PTO Today

Have you been to our clip art gallery recently? Worth a visit — we’ve added lots of new colorful images so you can jazz up your flyers and newsletters.You can download any or all of these high-resolution image files, then resize, crop, or edit them in any way that works for your group’s needs. They’re free for parent group use in print, online, or anywhere else.

When it comes to managing your PTO’s reputation, you can either proactively set the tone yourself or have your parents choose the default description, thinking of your group as “that fundraising group that’s always hitting us up for money.” I obviously prefer the first option.

Being known as just a fundraising group is far from warm and fuzzy. And it’s really hard to get new volunteers to excitedly sign up to be fundraisers. The opposite is true if you can become known for all your good work and for parent involvement and for your welcoming, fun, supportive atmosphere.

The key to changing that reputation is, first, actually earning the change. You’re doing lots of good work beyond fundraising and you’re welcoming, fun and supportive, right? If so, the rest is just marketing. Are you letting parents know about your good work? All the time? When you donate something to the school, do you publicize that? You could even put a small “proudly donated by the parents of the XYZ PTO” plaque on the item. That’s not bragging — that’s good marketing, and it’s part of your leadership challenge.

We have a great article on effectively marketing your parent group with more tips such as these. Like the companies that put their names on sports arenas, you want your PTO or PTA’s name associated with good work and fun events and results. And you want that association to last all year long.

For those of you who have been involved with a playground fundraising effort, you know that it’s an ambitious and rewarding project. Just look at the faces of the children at a new playground grand opening and all your efforts are instantly rewarded.

The tenacity of the elementary school PTA featured in this recent article is admirable. To date they have raised 37K and secured matching grant funding.But what makes it even better is that they are holding a barbecue and silent auction to raise even more money. Why? To replace the gravel on the playground with compressed wood chips — a wheelchair-friendly product that will let their special-needs preschoolers enjoy the playground. That’s going to be one awesome playground.

We hear it a lot this time of year: “I am so excited to be the new PTO president… but I’m also nervous!” Or, “I had a great year this year, but I am already thinking of ways to improve the board for the next school year.” Well, whether you’re new to the job or an old pro, our FREE New Leader Kit will be your new best friend. The insider tips will give you the tools you need to lead with confidence — so you can relax a little this summer.

For those of you who are not out of school yet, you have to feel for the teachers! The kids are done but school is not! Teachers certainly deserve a world of thanks.  How to show teachers appreciation is a popular topic on our website, for sure.

What’s neat about this teacher appreciation idea of creating scrapbooks for each teacher is that it involves the parents and the kids… and heart. Kudos to the PTO that took on the coordination effort and offered their creative talents, while setting a great example for their kids.

This topic goes right along with my recent push for PTOs to make the move toward email (our Parent Express Email solution is a great tool for that), but school calendars is another area where districts and PTOs and PTAs can be a lot more family friendly with a bit of technology help.

How many of your parents manage their lives these days with some kind of techy calendar, whether it be their Blackberry or Outlook a family online calendar like Cozi.com? A ton, I’d wager.  And that number will grow each year.

Trolling the web, I know that most school calendars are simply .pdf files on the school website, basically the same file that is sent home in August with the back-to-school mailing. What i’m just learning, though, is that there is a standard format for calendars called iCal that isn’t that hard to utilize and that will result in the school calendar being automatically compatible with moms’ and dads’ organizers. Even changes to the calendar made after intitla publication will automatically get changed in the parents’ calendars. 

Our districts talk about parent involvement all the time.  This is the kind of step that actually makes a difference in helping busy parents stay connected.

There’s a new site up called SchoolCal.org that’s helping parents basically petition their schools and districts to use the iCal format.  It’s not exactly the Declaration If Independence, but it is a nice step toward making parents’ lives more integrated with the school.  Hope you’ll take advantage.

Realized when I woke up this morning that it’s June 1st, which means it’s a birthday of sorts for PTO Today. The company got its start officially 10 years ago today, when I rolled out of bed, made my way down to the extra bedroom, closed the door and picked up the phone for my first day of work.  If I remember correctly, that day was marked by a whole bunch of cold calls (for ad sales), working on our first batch of articles, and intermittently wondering what the heck I’d gotten myself into.

Doesn’t seem like very long ago at all.

Kind of fun — here’s a link to the Internet “way back machine” with a look at the earliest archived version of our ptotoday.com website.  The images aren’t archived, but it still gives a good feel for the focus then — content and service for PTO and PTA leaders — which isn’t very different from the focus now. 

We have early readers who’s kids are now through with college (Note: I almost guarantee those folks are now volunteering for the local Cancer Walk or still running the Soccer Club or the like — it’s in the blood) and new readers who weren’t in high school yet when PTO Today started.  Kind of hard to believe.

Not to get too nostalgic (it’s 10 years not 50, y’know?), but it’s worth thanking so many people who’ve supported us this past decade. From readers (online and offline), who’ve sent us amazing stories of how our efforts helped them make an impact at their school and for their kids, to advertisers, who originally took  a chance on a new company and now have stood with us as partners (and, in many cases, friends) for so long, through numerous others who’ve helped us along the way.  Thanks.

And from me personally, it’s worth calling out a few of our earliest staffers, all of whom are still with us today.  Our first employee and all-around do-everything all-star, Nancy Sousa.  John Williams was employee #2 and made us a better company the day he began. John Driscoll once hired me for a job, took a chance investing in this PTO Today idea 10 years ago, joined us as employee #3 (“to protect his investment,” he says…) a bit later, and has been a partner and friend ever since.  To them, the 25 other staffers around these parts and to the families who’ve put up with us along the way — thanks and happy birthday to you, as well.

The fun part has always been dreaming up new ways to help PTO and PTA leaders and then finding the path to making those happen.  We’re already working on the next 10 years of doing that same cool stuff.  Can’t wait to see what the future brings…

Could I ask you for 5 minutes to help us plan the next steps in the development of PTOtoday.com?

Please take this quick survey about what we can do for you next?

Thanks in advance for any/all help on this.  The web changes so quickly, and PTO and PTA leaders’ web habits change quickly, too.  So before we launch our next major development of the site (version 9.0 or something, it seems like), we want to get a good feel for where you are now and what you think would be of the most help and value.

I guess today is the day for friends of ours to hear about State House honors. First it was the Paula Mullen deal. And now Cindy Jolicoeur, a key player on our Go Green Night team with the EPA and Energy Star, also gets well-deserved time in the spotlight.

That’s Cindy, her daughter and Katelyn Aguiar, a teacher from their school, with Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Cyndi has not only been working on Go Green Night for all schools, she’s also been spearheading a unique green education effort at her own school. Thus the state-wide honors. Kudos. Kudos.

About 80,000 of you are likely receiving our March magazine issue this week.  Thought I’d take a minute to clarify something on the cover.  This cover:

There’s been some confusion about the sub-headline that reads: “6 Top Fundraisers” with folks thinking that the story was our list of the 6 best or biggest fundraisers.  That wasn’t it, and we apologize if the wording there led anyone down a wrong path.

The issue has a ton of great stuff but is definitely not our list of best or biggest.  It’s really a look at 6 fairly common fundraisers (out of dozens — several more popular than these 6) with some advice about the best practices and potential pitfalls of the 6.  If you’re looking for a comprehensive listing of fundraising options, our online Fundraising Yellow Pages site is a great place to start.

And if you’ve followed our editorial stuff for a while, you know that we cover all kinds of fundraisers from all kinds of angles every year. Stay tuned….