Last year I was vice prez. I always retreived the mail for our president. I always weeded out the junk. Some companies sent the same catalogs for a few months in a row. Who needs all of that junk mail at the meeting. I only brought what I deemed important. I also delivered it to the rightful chairman.

If your PTO members got upset because you weeded through your mail, when they see the ton that you get weekly and then at your monthly meetings you have to sort through all of it, your new president is going to be sorry she bothered to bring it all with her.

I feel that it is up to the executive board and fundraiser chairman to select a few different catalogs for the body to vote on. Too many add too much conflict.

YOur new Prez sounds like she is going to bite off more than she can chew. She will learn quickly. Our members hate sitting for an hour each meeting. (WE too meet every month during the school year.) Oh well live and learn.

Best wishes,

Renee

We also get a bunch of junk in our mailbox. As president I tend to keep only the good junk then bring it to our board meetings. The board then decides on what to do(we NEVER have parents at our general membership meetings other than the board members--but we do try to conduct ourselves as if others show up -- some day they might). Anyway, it is just a matter of time before the membership turns on your new president because the meetings are lasting too long!!

Tim, Fundraising is my forte! I was (and still am) the fundraising chair. The rest of that committee was the rest of the board! Because of the early start on our Fall Fundraiser, it was up to us to get it going. The prior prez and vice prez had made all prior decisions regarding the promotion itself, that it was the only way to get all the particulars done on time, plus our group was so small prior to the first meeting. Our group is much larger now, but our Fall Fundraiser begins before our first meeting. And if that was all it had been, I could understand that. No, it really came down to they think they want to see EVERYTHING! All I can say is Be Careful What You Wish For! LOL. I did like the idea of of the vendors only presenting to the various committees though. Great Idea!

Even though I was not re-elected, no one can, or will, argue that I didn't do a bang up job. They really feel that they need to see everything. I don't expect it to last long, once they see it is almost impossible to get 40 or 50 people to agree on one or two items when they have 40 or 50 items to choose from. I'd still like to know if anyone else does this.

I definetly agreee, the PTO box receives lots of mail. What I do since I am the President I go thru it all and toss out everything that isn't interesting to us. Why, keep all that paperwork. I only keep what I think is good fundraising material, etc. etc., it all goes to the proper chair people. Our district has a approved fundraising vendor list that we have to use vendors on that list. So, why keep all of the other stuff. The vendors must fill out proper paper work to be approved. It's all comes down to delegation. It's has to be delegated out if not you will drive yourself crazy. The board should be able to decide as to what vendors (to use) if on list for certain activities. Another thought just came thru. You know you learn from experience and hear say.
Ask the fundraiser rep. for references. (sorry, to get off the subject) We had a experience that another school in our district used a fundraising company not on the approved list and guess what they had several problems with delivery, replacements, even getting a hold of the rep. Didn't mean to get into another topic.
If you were to leave everything open to the general membership meetings you'd be there all night plus that's why there's a board that parents entrust to make proper decisions to serve the staff and children in their best interest.

To me, it's a delegation issue. If you have a fundraising chair and a fundraising committee -- let she/he/they get all the fundraising stuff. It's then very much a good idea to let them sort/cull the options.

In a day when everyone is looking to make meetings shorter/better, I can't imagine a single good reason why an average member needs to see every flyer. That's what committees are made for. I think general meetings would be a lot better if more of the work of the group was done in committee. Example: those presentations by fundraising reps. can be done before the fr committee. That frees up your general meetings for valuable content (or even just shorter meetings).

Perhaps the criticism was that you were doing the sorting/culling yourself and not delegating to even your fellow leaders/chairs.

I may word this badly, but here goes:

What are your views on parents (i.e. general membership) being given the 'right' to see everything that comes in to the PTO mailbox. For example: during any given week, our PTVO school mailbox receives no less than 15-20 requests from Santa Shop vendors. No less than 30 vendor requests from Fall Fundraising companies. Not less than 50-60 various vendors, including playground equiptment, Oriental Trading, suckers, chocolates, pen and pencil sets, well you get the idea. Should ALL of these things be taken to the monthly membership meetings to be sorted out by the entire membership?

I personally don't see how it could be done, but it is one of the main reasons, apparently, that I lost the election back in April . I would go through everything, narrow it down to 5-7 choices, present it to the other officers. We would then narrow it down to 2 or 3 choices to take to the general membership for a vote. My opponent won by saying that she would bring everything to the general membership for decisions . Sounds good in theory, but my God :eek: ! With an average of 100 pieces of mail a week, that rounds out to 400 items to look over during a meeting, in addition to the regular business :confused: .

I know a lot of you don't have regular monthly membership meetings, so you won't need to answer on that level ...lol... - I'm just curious what everyone else thinks of this, bringing it ALL to ALL the parents. I kid you not, I'm not sure I could get them all to say it was daylight at noon :cool: ...lol!

Let me know what you think!