To wonder why more people don't help at PTA events ... and what would encourage more people to do so ...

[onthebus]

In common with many other schools, our PTA had its annual summer fayre a couple of weeks ago. The school has quite a small PTA (about 6 people) and every year for this event they send out a note asking for volunteers for people to help set up/run stalls/clear away. Every year about 2 people volunteer and the PTA then run themselves ragged trying to do everything (and generally failing).

I'm not on the PTA by the way, though I do offer to help, and it strikes me that this really can't be the best way for anyone.

I understand that some people don't help because they are looking after small children/are at work/think the PTA are too scary/just don't want to but I'm really surprised that so few do. I did suggest to PTA members that if they actually asked people rather than sending out a note they might get more helpers but they are loathe to do this.

So ... I think most people appreciate that funds raised by the PTA are worthwhile. If you do/don't help out at PTA events, why is that, and what do you think would encourage you/other people to do so?

Still not sure that's right. Great you have helped out but what about the parent who couldn't do that because they were working? Why are they less deserving of a good seat?

I would say though, that there are about 4 of us that do the nativity event, so not as if all 25 members are hogging the seats

Well that sounds ok....had visions of the front 10 rows being PTA and other poor parents huddled outside with noses pressed to windows :)

catgirl - well, when they can help out, they can have a choice of seat. I wasn't working on that occasion, so could help, and get a seat because I was there an hour before, helping, and will stay afterwards to help.

At the next event, I might not be able to help, and therefore will not get a seat. Someone else will.

And if you make a point of saying that PTA can't have a seat, if they are helping - well then, the PTA have to turn up, help set up the event, then go outside and join the back of the queue (that has been forming while PTA worked to set up), to not get a seat. Is that fair? And anyway, if one person is working, they won't be at the event. So it's not a problem.

You assume that it's always the same people, at the same events. The key to a successful PTA is to have loads of people that can give a short amount of time to help.

catgirl

I think you have done a pretty good job of slagging the people who do help off to such an extent you have made us all feel absolute idiots who have nothing better to do with our menial lives. Good for you, have a career and pay so much tax.

Thank you for your sarcasm.

I dare you to volunteer 1/2 hour of your precious time.

Because I suppose my time is insignificant, isn't it?

Pingu: The PTA raises thousands a year - over £10k each year
But how much work are the PTA putting in for that, If you valued your own time, even at minimum wage, you are not getting a very good return.

Of course, front seats at the Xmas show are priceless, so maybe that would make it all worthwhile.

I prefer to give my time directly, half a day a week reading (effectively freeing up a TA) is worth at least £1000 to the school.

catgirl

I have to say, our PTA never choose front row anyway. My DS would die with mortification to see me there.

I stand on the edges, without a seat, so I can get to the tea hatch quickly to serve everyone else in the interval

And catgirl - I would add that my PTA (very successful PTA) is comprised of about 70% of parents who work full time

The outskirts of the PTA is full of people who spend an awful lot of time talking about how they cant possibly help because they have no time. I suggest you spend less time talking about how little time you have.

I didn't say I didn't have any time - I merely suggested that if more PTA's reduced the total time commitment required by volunteers or held meetings out of working hours, they might get more assistance, which was the OPs original question I think. I appreciate some PTAs do this already, but pingu was saying her PTA only had SAHM's or part time workers and oculd only cater for those groups which seemed wrong.

melika calm down. I was responding to pingu who had been very sanctimonoius about all the amazing work 12 people had done over a whole year which raised £10k. Thats less than £70 a month each, so excuse me for not being that impressed. A fair few posters have implied that those who don't help with the PTA don't contribute which is clearly not the case. I was responding to those posters, not "slagging people of". I am not suggesting your time is insignificant either, but if I were you I would be hoping to get a bigger return on it than pingus PTA managed.

DS's nursery doesn't have a PTA but when he gets to school age I probably won't join one because:

1. I can think of few things more excruciatingly uncomfortable than dreading going to a meeting every month where I'm pestered to do things I don't want to do, but feeling too guilty about letting people down to resign i.e. there's no easy exit if it proves to be too much and 7 years is a long old time to be doing something you hate. This could probably account for parents in the first few years of their children's school lives being less likely to take part.

2. No PTA that I ever saw in my school days actually did anything other than fundraise - where did all the money go?! This was probably down to poor communication rather than actual money hoarding.

3. I have sat on many a committee in my time and it always seems to take 10 meetings to dicuss something before anything actually gets done. This ends up in a situation where either nothing gets done or the everything gets dumped on a few key people who are too nice to say no.

4. I have also manned more than a few stalls (I belong to a family of teachers) and it takes the entire day because you have to get there, set up, man the stall, clear away. Thr guilt-trip if you leave part-way through is extraordinary and I actually value spending time with my family in the rare event that I am not working/cleaning/running youth group (where I am the boss and everything is organised military-style :o)

I would gladly sign up to man a stall for an hour or to help set up or to clear away, but only if I knew that I would get what I signed up for i.e. I wouldn't still be at the white elephant stall 4 hours after someone was supposed to relieve me.

Well our meetings are at 7pm. But you can't please everyone.

You must have a Friends of the PTA? We have people in that group who cannot attend meetings, but who are happy to give an hour here or there at an event, or make cakes, or contact businesses and such like.

choccyp1g - exactly. The economics of PTA fundraising is bonkers and one of the main reasons people will not get involved.

Take a simple thing like a cake sale. If I make a cake, for a cake sale, it costs £2 for materials and and hour of my time. I then spend £4 buying it back and an hour volunteering to run the cake stall.

