Q&A

Eligibility for Officers

Our PTO 501 (c) (3) by-laws indicate that any member of the school community, if they have attended one meeting, can run for office of this non-profit business. Until the last election, the leadership was fairly 'cliquish' - and the nominating committee was dysfunctional. As a new officer with previous 'organizational consulting' experience, I would like to know what other PTO's are doing to build succession planning into their by-laws and what success they are having in training to parents to prepare them to run a business.
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In general, parents don't do a lot to create the kind of transition you're talking about, but it's a great idea and something we believe is very important. Among the simpler approaches you can take are creating a binder for each position that includes job description, calendar of important events, key contacts, a copy of the bylaws, and other appropriate information. Setting up a hand-over meeting after the election, where new officers meet individually with the officers they are succeeding, is helpful. If you can set up a training program -- event "assistant" officer positions for officers in training, all the better. Some groups have a co-president position that is essentially a president in training.
- Craig
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