Wow! 33 committee chairs! We are much smaller (270 students) and although we could ELECT officers we just take whoever is willing to step forward and sometimes there is nobody. Our main goal is to get more people involved since we think they might be more willing to volunteer to do ONE TASK only and the role of "officer" sounds like too much work.
Is it just semantics? That's ok if those names would work better in your school. Might be necessary to use new labels to reflect a new attitude.
Do you currently call all your committee chair people "officers"? Are they elected? Must they commit for more than one year? Are they expected to attend alot of group meetings? Are you asking your committee chairs to take on extra responsibilites because your PTO views them as officers? Changing the name alone might have a short term benefit, but you'll want to look deeper as to why chairpeople are scarce.
We have an elected board of 5 positions: Prez, VP, Treas, Corresponding Secy, Recording Secy. We are elected for one year term, with a 2 year term limit. In addition to our Executive Board, we have 33 committee chairpeople. The Exec Board meets monthly, the entire PTO membership is invited to our general meetings, and the committees meet on their own as needed.
Since it is difficult every year to get people to volunteer to be an officer we are considering having coordinators only. Of course we will need a meeting manager and finance officer but also volunteer, hospitality, yearbook, etc. Has anyone tried this? How did it work? What were the positions?
