The great times shared by school families at your fun events.

That’s what makes this work so worthwhile and rewarding.

My resolution for 2010 is to remember those things more, both personally and in my writing here at PTO Today. Reminds me of one of the most popular articles ever on the website — ”One Last Dance” by Sharron Kahn Luttrell. If you’re looking for a PTO gift, give that one a read.

Do you appreciate the help you get from parents? Do they know that you do?

Volunteer appreciation is best when it’s real and obvious and year-round. If the only time your volunteers feel thanked is one time, at the end of the year, then you’re likely to have trouble keeping your current help and attracting new help.

We’ve gathered a bunch of great, simple appreciation ideas that can help you with this challenge right now. Check out our creative list of volunteer appreciation ideas on the website.

We’ve gathered a bunch of great, simple appreciation ideas that can help you with this challenge right now. Check out our message boards thread in our online Community on volunteer appreciation. Would love to hear what’s worked for you.

Still thinking about family event plans for spring? I recommend utilizing our Family Movie Night kit and info to put on a relaxing flick night. There’s a good element of fun with the added bonus of being one of the easier family nights to run.

You can order a free Family Movie Night planning kit on our website, plus find info on all of our School Family Nights. To me, these kinds of involvement events are a welcome mat to deeper involvement. Don’t charge admission. Don’t give folks the hard sell that they have to help out. Just make it a great night. The good news is that some of your attendees will have a great time and feel more comfortable getting more connected. That’s how more involvement develops — not through guilt or the like.

We’ve also recently added a brand-new Family Movie Night ”group” in our Community section on ptotoday.com. Here, you can share what’s worked and what hasn’t with other leaders running the same kind of event. We’ve even got a movie tracker, so you can review which movies worked best for school nights. I really like the movie Cars, for example, but it was a terrible choice for our last Movie Night — just way too long for 90 K-5th graders. Wish I’d known that before we picked it.

Good luck with all your involvement efforts!

After a decade of talking with PTO and PTA leaders on the phone, in person, and through our online message boards, we’ve found that one of the most common themes is how to deal with principal problems. Can the principal decide what kind of events we run? What if she gets in our way? Who has final say over fundraising and finances?

My latest video blog on who’s the boss of the PTO covers the short answer — if your parent group is independent from the school, then technically the principal does not control these decisions — and also why this isn’t really the right answer. A strong, successful parent group needs cooperation and support from the principal; you aren’t likely to get either of those if you’re fighting over territory.

So here’s this week’s tip: Instead of challenging the principal’s authority, find ways to work together. Start by thinking about concerns she might have, and what you and your fellow PTO leaders can do about them. Is the principal worried about embezzlement? Wow her with the financial controls your group uses. Did previous PTO boards plan activities that interfered with classroom time? Might make sense to check dates with teachers before printing up flyers. (Read ”Real Disputes With the Principal’‘ to see how several parent groups solved their own disagreements.)

In the end, it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge; what does matter is that your PTO is doing great work for the kids and making the school a better place. That’s also the best foundation for building a strong principal-PTO partnership.

Yup — drama-filled PTO moments (and how they scare away and chase away good volunteers) seems to be a theme this week. We’ve had message board threads about presidents with bad attitudes and clashing leadership styles, among other things, and have seen stories in the news on the same kind of stuff. Ugh. The good news is, we can take steps to limit the drama. Seriously.

In my experience, PTOs and PTAs have more drama than the average organization for a couple of reasons. One is that parent groups work with our kids — and we all have very passionate opinions about what’s best for kids. Another is that in a PTO there is often no “what I say goes” authority figure who can put an end to drama that has gone too far. (Think about what you do at home when the kids take things too far.)

And there’s no doubt that all this drama hurts our groups, our schools, and our volunteers. Drama is really tiring. It saps everyone of energy. It takes the focus away from doing good work. It absolutely makes parent involvement and gaining volunteers more difficult.

I wrote a column called ‘‘Stop the PTO Drama” a while back, and the solutions remain the same. It starts with working hard to be the grownup in these situations, even when others are reenacting the worst parts of high school. Another huge factor is communication — don’t let nagging annoyances and growing bad feelings fester. Schedule a coffee or openly discuss your group’s efforts to avoid drama right at a meeting. Small dramas become debilitating dramas when not addressed.

I’ve never met a PTO volunteer who hasn’t faced her share of drama in the volunteer world. What have you faced? And what have you done about it? Would love to hear your take on dealing with drama.

Yup, Lowe’s.

Lowe’s has been a huge supporter of schools and of PTOs and PTAs these past few years (their Lowe’s Toolbox for Education program has given millions to PTOs and PTAs these past 5 years), and I’ve really enjoyed working with their whole team on a variety of projects.

But when they started talking about Lowe’s giftcards as good teacher appreciation and holiday gifts, even I was a bit skeptical. After all – you can’t exactly buy ceramic apples at Lowe’, right?

After they walked me through a few things they’re doing though, I was impressed. And I think it’s worth a look for you.

First of all, while you can’t get ceramic apples — you can get about a billion other things, tons of which would be great for a teacher. (Classroom stuff and stuff for when the teachers are being actual normal everyday people). Think: plants, gardening tools, organizing bins for the classroom, even Christmas decorations. And a whole bunch more.

Even better, Lowe’s now has the ability for you to customize your gift card in a very cool way. You can, for example, add a picture of your son or daughter along with “Mrs. B – thanks for helping me with fractions!” right on the giftcard. How cool is that?

Check out their Lowe’s giftcard page and the personalization features before you make your holiday gift choices this year.

Now that it’s November, I imagine your membership drive, if you have one, is over. So my question (and tip) for you this week is, why do you charge dues to belong to your PTO? I personally think it’s a bad idea, and I hope you’ll discuss it with your group before next year’s drive rolls around again.

I wrote a column called ”Just Say No to Dues” a couple of years back, and I thought I’d summarize it here.

My problem with it comes from two perspectives. First, I think dues are anti-involvement and send the wrong message to your parent community. Why do I have to pay to belong to the parent group at my kids’ school? I feel like I paid those dues with blood, sweat, and tears (not to mention the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars I’ve already spent raising junior). Most parent groups cite increasing parent involvement as their number one goal, and then the first thing they do is put a barrier (”$5, please”) between parents and their group. I think a much better message is “All parents and guardians of XYZ School are members of our PTO, and we look forward to a great year of working together to make our school a great place for our kids.”

The second is that membership drives actually aren’t even very effective as fundraisers. You spend lots of time and energy on a membership drive…frequent reminders, sign-up tables at open house, emails, more. And for what? $500? If you have a membership drive for the money, you have much better options to consider.

My observation is that most groups have membership drives because that’s the way it’s always been done. My tip this week: It’s OK to change the way things have always been done.

Agree? Disagree? Tried it already? I’d love to hear your take on this issue. Chime in on the ”dues or no dues” thread on our message boards.