To ask why you don’t volunteer for school / PTA / Parent Council Events?

[whyismykid]

Is it because you are too busy? Don’t think it’s important? The people who organise these type of events are irritating? Think the school have all the funds they need so it’s not worth the bother?

What would enable you (or persuade you) to help out?

200 people attended the event I planned today and had a good time but only 8 people volunteered to help. I understand that the planning and preparing for events is time consuming (it totally is!) so I’d only expect a small number of people to be able to take that on, but it should be different for on the day help I would think? I made sure each volunteer slot was only 45 mins long, so that people could also take part with their families, and made it clear what each volunteer job involved. Online sign up
so super easy.

What else can I do? it’s a school of 750 pupils and I have a summer fair to attract volunteers for next, any ideas?

For me there are two reasons.

1. although I am a sahm I would have to bring preschooler plus toddler with me and therefore I'd probably not be very helpful.

2. the PTA in our school are a coven of witches. I am not willing to be involved in the cliqueyness and bitching that they seem to love.

*disclaimer - I'm sure lots of PTA members are lovely. Our school are not. I have been on the receiving end of their nastiness so I know what they can be like.

I am on the PTA. (I was one of those parents that the clique looked at like I was weird). I found that the clique warmed to me and weren't at all cliquey.

I run Brownies - I've always said they will come 1st if we have a clash of dates.

I run a choir for adults.

I am reg disabled and a carer.

I am broke and couldn't afford £20 per kid so giving my time and/or ideas is a cheaper option. If I man a stall at the fayre I get a burger, drink and ice cream and my kids get in free.

Perhaps you could offer a voucher service too OP?

Sweetie, I’m not convinced they work economically though. We had a cake sale at the old school and the cake I provided was sold for less than cost price. Would have been way more sensible for me to donate the ingredients price!

That's their experience though. It's not their opinion on how lazy people are based on knowing nothing about other peoples' lives.

How do you want them to describe their experience other than to describe it?

These cliquey, glory hunting stories don't come from nowhere. So it may seem, when being asked why they don't volunteer, that people hate the volunteers but usually, it's their experience with those volunteers.

I certainly don't hate volunteers, and I'm always grateful for the events.

I don’t hate volunteers either - before dc and health issues I did masses of volunteering

I'm very involved in my children's current school but wasn't in my children's old one.

Reasons why not.
1.I already felt over burdened and was struggling to adapting with 4 young children and two with disabilities.

1. I was busy, yes I was at home, but I spent hours each night, not exaggerating, learning all the legalities and policies relating to children with SEN, because the school were not supportive.
2. Probably the biggest reason, I didn't like the school. The school were very difficult to work with, they really did treat my kids eldest child poorly and refused to work with him and I.

4.i didn't feel part of the parents circles, my child was "that child" so I wasn't very included and I did have parents verbally attack me on the yard or whisper about how my child shouldn't be in their school.

1. PTA was very cliquey.

This school is totally embracing, my child who was a nightmare child in the old school is no major issue in this school. Staff are fantastic, I have a lovely group of friends and everyone is lovely. The HSA (home school association) is small but very inclusive, people can do as little or much as they want. There is a real community spirt too, so we don't have a large committee even though everyone is welcome but people work etc ... but people are more than happy to volunteer for things, so we stated we had a raffle and many of the parents who own businesses or make things offered to donate.

I agree with what a pp said about not economic. Ours did a cake sale a few weeks back and all cakes were 50p. For many of those cakes that was probably below the cost of ingredients, so it doesn't seem to make sense.
I'd be happy to bake for cake sales but I feel it's a bit pointless if they'd make more money from me donating the ingredients money.

I agree, cake sales normally do not break even with regards to the costs of the ingredients vs the sale price.

But, in our school there are normally always the same parents donating, I like to bake together with DD and a cake sale is a great opportunity to do so without having to eat lots of cake at home. I prefer this to donating items for a raffle as I never have what they want.

