PTO Today

With school opening up, do you have a plan to connect all those parents who say they want to help with actual volunteer opportunities?

For too many groups, the plan is a nice Open House speech followed by a sign-up sheet that winds up in the back of a file somewhere. Two months later, the leaders of those groups are frustrated by a lack of volunteers and a whole bunch of parents are wondering why the cliquey PTO doesn’t call. Ugh.

With that in mind, here are two tips this week — both regarding getting and keeping lots of new volunteers.

1. Do you have a well-done volunteer interest sheet for your parents? More than just “can you help,” a well-done survey asks about interest areas and best times. We have a sample volunteer interest form in our File Exchange area that you’re free to use as is or customize.
2. Have you looked at our PTO Manager volunteer software service for keeping track of all your parents, managing volunteers for events, and communicating with parents? It really does make a difference for those groups that take advantage.

Many parents will help if the opportunity and timing and commitment are all right. You have to ask — sometimes several times, and always nicely — and you need a system for keeping track of the interest. It’s not as hard as it sounds, and it’s well worth the effort.

Summer is waning and for some PTO or PTA leaders one task is weighing heavy on their mind–  the big back-to-school speech.  So here’s our advice: maintain a summer attitude and don’t make a bigger deal out of this speech than it needs to be. You probably have two major goals, right?

1). Make a good first impression.
2).  Inspire more people to volunteer this school year.

We’ve got you covered. Watch Tim’s video blog for some simple advice on how to approach the speech to help you accomplish both goals. Look below the video for some helpful links.  Last piece of advice is take deep breaths, smile and try to relax. You are going to do great!

Helpful links:

http://www.ptotoday.com/2hourpower/

http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/137-7-steps-to-grow-involvement

http://www.ptotoday.com/filesharing/document/325-volunteer-form-for-start-of-year-detailed-two-parent

http://www.ptotoday.com/filesharing/document/389-five-reasons-to-get-involved-a-great-handout-for-parents

No doubt about it — green is growing. Over the past year or two, we’ve noticed a big increase in the number of groups going green. Groups are running recycling programs, holding walk/bike to school days, and setting up composting systems at school.

Some groups help the school reduce energy use with simple measures like raising awareness about turning off lights and power strips when not in use. Others sell green-related fundraising items like reusable water bottles and even run environmental fairs where people can learn about the latest green techniques and tools.

Green is such a popular trend that we’ve launched a new webpage where you can share your interest in making your school and your group more environmentally aware. Here’s a link to that page and some other tools from PTO Today.

• Go Green community group page on ptotoday.com:
  Talk about all things green
• Go Green Night for families:
  A fun learning experience for kids and parents alike
• Make your school more green:
  Examples from PTOs around the country
• Make your PTO more green:
  Could your group operate in a more green-friendly way?

We hope you’ll check out these resources and, please, jump in and share what your group is doing.

PTOs and PTAs build school community in many important ways. And research shows that this alone can help students and teachers succeed. But do you do anything that directly impacts student achievement?

There are lots of ways to do it. You might organize a monthlong reading challenge, create a series of math enrichment programs, or set up a tutoring program. There are other possibilities, too, and that’s my tip for this week: When you’re planning your calendar for the new year, think about ways you can directly affect student achievement. Here are some links to get you started:

• Make It an A+ Year
• One school’s awesome reading challenge
• Family Reading Night planning kit
• Back-to-school resources page on ptotoday.com

Share your ideas with the principal, and ask him for the subjects or topics where he thinks you can make the most difference. A project like this can be exciting for your group and the school alike, and you’re likely to find that it builds parent involvement, as well.

Middle school involvement is different. How is that for stating the obvious? The million dollar question is how do you adapt your parent group approach to parent involvement, when the kids don’t want you there in the first place? In this week’s video blog Tim talks about how to get past the resistance of kids,  how to build strong parent involvement, and offers examples of successful middle school events.

Starting to think about getting more volunteers next year? One important first step is how you ask parents to express their interest. A well-done “volunteer interest form” (here’s a sample) is an important part of that process.

The best form combines practicality with a bit of cheerleading and is very careful not to intimidate. Remember, parents are a bit afraid of volunteering (like if they volunteer once, they’ll be sucked in to a major commitment), so you need to make it clear that flexible opportunities are available and limited help is still very much appreciated.

While including specific opportunities is great, I also highly recommend including at least one check box that says something like: “I’d love to find some way to help this year, but my schedule is crazy and I’m not sure what can work.” You can then reach out to those who check that box and see whether there’s something you can work out together.

If you’re in volunteer-getting mode, I also recommend this feature story on connecting with more volunteers. Good luck!

Fairly soon, your group will be welcoming a whole new crop of parents to your school. Some small percentage of those parents will be excited to get involved with your group. How will you react to those parents?

Will you make it clear that their questions are tiresome? Will you hastily dismiss their “new” ideas (that you’ve had in the past) and discourage them?

