Did you read the article about increasing involvment in PTO Today? Be direct and specific. Tell them that you are giving them an opportunity to help their child by helping with...........
Tell them exactly what you want and need them to do, give an easy way to contact/sign-up (I set up an email account that is specific to volunteering) and "thank them in advance for their support and willingness to help". *This creates the feeling that it is a given they will sign-up to help.
This year I asked each of the Room Parents to tap into their classroom of parents. They either sent home a survey, called, or had meetings in the park, etc. The idea was to find out what each of their parents could offer and then compile a list. Some parents had time to commit to volunteerism. Some had specific training to bring to a classroom or teacher for a specific subject. Some could cut circles at home at night. The idea was pin pointing what parents had to offer and then making it known at the school. I then complied a master list from all of the information the Room Parents gathered. As PTO president I worked with our principal on getting this out to all teachers and staff. The results have been inspiring considering we had never done anything like this before!
Our elementary offers a parent work night. That's for parents that work and want to
come and volunteer (2) nights a month.
So far we've had 8 parents committed. It's great just to mingle and do work for the school. During the day there are volunteers not as many as we'd like but were always scraping to get parents involved. Just trying to find new ideas that may work.
One thing we have had a fair amount of success with is running a Family Picnic/Volunteer Fair in the first month of school.
To bring people to the school, we advertise the event as a family picnic -- people may bring blankets and picnic dinner, or they may purchase pizza & soda at the event.
Families come to socialize, and can browse the volunteer tables.
For each committee, we ask the chairs to prepare a simple display that explains their committee's purpose and lists possible volunteer opportunities. Each committee has a sign-up sheet for parents to write their names and phone numbers.
Even if the individual chairs did not create a display, each committee had a write up which included chair name & number, description of committee, and volunteer needs plus the sign-up sheet.
At the end of the night, I made copies of the sign-up sheets for the Volunteer Coordinator and gave the originals to the appropriate committee chair.
We have filled some key vacancies with this event and have been able to provide committees with names of volunteers.
This year I added a display called, "The One-Hour Club." Realizing that many people are short on time and can't commit hours and hours, I made a list of easy tasks that can be completed in 1-hour or less (purchasing -- and be reimbursed for -- paper goods, photopying a flyer, sending in baked goods, etc.). I asked people to sign their name if they'd be willing to pitch in on a small scale. I also asked if they'd be willing to help more than once -- didn't want anyone to feel they'd get sucked in against their will! Happily, everyone who signed up said, "Yes!"
We still have the same problems of a small minority of people doing the lion's share of the work, but at least no one can complain that they don't get enough information about how to volunteer.....!
We increased our membership by 5% by offering Calendars. We are at 22% and trying to hit for 40%. A high target I know, however every month we put a PTO form in the school newsletter. We put information about what the PTO is doing and where the money is going. I saw a couple of ideas I really liked on another board - like offering a discount at the Dances. You have to weigh up the cost of these things against the possible increase in membership.