In total I spent £6 plus another 2 hours valued at minimum wage. In total the PTA gets £4 but I spend £18 in cash and time spent.

In the end, me and DW wrote to our DCs private school and suggested they stop PTA fundraising and put £25 on the bill of each child per term. We worked out they would raise more money and with a lot less hassle to parents who in many cases are out working to pay for school fees.

We suggested they they then organise a ballot and a meeting with parents ask them what they wanted the money spent on and then the PTA committee implement what parents had voted for the money to be spent on.

The suggestion did not go down at all well because the PTA organisers were offended that we suggested the events should not happen. It seemed 'organising the events' wase more important to them than the money raised and asking parents what they wanted it to be spent on. They wanted the power to run events and decide the distribution of money - not the parental body as a whole.

Its seemed to us that our PTA was really about petty power politics of a clique of well connected parents and not really fund raising at all.

I am not involved because I get bored pestering other women to make buns.
I've had enough stale fairy cakes in my life to sink a battleship.

Instead I spend my time working with the Head Teacher behind the scenes getting in whopping great grants and facilitating capital projects.

I wish we had a national PTA rather that atomised school-based ones. Then I might be more interested.

I don't even know if our school has a PTA.

When they want money for something, I get a note in the bag saying 'Hey give us some money for this'.

Though we did get a bag of chocolates to sell, but pretty much everyone I know just bought the whole bag themselves.

Have to agree with morebeta. It does sound like the PTA is run for the enjoyment of the members not the financial results it brings for the school.

That is fine and I don't have a problem with it. It is nice for people to be involved, nice that they enjoy it and I am sure it does add something to the school, but when you get poster saying things like the schools need the PTA and they money they raise is amazing and people not involved don't contribute, it is a bit bloody much.

thing is though, that the events ARE important. I don't mean that organising them is important, but we put on a lot of events, infant discos, film nights, summer fairs for the children. This sort of stuff just wouldn't happen without the PTA.

I completely agree that time wise, it's a ridiculous way to raise money. Completely ineffective. But the making money out of these events, it's almost like a side project. We don't run events for ourselves, we do it for the children to enjoy. These events would still take place if you took the fundraising out of the equation, it's just someone would be doing it without money to take into account.

I agree that it would be more cost effective, more time effective to just take money from people. But if we did that, there would just be a million complaints from the other half of the parent body who don't like that decision.

catgirl I disagree.

The PTA is the only way that most schools have to raise that money Yes, it's not time effective, but most schools cannot just ask all the parents for a set amount of money each year.

It's not about the enjoyment of the PTA members - because a lot of the time, it's a lot of hard work for no recognition, only people like you who bitch all the time at anything you do.

If it were a viable option for all schools to just say "give us more money" from the parents, then all PTAs would be defunct. But this is the only way that a lot of school have of raising money.

I agree that events add something to the school and are important for the the fact the children enjoy them and they add a bit of a social / community aspect that wouldn't exist otherwise.

Just didn't agree with other posters saying they are financially important and saying only the PTA really contributed to the school.

Yes, but faced with the choice between being berated to help out and no event, I think rather more of us would say Soddit and organise a perfectly pleasant kneesup for ourselves in any case. Like the after school picnic today, not organised by the PTA (although plenty of the lovely PTA types will be there - do note I like our PTA stalwarts, see beer/cards post above) for which we will all saunter over to the local park. I have made brownies. In the same way that I make brownies for the Christmas fair.

In other words, not all sociable stuff does depend on the PTA slogging its guts out and frankly we will manage to have really quite nice lives even if they stop slogging, if they feel so martyred about it.

BTW - in saying they are not financially important, I am going off the figures quoted by pingu in an earlier post so that could be totally misrepresentative - in which case I would be wrong.

So, Pingu and Nick, what's it like living up your own arse?

PTAs organise events for two reasons IME, raising funds for the school AND involve the community into the school, I have never met PTAs organising events for the self gratification of having done it or to get better places at school plays.

In our school if the PTA people (which BTW are not scary as PTA people are parents with children in the same school as yours, not some dangerous aliens!) were not raising funds there would be

-no stage for the school plays
-no kits for the sports teams
-no costumes for the Nativity
-no greenhouse for the gardening club
-less computers
-no music instruments
-no playground equipment

• ...

and the community would not have several events every year where people who live near the school (even if their Dcs are not in the school or have no/no more dcs of school age) are welcome to see what is happening. Children who are now in high school come back to see their old teachers and have a chance to see each other when scattered in different HS... It makes the place vibrant and alive!

I feel very sad that people often "slag off" PTAs. I certainly understand while someone very busy would find they cannot join it, not everybody can find the time but I feel hurt when hearing/reading open and very often unjustified criticism coming from people who have actually never been to a meeting but are adamant that PTA people are stuck up, scary, bored people who have nothing better to do with their time.

oh and never in the few years I have been in a PTA have I bought back anything I had made/baked.

If they are raising funds for the school and £10k in a year by 12 people working really hard all year is typical then I would really have to question the effectiveness. Totally agree the events are great for the children etc, etc but IF the financial aspect of the PTA is important to the school and IF the figures quoted by pingu are typical then they need to sort things out.

"Parents want all the fucking good stuff that the PTA enables, but can't be arsed to do anything themselves"
I'd willingly give any amount of cash to avoid the fuckers on the PTA.

Just wondering how many people commemting here have read this thread AIBU to ask why something I took in for summer fair was not there

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1259416-to-ask-why-something-I-took-in-for-summer-fair-was-not-there