To the pp who said they are old fashion and not good in the age of obesity - well, I don't mind my DD eating a cupcake after school once a month. I just don't let her eat more at home.

Movie nights are great fun for little money, sending her is a lot cheaper than two people going to the cinema and the added bonus for me is not to sit through a kids movie.

but being honest - if they said ' we are doing a virtual cake sale' please donate the cost of the ingredients of a cake of your choice' would you?

Its quite an interesting idea.

A really nice email/flyer with the cost of making 12 of the top sellers or 1 bigger cake outlined:

chocolate crispie cakes
fairy cakes
chocolate brownies
iced biscuit
Victoria sponge
fancy cup cake
chocolate cake

would people miss actually getting the cake. They do cake sales at the school I work at. Id say 99% of parents provide a cake and provide their child with £1.50 to buy 3 small cakes with. They do 3 a year and always raise about £900 in total from it.

I'd love to try a virtual one instead

I am just going to re-post this in full because I so whole heartedly agree

"I feel compelled to offer a kind of outsider point of view. It seems that many people here view all those PTA organized activities as a given. Maybe because you grew up with them.
Of course schools need donations. All what’s neeed for that is to publicize the bank account really. When our PTA finally asked the parents to donate online they received a few thousand pounds in the next few days.
What does all this have to do with those forgive me but a bit inane cake sales? Don’t our kids already eat enough sweets? How much money can you possibly raise from this? No thanks I am not going to man a stall selling unhealthy food or cheap plasticky trinkets nobody needs to kids to earn a 100 pounds, when I make around this sum working in my actual job (much more really if you include time spent organizing and baking those cakes). Same with raffles, fetes etc.-I just don’t understand the draw, those events seem to have come from the 50’s. And it’s always just the mothers organizing them - men apparently don’t want to spend their precious time on those.
Yes it would be great to have social events for parents. Just organize such events unrelated to any donations and don’t force them to buy some trinkets, watch a movie or bake cookies."

I coudln't agree more but I didn't put all this because I didnt' want to seem curmedgeonly.

Please can we separate fund raising from community building; decide what the objective is and go for each whole heartedly.

No way are bake sales the best way to raise money. I have said many times before: you could probalby get more money just by asking for it.

If you want to get everyone together, then the barriers to entry named by many here are real, and make people feel genuinely uncomfortable. Put events on that people will enjoy and feel able to socialise at, and don't dress them up in worthiness and For The School.

Example: our school does a great fireworks night which doesn't raise any money because it costs a fortune. It breaks even, because the tickets are priced honestly and they sell out. there is food and drink for sale which breaks even too. the fireworks are good, the kids are all excited to be with their friends and the parents can actually have a drink and a chat. So much less cliquey and annoying than these opaque badly organised fair things where you just feel wrong footed all the time.

I can not stand the cliqueness between parents and some parents and teachers.

I will help when help is needed but I prefer to keep to myself when it comes to school parents and teachers. They tend to be very bitchy and clique.

I would happily give £20 a term to not bother with any of it but the kids always enjoy the fetes so I did used to help and did PTA for 2 years when my older ones were little.

You do get the odd idiot who thinks they have some sort of power but then you equally get the pains who pretend they are too cool for the PTA and their lives are far too important and busy to help.

Seen both types after 6 kids.

Because my days go like this:
6am get up with dog, feed and walk dog.
7:30am get up kid and DH and do breakfast.
8:30am - 5pm go to work.
5pm - 8pm do dinner, kids homework, swimming (Tues) / Beavers (Wed) / dog training class (Thur), walk dog (every day).
8pm - 9pm tidy up / laundry etc.
9pm - 10pm lie in a heap on the sofa
10pm go to bed.

In that 3 hour slot between end of work and kid going to bed I fit in anything I need to do as a Beaver leader to make the Wednesday work well for the group.

I am a full time senior Project Leader and I manage million dollar multi year projects. There is no way I could do the PTA without taking over and pissing everyone off. I went to 1 meeting and in an hour only about 5 minutes of actual business was done - I don't have time for that.

