No -- no requirements. Have at it. You're right that tracking a program like this on paper will be a bear, but... that's your call completely.

You need to register (free) to get access to all the tools, but that's it for notification.

Good luck,

Tim

Okay Tim, quick question! I know in the idea world we would be using the PTO volunteer software to fully have the two hour power be up to it's potential. But can we still do the two hour power program without using that program, I haven't convince our school that we need that yet...I have to start getting messy on paper and then maybe...ha ha ha.
I did show my principal the stuff today about two hours and he is for it...do you need to know we are going to implement it??

OOPS! :)My message got eaten!
Thanks Tim. I just couldn't figure out why you would want to reinvent the wheel. I guess my not knowing they had parted ways is testament to how often I ever visit the PTA site. [img]smile.gif[/img] )

I've used the Three for Me program full time for one year. I send home a two page flier on the first day of school detailing every volunteer opportunity in the school. We have increased our parent involvement to average about 500 volunteer hours PER month. It has bee very successful for us.

I'm on my way to sign our PTA for your Plus program and the PTO Manager. Thanks Tim. Keep on doing such a GRETA job!

Debbie

Originally posted by Rockne:
Hi Debbie -

Glad you like the efforts.

Actually, that program is no longer PTA-affiliated at all and hasn't been for almost a year. The national PTA and three4me had a falling out in 2005.

Honestly, we talked to those guys at three4me a lot before developing our own solution. I've been talking about "the fear of the black hole" (and a pledge program as a solution) for a long time in my keynotes and columns, and when three4me popped up, we were very supportive. Kind of like we have been with another, even older pledge program at Project Appleseed (a cover story in our first year of the magazine). The three4me crew spoke at all of our 2005 conferences, for example.

So like I said, we had really open and detailed business discussions with those guys back in late 05 and early 06. Like us, they are a business, too. When all was said and done, we both decied to go forward separately.

I think a pledge program is a great involvement tool. And I think you'll like how our 2 Hour Power program continues to develop with our talented designers and writers and involvement experts working on it for years to come. Hope so.

Tim

Not sure if I'm doing the message board thing right, but it looks really good. Thanks, Tim. We've been using PTO Manager for 6 months and were wondering what the pledge features were all about. Now I get it. We had our Open House 2 weeks ago but we'll be introducing 2 Hour Power at our first real meeting in September. Everybody is already loving the software. This will work great with it.

What a great job your doing it gets a lot of the leg work done for us PTO. And your right that many parents avoid the PTO thinking they will get sucked in for everything. Even just a couple hours here and there helps out.

Thanks Tim and the rest of the crew that worked on this.

Cindy

PS I think many things come from others great ideas and just need to be tweeked every now and then and there's nothing wrong with that!!!! [img]smile.gif[/img]