I have always been dead set against charging dues. Being able to promote my group as "All parents, guardians and staff are automaticall members" is worth much more than the 1 or 2 thousand we could bring in by charging...
at my children's school i spend a lot of time volunteering, mind you it is a very small community preschool through 6th 202 students high school 7th -12th around 250 students all in the same building when i first started anyone could volunteer for the past few years they started background checks where the price rises every year up to $30 now, when they started making volunteers get checks a lot of people quit helping so they have trouble finding help, i would not make someone pay money to be in pto that is awful, i do understand background checks even at my school where you know everybody, but if you have a volunteer that can not afford to pay to get one done than the pto should pay for them most of the time you would know if that person really could not afford it
We are a small private school. New parents receive a letter when they sign up for the school about the PTO. We charge a very small fee, but in all honestly, we are not really sure if every pays, and we don't keep tabs on who does or doesn't.. This money usually goes into our "stationary" fund for the PTO. There is no rule that says to then volunteer you have to pay.. That's just plain silly.
to the person with the class party.. if the class party has nothing to do with the PTO, why whould be parent have to pay a fee just to volunteer in the classroom?? Nor does it make since that the parent who wants to help in the classroom has to pay a fee as well. Who gets the money, and what is it used for??? in our case, the classroom (school) and the PTO are seperate (more or less).. but people volunteer for both.
I'm with Rockne -- seems that whether a parent volunteers in the classroom is under the discretion of the principal and/or teacher, and the PTO shouldn't really have any say -- unless, as Luv says, the PTO is paying for the background check.
Our organization has "voluntary dues" and we just re-wrote our by-laws to say all parents/guardians are members.
The issue of dues/membership and volunteers should be completely separate. A valuable role of the parent group often includes the coordination of coordinate volunteers. A parent group serves the entire school community. In the same way ALL the kids (not just member kids) benefit from programs, ALL parents/eligible stakeholders should be able to volunteer.
Requiring a general volunteer to be a member is absolutely wrong, in my opinion.
There are very few times being a member comes into play. The main one I can think of is you may require volunteers who handle cash to be a Board member or particular office holder (or have one present). But otherwise, there should be no restrictions.
I can't think of any valid reason to tie volunteering to membership.
