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Engaging Parent Volunteers: Planning for BTS 2010

Wondering what kinds of planning you're doing now to get ready for engaging (more) parent volunteers next school year. Are you making changes to where parents can help, how you ask them, what kinds of roles are available, etc?

This article on our VolunteerSpot blog has a list of starter quesitons for PTA leadership teams.

Tags: Volunteer, action, coordination, recuriting, volunteer, volunteers

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Permalink Reply by Karen Bantuveris on August 25, 2010 at 5:55pm

You are so right - not everyone is 'wired' or comfortable getting there. Our parent group sends paper messages and notices home to some families, but we've cut it way down by asking parents how they prefer to be contacted. The really cool thing about VolunteerSpot is that it's 'clipboard compatible' - if you have a paper sign up sheet or volunteers without email addresses, you can still schedule them manually. Instead of the reminder email message going to the volunteer, it goes to the parent leader with a note to call those few parents without email.

We've also had good luck holding family work days - the volunteering happens as a family activity (school garden, field clean up, etc.) on the weekends. It's a lot of fun.

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Permalink Reply by Molly Page on September 7, 2010 at 7:51pm

I agree you have to try several methods to reach all parents.

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Permalink Reply by Brenda Drummer Martin on September 27, 2010 at 3:31pm

During "Education Nation" today, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, announced doubling their investment to $270 million for Parent Engagement programming, fiscal year 2011. He also touted their important partnership with PTA! It will be good to find out how to tap into that in our areas as we plan for next year!