These type of negative people exists everywhere and if you did not note it I would have guessed that they do not attend meetings and most likely are not involved. A negative person is a negative person and by and large no matter what you do they will find fault with it. I learned early in that no matter what you do you will never please 100% of the people. Someone will always take exception with something. All you can do is do your best and move forward and not concern yourself with a few sour apples.
Luvmykids gives good and sound advice, but I have to tell you I have gone that root and these people never step up. The last one of these parents who I actually did reach out to, to do something said yes and then when the time came and she was contacted she did not even bother to return our phone calls and emails. But the good side of this is that it shut her up and we have not heard another peep out of her. Heck at least too I can say we give them the opportunity to correct all our flaws! lol
One of the best way I know to stop the effects of the naysayers is to communicate with your parents(all of them) as to what your group does for the school. Do you send out a newsletter? Start a monthly newsletter that lets parents know what events you have going on and the successes from events that just completed. Publish a simplified budget that shows what money came in from your fundraiser and how it was spent or what plans have been made to spend it.
Do you do any family events? Are they all fundraiser type things or are there some that are free? You can get great publicity and goodwill(and some new volunteers) from doing free and low cost events.
If you want to be really bold you could approach those negative parents and talk to them. What I mean is that when you hear a negative statement has been made by someone in particular(Sue Smith said that your fundraiser was just really junky stuff) then you could approach Sue Smith and say "I understand you had some concerns about the quality of the items from our fundraiser, which items did you have problems with?" Then you could go even further and say " You seem to have some definite ideas about fundraisers and how they should work, would you be willing to sit on our fundraising committee and help brainstorm our next fundraiser?" That way they either have to put up or shut up.
We have a growing PTO group and it is very active. We have grown over the last 4 years and we are doing community activities such as March of Dimes and we are trying new activities including the seniors in our rural community.
Our school has about 230 kids and getting the parents involved is very hard. But we have a small group of parents that no matter what we do they are NEVER happy. They take pot shots at the PTO all the time. How do you deal with this type of activity? Every time we do a fundraising activity they make comments that we have to much money now and people should not support. They have made some of the attacks on our officers as well. Do I need to tell you that they have not attended a meeting and do not know what is going on with our parent group. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
