PTO crazies, I’m sure you agree. Its like this every year. Summer flies by and suddenly you’re hit by the realization that you have events to run in 2 weeks, and no one to run them.
No? You don’t? Well, then you’re lucky. Me? I’m busy. Last night I spent about 2 hours mapping out the year’s events on our calendar. Next, I contacted all of the people who had said they would be interested in running events and fundraisers to confirm their commitment. Most of them said yes. A few? Well, things change over the summer, right? So a few had to withdraw from their commitments (a nice way to say it, yes?) And, so, just like last year I pulled out my school directory and sent out an e-mail. It went something like this:
Aren’t you so lucky? See, I consider you my friend. And since we’re friends, you get to be bugged about helping out at school because I need help.
Yup. I just asked. And I asked about 20 people if they could fulfill about 10 spots. (Not everyone got back to me. Not everyone wanted to do it.)
The good news is that my next 3 events I now have committee chairs to run. The bad news? If I don’t fill the rest of the positions I”m going to be doing a lot of work this fall. And, you know what? I already do a lot of work.
Of course, we’re not finished yet. Yes, I have the committee chairs in place (for most of the events and fundraisers) but now I need to recruit volunteers to actually do the work.
At our school we do our sign-ups with paper and pencil. Which is great for a lot of our parents. But not all. There are those of us who are computer and social media minded and would love to run our sign-ups through a web-based application like Volunteer Spot. I spent some time playing around on Volunteer Spot this week and I can see how it would streamline the volunteer process, making it nice and organized. In my case, the challenge would be to get everyone to sign up and actually use it. But if a group is encouraged to be web-friendly, then Volunteer Spot is definitely something your PTO should consider.
This post is part of the Fill the Backpack program and is sponsored by Ziploc and 20th Century Fox. Fill the Backpack is hosted by Volunteer Spot. Did you know I’m giving away one of 16 backpacks overflowing with great gifts like from companies like Leap Frog, Sun Maid and Carolina Pad? Enter to win by responding to my Fill the Backpack post by August 31.
© 2010, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.
Your school is lucky to have you, Julie! Lots of schools still use paper sign up sheets, because they work! Fortunately, VolunteerSpot is ‘clipboard compatible’ – just take that full sign up sheet and enter the parent assignments online – we’ll send automated email reminders for you, or alert you of parents w/out email addresses so you can call and remind them of their commitments.
Here’s to a great year!
Twitter: justprecious
says:
That’s great, Karen! I really need to continue further exploring Volunteer Spot. In hopes that, some day, our school will be willing to allow us to use social media to organize our PTO (or even behind the scenes.)