Welcome to my world
Won't you come on in...

As ScottMom said, THAT is the question...lol... Our group sends out a "Talent Survey" the second week of school with every child. Parents are asked to fill it out by checking the things they can help with during the year. Some items include: Making calls, grading papers, working events, baking, cleaning up/setting up, painting, sewing, works well in a.m./p.m., can work on short/no notice, will bea room parent for a class other than their child's class, etc.

We then have a home-bound volunteer (can't leave her home due to illness and advanced age) put the surveys into usable form. She lists each line-item onto one or two pages (all bakers are listed together). She lists the parent, then the teacher, then the phone number. If there is anything else on the sheet that we need to know, she adds it below that info. She takes the final compilation, makes enough copies for each teacher to have one, and one for our group. She uses a highlighter to highlight the parents for each teacher (parents who have children in that teacher's class). This year that survey compilation is more than 25 pages long! When we need volunteers for something, they are called from that sheet. We always over-book because people cancel and/or don't show up. We've been using this system this year (sent the survey home each year, but never got it put into usable form before) and it is working great! When we held a school wide bake sale, we had a list to call and everyone contacted sent stuff in. We even had parents complaining that we didn't call them! We have recently staffed our BookFair (for this upcoming week) using this system. We have plenty of helpers, now if they just show up...lol!

That's the million dollar question. Some schools use incentives like if your children need compliment cards to get a popcorn party, they offer one to every parent that attends. We offer childcare for kids over 4 because our majority is stay at home moms and they wouldn't be as regular without it. In have personally asked teachers for recommendations in the past and either sent a personal note or a made a phone call to these people to get them to come. My experience is that parents don't mind doing work but they don't want to sit around and talk about it. You could also threaten to cancel events because you can't run them without help but this has never worked for us. In the past, when I need volunteers, I go to the local high school JRROTC or some of the local churches and this also gets people in your community involved, not just parents. Good luck. Let me know if you hit a jackpot!

I’m a PTO member and chairman of the activities committee. During “Back to School Night” we circulated signup sheets for parents to volunteer for the various committees that we oversee. We had twelve people volunteer for the activities committee. I scheduled a meeting time for a Thursday evening, had the announcement in the individual class newsletters 2 weeks in advance and then again the next week. I called all of the people that signed up during “Back to School Night” and left a message with the meeting time and my contact information in the event they could not attend.

Well meeting night came and you know the story; there were four of us there. The chairman of the PTO, a teacher, my wife and myself. Not one of the people that signed up for the activates committee showed up or bothered to call to let us know they would not make it. What do we do to get people that committed to follow through? Just between us; even if we could get 2 or 3 we could get rolling.

Thanks,
Marc