Volunteer Appreciation Week

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Permalink Reply by Carissa Dollar on February 25, 2010 at 7:36am

We don't do a whole week. We just have a night at the end of the year. We have a free dinner where the teachers serve the parents, present something to all of our volunteers, and present our State Life award. Then we have our end of the year dance for the kids.

Last year every volunteer got a t-shirt that said "Unless..." on it. The elipse was made of pawprints as our mascot is a bulldog. The "Unless' theme comes from Dr. Seuss' book THE LORAX. At the end of the book, it says, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, it's not going to get better. It's not." The whole idea was that one person can make a difference. We have now encouraged our volunteers to wear those shirts for events this year and carried it forward as our membership theme this year.

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Permalink Reply by Heather Shulman on February 25, 2010 at 3:50pm

I love that quote! We just ordered PTA T-Shirts for those of us die hard volunteers so that people can find us at the events we put on in case they have questions. I love that quote though!

How does your school do with active volunteers? We have about 15 regular volunteers (we have 900 students in a K-5 school) and we are desperate to get more help. I work at the school so it helps in getting to know the parents and face to face asking them to come in and help do some stuff.

Thanks for your response!

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Permalink Reply by Carissa Dollar on February 25, 2010 at 8:29pm

Personal contacts usually work better than blanket emails or flyers, in general.

We have an enrollment of 471 students K-5. We probably have 15-20 who are in the school on a very regular basis. And then we probably have another 2 dozen or so that we can call on for our bigger events. We also utilize honor society kids from our high school for our open gym nights and our fall carnival.

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Permalink Reply by Carolyn A. Price on March 7, 2010 at 12:27pm

Is it possible to post photos of your volunteers? Names are great, but it's even better to have a face to match the name. Perhaps this will lead to prospective PTA members approaching the volunteers for ways they too can be involved!

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Permalink Reply by Heather Shulman on March 8, 2010 at 6:22am

That is a nice idea too. We run a school newspaper (and a PTA newsletter) and I want to post Volunteers in April to show other parents what our volunteers do so maybe they can come and help too.

Thanks so much for all your help!
Heather

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Permalink Reply by lisa Smith on March 23, 2010 at 6:24pm

We have really been pushing the 3 for me campaign this year. Every volunteer is asked to sign in and out at the office. Each month we have a drawing for 3 prizes to thank our volunteers. We list those winners in the monthly newsletter to let everyone know what great things volunteers do. We will sometimes spot light one if we have room in the newletter.

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Permalink Reply by Karen Bantuveris on April 12, 2010 at 3:13pm

Last year our PTA took pictures of each committee chair and homeroom parent's kids holding a sign that said "Thanks Mom" or "Thanks Dad". It was presented in a small frame - but even emailed would have made me melt!

Here's a link to a free eBook filled with small (low-cost/no-cost) ways to say thank you and recognize volunteers. Volunteer Recognition Ideas from A-Z: http://www.volunteerspot.com/ebooks/VolunteerRecognition

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Permalink Reply by Walkathon Guide on May 13, 2010 at 1:47am

The eBook is really clever. Lots of good ideas. Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Chandra on April 20, 2010 at 11:11pm

This is our first year so we are just trying some new things for National Volunteer Week. We are actually using it as a way to encourage parents who might not normally volunteer at school to come work on special projects. There are two kinds of projects, classroom and whole school. The classroom projects are offered by each teacher for the parents of the students in their class. For example, one teacher set up guest reading times for the parents to come read to the class. Another teacher choose to commerate Earth Day as well and walk the students to the local recycling center. She then had parents volunteer to walk with the class. The whole school projects are ones that benefit the school as a whole and are coordinated by our principal. An example, is to turn up the soil in one of the flower beds and get it ready for the kids to plant. We also are celebrating Administrative Assistants day on Wed., by having parents volunteer to man the phones and the office for three half hour periods so that our secretary can take some time off. All volunteers recieve a volunteer pin and are invited to lunch at the end of the week.

Ultimately, we would love to have it grow to where at the end of the week we have a Sat. at the school day. Families would volunteer together at the school to work on improvement projects. Several projects would be offered. At the end of the day we would have a hot dog roast and maybe a carnival or an outdoor movie.

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