PTO Today

This week’s round-up features the fun and not so fun.

First the fun. At PTO Today we talk a lot about how important it is to infuse some fun into your parent group. Well, these groups certainly seem to have the fun factor figured out.

• Nothing like some good-natured competition to liven up a school community:  Iron Chef competition.
• This PTO is giving families a chance to get creative with an all-day scrapbooking event.
• Families at this school love their Spaghetti dinner family night tradition. Sometimes it’s the old fashioned favorite that is the most fun.
• Getting high schoolers on board with a fundraiser can be a bit tough. This NJ PTO figured out a fun event to do the trick: a fashion show fundraiser. Loved that they involved the students by sponsoring a contest for the invitation. Neat idea.
• This school combined a  school carnival with a silent auction and had over 1000 attendees. Wow, that says a lot about the community!

Ok, now for the not-so-fun. Speaking to the need of solid financial controls in your parent group, there were several stories in the news this week about embezzlement:

Woman pleads guilty to $35,000 PTA theft.

PTA treasurer sentenced to three years of probation for stealing nearly $75,000 over a six-year period.

Ex-PTA president sentenced for stealing funds.

Being a middle school PTO leader is challenging. The standard tactics to bring parents in — family events and doughnuts with dad — don’t work as well when the kids’ hormones are kicking in and being seen with Mom or Dad becomes a prison sentence.

That pressure from the kids not to attend events is very real, and if you want to have success with parents of older kids, you really need to address it. My best advice: Bring those older kids into the process. What kind of events would they find cool? What do they want you to do? Can they help you plan it? Can you even make it seem like it’s their event?

One of our Parent Group of the Year winners from a few years back was a middle school group that created several great student events with lots of different activities, including separate overnight parties for the 6th grade girls and boys. The fact is that parents participated and volunteered, parents attended, and connections were made.

If parents are connecting and getting involved at school and meeting teachers, that’s the result we’re looking for. If you have to have a Survivor contest or American Idol night or an all-night Xbox party to make those things happen, then go for it. Involvement does change at the middle school level — but if you’re creative and flexible, it doesn’t have to go away.

Here’s another way to ask that question: are you bragging enough about your PTO or PTA? In this week’s video blog Tim says that groups may not realize it, but not boasting enough can have a negative affect on your ability to recruit more members/volunteers and fundraise successfully.

Some of the ways that Tim suggests to promote your group are:

• newsletters
• local newspaper articles (write a press release)
• brass plaques

We also hear of many groups using Twitter and Facebook to toot their horn a bit and grow involvement.

How does your group get the word out to your school about your hard work? We’d love to hear from you.

I have an assignment for you this week — check out the last four or five PTO emails or notices home and see what kind of message you’re sending about your group’s DNA.

We talk a lot about making our groups more welcoming and trying to bring more parents into the volunteering fold. But are your messages home supporting those goals?

Funny thing is, I’m talking about little things: Do you start with a welcome? Do you always close with a sincere thank-you? Are you preachy or do you use guilt tactics (”It’s hard to believe that in a school with 400 children, we can’t get 10 volunteers”)? (I wrote a column a while back about avoiding guilt recruiting.) Or do you remain positive even when the frustrations of a long year are getting to you? Do you take the time to be careful with your editing and to try to write well?

These are the simple things that play a role in how you’re perceived by parents at your school. Tone tells a story about your group. Careful editing says your group believes its work is important.

I know you’re busy. And I know it’s hard to stay positive when you’re working so hard and facing obstacles and complaints along the way. But these little things do matter.

Recently, we had a good exchange on our message boards centered around the question: dues or no dues? Tim is squarely in the “no dues camp” on this question. Watch his video to find out why he believes that dues are a bad idea for PTOs.

Are you taking up your parents and supporters on their offers to help your group? Every parent group says it wants new blood, but tons of parents complain that parent groups are cliques — so something isn’t connecting. My column on cliques has more about this dilemma.

I bet sometime last fall you formally (using an interest survey form) or informally (like at Open House) asked parents whether they’d like to help. And I bet that lots of parents said yes. They checked off some boxes on your form or told you to call if you needed someone to help out.

My question for you: Have you reached out to them personally and purposefully since then? Have you used those forms to recruit your new volunteers? Or have you fallen into the easy habit of counting on your regulars and your friends because you’re so busy and it’s just so much easier to rely on those familiar faces?

