Well, first of all, if anyone has suggestions about how to keep meetings on track, please let me know! That one I can't seem to solve! Our PTO is very established, but NOT organized. Our goal this year was to get everything planned out, written down, etc. I have found that people are SOOO more likely to volunteer if you have a plan that you can give them to run an event. It is much easier than flying by the seat of your pants. You will certainly get better and more organized year after year, but you do need the organization in order to recruit volunteers AND to leave for next year's group. Trust me, I came on board with NOTHING to go off of except what I could gather from talking to fifty different people, each who knew a little piece of the puzzle.
I'm not sure what you are looking at here. Do you feel you need more people in the organization or that you have bodies, but that the giving out of volunteer assignments is unorganized?
If it is bodies to help do the work I understand. Try counting $46,000 in a timely manner, making sure all the orders were right,etc., when only 2 parents are stay at home moms,you get the picture. It ended up some school personnel helping but no 2 people were doing it the same way.
If needing volunteers for committee work is your problem, go to those who volunteer in your school and ask them to help with one event. And start forming committees, who are given assignments to accomplish with final approval from your PTO,even officers get discouraged when they have to work for a week straight on something that should have taken a day. We do have families too.
Or perhaps the next time someone has a suggestion for a project say I hope you don't mind Let's get a group of parents together to help us with that task and bring it back to the meeting with some reccomendations to be discussed by the PTO. Anything to narrow the discussion.
If it becomes to drawn out for officers or members people will start leaving eventually.
Good luck with your situation!
We are a new PTO. We are basically blazing the trail for the future. We are doing fairly well, even our principal says we are the best PTO he's seen. That is nice to here.
However, we're all human & therefore not perfect. We have hit a road block, many - almost all are upset about organization and the fact we have taken on too much too fast.
Our president is wonderful, she has done a better job than most of us could do. Everyone loves her, but...
She is very laid back which is a good balaance most of the time. This time though she thinks everyone just needs a chance to settle down and not try to do things so big. I agree, but I and the rest of the group agrees we need more organization. That if we don't do it now then we set a bad precedent for the future and run the risk of losing members and volunteers.
Our by-laws say that if majority wants a special meeting we can call it. That isn't the problem. How can I approach to the president to get her to understand that we do need more organization. And does anyone know ideas to how to run the meeting so it doesn't go too long, but everyone gets to voice an opinion.
We all realize we aren't going to have the great smooth, running PTO the first year - it will take a few, but we want to at least be going down the right path.
