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.”

Here’s an idea if your parent group is short on volunteers. Instead of sending out a tersely worded note asking for help from your parents, how about borrowing some volunteers from a neighboring school? We came across a story about schools in Chattanooga, Tenn., doing just that and we think this is a great idea. In Chattanooga, one school had literally hundreds of volunteers (can you imagine!) while another had just a dozen. So, the school with all those helping hands sent over volunteers to the less-fortunate school to give it a boost. Think of the possibilities. If you could get some neighboring schools interested in this idea, you could create a volunteer swapping program. There are many opportunities for this, including providing babysitters for each other during parent meetings. Also, volunteers could assist a neighboring school by manning the snack or carnival booths so parents could enjoy these events with their children instead of working the event as likely do most of the time.

The Chattanooga story was particularly touching because the school in need of help had been without a parent group for a decade. It was really trying to make a go of it and those borrowed volunteers made a big difference.

That’s a win-win, as they say, especially for the kids.

Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14) is a good time to show some love to everyone in your school community. Consider trying one of these popular activities.

Parent-Child Date Night
Give parents and kids a fun night out. Hold a dance for father-daughter and mother-son couples. Make it clear that kids can bring another relative or family friend if a parent can’t attend.

Teacher Treats
Write valentines to teachers and other staff members and place them in their mail boxes with chocolate candy. Change the school sign to say “we love our teachers.” Or organize a student serenade to teachers during recess.

Candygrams
For a small fee, let students order candygrams to be sent to other students or teachers on Valentine’s Day. Students can write a short note that is attached to a lollipop. Line up parent volunteers to make the deliveries. Another option is to send single carnations instead of candy.

Looking for more? Read “7 Fun Valentine’s Day Ideas” for inspiration.

We all do it, right? New year. Fresh slate. Great intentions.

For your parent group resolution, I’ll give you three possibilities. Little habit changes that can make a big difference:

1. Make each of your family events 20 percent more special. Pony up for the good DJ or add free popcorn (yes, free!) or see whether you can get the fire trucks to come down to your fair. Special events attract more families, and (key secret!) they also attract more and better volunteers. Check out this article on ways to make your events more memorable.

2. Use email for quick thanks. Spend 15 minutes after events writing three- to five-sentence emails to volunteers. It’s amazing how effective this habit can be. Need a great, free email tool for your group? Check out Parent Express Email.

3. Smile. Have more fun. One of your goals, I’m sure, is to recruit your own replacement, right? Well, that’s awfully hard to do if everyone sees and hears how taxing your job is. What signals are you sending? Can you change those in the new year? I bet you can.

From all of us here at PTO Today, best wishes for a fantastic 2012. May your volunteers be plentiful (and on time!). May your fundraisers sell themselves. And may your school community thrive like never before. Happy New Year!

On behalf of all of us at PTO Today, please accept our warmest holiday wishes and thanks for all you do year-round. May these next weeks afford you all the family time that you so richly deserve (and that you sacrifice so often to do your school volunteer work).

If you are looking for a holiday link, I bet you’ll love this column from Sharron Kahn Luttrell. It’s called ”One Last Dance” and it’s been one of our most popular stories for several years now. It really captures the heart of this parent volunteering stuff that we do. Enjoy.

Happy holidays to all!

Creating a Facebook page can be a great way to keep in touch with parents and build community. Use these guidelines to set up a successful Facebook page for your group.

• Write guidelines for your page that emphasize the importance of being polite, avoiding profanity, and writing only what you would say to someone’s face.
• When you set up your page, tell Facebook you want to add a “Like” box to it. This will help you attract more parents.
• Vary your posts. Include information about school events, volunteering, and fundraisers, but also add photos, links to interesting blog posts and articles, public thank-yous, quotations, and anything else you feel is relevant.
• Delete all posts that are negative, inflammatory, or promotional.
• Promote your page in your other communications whenever possible. The more parents who know about it, the more lively and beneficial it will be.
• And don’t forget to like PTO Today on Facebook!

‘Tis the season of joy, goodwill, and peace on earth. But one thing we’ve noticed recently is that our website is getting a lot of traffic an article called ”How To Deal With Difficult People”. It’s an excellent article that talks very specifically about coping with a variety of annoying personality types and tough situations. But why now? Maybe it’s that along with all the good things about the holidays, stress levels tend to rise. Or maybe it’s that the school year has gone on long enough at this point that people tend to get on our nerves.

Whichever is the case, we have several resources for dealing with the stresses of parent group work, and the varying personalities we encounter:

Dealing With Disagreements: Tips on finding the right words for difficult conversations
Responding to Criticism: How to handle complaints about the PTO
Managing Personality Conflicts : Insight into working with different personality types

I hope you’ll find these articles useful in turning down the stress levels and getting in tune with the harmony of the season!