That’s how clique reputations are earned. You don’t mean to seem closed, but that’s the impression you can give off. What you don’t want to happen is to get to May or June and have parents saying “I told them I’d help, but they never asked or called.” Ouch.

This is the time of year to take those forms back out and dust off the email lists and reach out to every parent who has expressed interest. Find them a job — hopefully a fun, energizing job — and make this an involvement-growing year. It’s worth it.

Did you know that by the end of last year approximately 18 million people were using Twitter? Many schools have jumped on the bandwagon and are successfully using Twitter to get the word out about school events and get quick feedback on issues. On a personal level, it’s a great way to stay on top of news and trends that matter to you — like parenting.

If you are not familiar with the basics of twitter, watch the video below:

Most importantly, Twitter is a great tool for building parent involvement. Here are some sample posts or tweets from parent groups:

PTO Meeting this Thursday. XHS Princpals will be on hand to talk about the upcoming transition for the 8th graders. Don’t miss it!

Thanks to all who have volunteered for Friday’s Holiday Shoppe. We still need more volunteers – if you can help, DM me.

Working on our school auction. Anyone have an ideas for a fun theme?

Some Twitter lingo and basics:

Follow- When you follow someone on Twitter, that means you elect to see, in your twitter stream,  the tweets that they post.

Tweets – this is just another word for post or status.

Your “followers”-  (a.k.a. “tweeps,” or “tweeple”) are the people who have chosen to see your tweets.

@ Replies – When you want to reply to someone or simply get their attention, you use the @ sign followed by their username and your message. Note that when you do this, everyone who follows you and that person sees your message.

Direct messages –  To send a private message you type a ‘d’ before their user name and then the message. Direct messages  are often referred to as “DM.”  You cannot, however, DM just any Twitter user – only people who you follow and happen to be following you back. This restriction helps prevent spamming.

Adding links to your Tweets:  You can include links in your tweet simply by posting the complete URL, including “http://”, but some URLs are long. Luckily there are free online services that will shorten your URLs. Three popular services are Hootsuite, snurl,  and bit.ly. They all work basically the same way: You enter the long URL, and the service generates a shortened URL. You then copy and paste the short URL into your tweet.

Still not convinced you should jump on the Twitter bandwagon? Watch this Youtube video about the social media revolution.

Now that you’re convinced, we hope you’ll follow us on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/ptotoday
http://twitter.com/TimPTO
We’d also love you to join the conversation on our Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/PTOToday
Does your school use Twitter? We’d love to hear how you are using it and how you have encouraged parents to engage with this new form of communication.

I continued to be inspired by the creative ways that parent groups raise money and/or create a sense of community at their schools. Here a few of my favorite event articles in the news this week:

School Family Events:

Enthusiasm is the key ingredient in this parent group-sponsored math night.

PTO runs a fitness day where football rules.

Creative PTO party animals set the stage for success.

Teachers & parents with talent serve up plenty of inspiration at this school!

Loved this PTA event that encourage middle schoolers to honor family history.

And it always saddens me to post articles about thefts from parent groups but they certainly serve as good reminders for PTOs & PTAs to employ smart financial controls.

Parent Group Thefts:

http://www.brainerddispatch.com/stories/020510/new_20100205001.shtml

http://www.indystar.com/article/20100127/LOCAL1804/1270354/Maplewood-Elementary-PTO-chief-jailed-in-theft

Has your parent group been in the news and you’d like to share your story with other leaders? Email me at lgundlach@ptotoday.com and I’ll include it our weekly round-up.

Tim talks about the 2010 Back2School Program and explains why parent group leaders should take advantage of this great opportunity to reach out and connect with parents at their schools.

Lots of PTOs and PTAs in the news. Here’s a round-up of some recent articles and blogs:

Loved reading these stories about what schools and parent groups are doing to help Haiti:

Dimes for Haiti teaches kids math skills and more importantly, about helping others in need.

PTO organizes “dress down day” to raise funds for Haiti.

Some nice work done by PTOs & PTAs (maybe their events will spark some ideas for your group):

PTO sets up “Study Island” for parents.

PTA runs Healthy Family Fun Night.

PTO surprises staff with break room make-over.

PTO helps turn Principal into a human cake!

Theft and controversy in PTAs & PTOs:

Middle school in Texas wonders what’s going on with their PTA funds.

Former PTO President accused of theft.

Parents protest alternate school zoning plan.

Has your parent group been in the news and you’d like to share your story with other leaders? Email me and I’ll include it our round-up. lgundlach@ptotoday.com