I didnt get involved in the PTA ( or whatever they were called) as they were cliquey and already had plenty of helpers etc but all the moaning that goes on about how the teachers are not on board and how its always ' the same old people doing it' and so on , i am amazed they just dont ask for a donation and be done with it really, have the volunteers to help with reading and such like and scrap the rest of it - people moan that their child really wants to go to the fetes when the parents are not that fussed , it all seems so much work for so little in terms of money raised and with some many more parents working full time, it would solve a lot of the ' cant get anyone' or the cliquey ones putting other people off. I am sure that many people would be on board for this to help the school rather than having to give up time, which they dont have. tough call though, i realise its not as easy as that though!

Parents with pre-schoolers are welcome at our school

I'm a SAHM. PTA member, Charity Trustee, Community Committee Secretary, ex Playgroup Leader, Ex Toddler Singing Group organiser and School Parent helper and I volunteered for very few** of these. I just got dumped with or dragged along by friends because no one else would/could volunteer. I understand OP's annoyance but honestly, if I worked FT there's no way in hell I would use my limited free time doing that crap. It's unappreciated for the most part (with exceptions of course) and hard work. I always say for a SAHM, I don't half work in a non-parenting capacity a lot!

Thankfully I was part of a group of 5 friends (our own little "clique" if you will) so when one dragged us to the PTA meetings we weren't on our own. I can completely understand how someone who was alone would steer well clear. Cliquey or not, it's intimidating.

The best way would be to ask a school mum to go with you to a meeting. Include them and show them that it's the pair/group of you going together. That way it's a lot less nerve-racking. After the first meeting or two it'll be their territory too and they'll be more confident in attending.

I didn't when mine were at school as I worked & was knackered enough with having DCs to care for. I volunteered for odd events tho but did roll eyes at 'battle of the cliques' who seemed to relish being Queen Bee telling everyone what to do.

I commend people who volunteered regularly, PTA etc as they're really necessary to a school. So I won't knock them really. It's easy to do that with a 'well I won't do it as I know somebody else will' attitude isn't it

'Queen bee' - another one of those terms directed at 'bossy' women

My mum was a church volunteer all her life and came up against the same problems, same with Brownies and Guides and scouts and everywhere else that needs people to run things for nothing basically.,

It's too overwhelming and the last committee I was part of were very forceful and piled too much onto my plate / made it very difficult to refuse. Too much pressure, not enough letting people do a little bit if that's all they can manage.

Our primary school is lucky enough to have a swimming pool on the school grounds which the PTA raised money for in a massive effort a couple of decades ago.
Now the school simply ask for a donation of £10 per term to cover the running & maintenance costs of the pool - and very very few parents even bother to pay that.
I work full time and am on the PTA, and other mums are PT, because if we didn't no other bugger would do it and there would be no spare money for sports kit, playground equipment, trips, Leavers gifts and so on. These events don't just suddenly happen out of the blue, it's a few parents giving up their free time. And the kids love the social aspect of school events, and I think it's really important for the sense of community.
Too many people are just entitled lazy gits.

And while of course there are arseholes and cliques everywhere, I would stake my house on some of the cliques being talked about here just being groups of friends.

Most families could afford to give 1 or 2 hours A YEAR to help with PTA events. If a school could reach that very bare minimum, it's the kids who would benefit.

Posters might have a point about bake sale - my local schools don't really organise them, just during the fair where people are happy to buy food and refreshments. Why don't you pass on your point to your local PTA?

It's people moaning and criticising whilst refusing to be involved who are unpleasant. Some PTA will be more professional or organised than others, obviously depends on the qualifications and skills of their members. It's still always easier to find things to criticise than helping out.

lethal no one has ever implied that my toddler and preschooler are not welcome.
The issue is that I cannot take them to the monthly evening meetings (past their bedtime) and I can't help at an event efficiently while also trying to supervise two kids who will inevitably run off in different directions.