I hope not, but that’s what a lot of us PTO and PTA old-timers tend to do (often unknowingly) when we first deal with these new parents. It’s a great way to turn off the fresh, enthusiastic volunteers you most need.

I tried to capture this dynamic — and also some of the mistakes that new parents make in jumping in too aggressively — in a column I wrote last year called “A Tale of Two Volunteers“. I think this is a great time of year to bring it back out. I hope you’ll share it with your fellow leaders as a reminder of the mistakes we should try to avoid this summer and next fall.

Are you the designated historian of your PTO or PTA? Or maybe, you are simply the person who happens to have a knack for photography and brings your camera to all the events. Either way, you are left with the task of organizing all those photos. And often (not always!) if you were blessed with the creative gene, you didn’t get the organization gene. If you fit into that category, sorting through and organizing those digital photos can be down right daunting. Can you tell that I speak from experience? So, I recently did a little research on best ways to organize photos and thought I’d share what I learned.

The first step in organizing your photos is to choose where to store them.  Storing photos on your computer’s hard drive can be a bit risky. Crashes do happen. External sites like Picassa or Flickr provide free storage and offer other great organizational benefits.  I happen to love Picassa because they make things so simple. Check out this video on the basics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rskC6c_5L1M

Once you choose a storage method, there are a few photo organizing basics to keep in mind.  The biggest tip, moving forward, is only download your photos when you have time to organize them. First, delete the photos that you don’t want as you go. Next, move your photos into the appropriate folders.  If you don’t take these steps when you download, chances are it will never get done. Once you finish downloading, remove the photos from your camera to avoid downloading twice and duplicate photos.Ugh!

The next tip is pretty obvious but I’ll mention it — just in case. When you create folders, include a real, recognizable name (I’m guessing I am not the only one who has given a folder a name that was meaningful at the time, but is cryptic a year or two later.) And always include a month and year in the name. Or if you prefer, you can just create a folder for each year and then have files within that with your event names.

Here a few other sites that provide some good information on photo organizing:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/learnmore/folders.mspx

http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/organize_archive_photos/tips/photo_organization.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10458296-263.html

OK, three last related tips:

• Take lots of photos. You can fool yourself into thinking … I am busy and there is always the next time.   But trust me, you will not remember how you set up your event, what the center pieces looked like, etc.  and you will certainly forget the stills of smiling faces. These events and years go by very quickly!
• After you have happily downloaded and organized your photos, share them with your community in your newsletter or website. Photos are a great way to build community and remind people of the good your group does.
• Finally,  please share your event photos with other parent group leaders on our site. You know the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”  No where is that more true than on our group pages. I have picked up some great auction classroom project ideas on our Auction group page and some of the photos on our family reading night group page have sparked some new theme ideas!

That’s it. Did I miss anything? Please add your tips in our comments section. Happy photo organizing!

OK, guys, time for my annual plea — please, please take these simple steps to protect your finances:

1. Make a rule that someone besides your treasurer receives and opens the bank statement each month. Temptation is much greater if a financially struggling treasurer knows she can write a check to cash and then just rip it up when it comes back from the bank.
2. Have an audit committee that will review the books at least once per year. (It can be all volunteers; doesn’t need to be accountants.)
3. Get bonding insurance. It’s cheap, it provides real protection, and it’s worth it.

Just this month, there has been another flurry of embezzlement stories from school parent groups. A PTA treasurer in California admitted she stole $35,000. And in Kentucky, a PTO president was charged with taking $10,000. We’ve seen dozens of these every year since PTO Today started in 1999.

The key to keeping your group out of these headlines is to make it much more likely that a misdeed will be noticed. The typical culprit in these crimes is a very normal volunteer, often in financial stress, who notices how easy it would be to “borrow” some funds for a while. I can’t recall a single embezzle case (or a big loss) in a group that followed the above steps.

Final plea: If you’re a treasurer, will you please make instituting these steps your job? Sometimes leaders worry they’ll be insulting their treasurer if they ask about these matters. You can solve that easily by taking on the task yourself. (And consider adding a few more easy-to-follow finance best practices while you’re at it.)

Has your group struggled with this issue? Or put some good controls in place? Would love it if you’d share your feedback and experience on our message boards.

Does your group run a fundraising auction of some sort? Over the past several years, auction events — silent auctions, full-blown gala auctions, online auctions — have been one of the fastest-growing segments of the fundraising world.

But they’re not easy. Where do you get donations? What’s a great theme? What items sell well? Lots of questions. Which is why we started a dedicated Auctions Group page in the ptotoday.com online community.

My best tip: One-of-a-kind items (something handmade by the kids or a dinner at the principal’s house, for example) are typically the most profitable and the most popular items at auctions. Sure, an overnight stay at the Marriott is nice, but anyone can get that outside your auction and you won’t get a bidding war.

What has sold best for your group? We’d love you to share that in the Auctions Group. You’ll also find an ever-updating list of companies who donate and lots of help from other auction organizers around the country.

Good luck!

Until next time, thanks for all you do for your school. You’re making a big difference.