Question: Meeting Attendance

We currently have the same people attending our meetings. Usually all of the board memebers are present along with 3 or 4 parents. How do we increase our parent attendance?

Asked by Jodie_Harry

Answers:

Advice from PTO Today

Craig writes:
Hi Jodie -- The story Boost Meeting Attendance has a number of suggestions that may work depending on your situation. I'd also recommend Put Meetings in Perspective. Sometimes the problem with meeting attendance is simply that we put too much emphasis on it. People in general have a limited amount of time to devote to PTO activities. You probably have a lot of things they could do that would be more helpful than attending meetings. Not to mention the fact that if you're like most groups, your meetings are probably about the least interesting thing you do. If your group has a healthy corps of volunteer, that's the most important thing. It's great to get a few more people to attend meetings and become more deeply involved, but it's probably not necessary to spend a lot of effort trying to get a large number of attendees at the meeting every month.

Community Advice

AuburnWildfire writes:
Our school has a big problem in accepting volunteer views. We are met with not acknowledging we said anything at all like we are not even there. It discourages people even coming. It also would help if it didn't come out in the Newsletter the day of. Help at events is being pushed at the teachers who already have very busy schedules. I have spoken with many of the parents from the school, even though I am a grandparent (YES we sometimes are the BEST HELP) and they have all said they answer the letter we get (what would you like to help volunteer with) and NEVER get a phone call. I am speaking from being a major part of the PTA which is now PTO in the past where we had lots and lots of parent involvement. How can we turn around this leader and staff idea of they can do it all (they get all the credit) to making it a school of future volunteers?