Looking to know what things to take care of during the month of August as a Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) volunteer?
That’s exactly what we’re covering in this post.
August is one of the busiest months of the year for PTO leaders since it marks the transition from summer vacation to the back-to-school time period.
So let’s get into what school parent group leaders should have on their radar to do this month.
All PTO Leaders
Before we dive into the specific recommendations for officers and leader duties to check off for the month, let’s first address the universal tone entire group should aim for as things start for the new school year.
The most important thing that you should be doing as a PTO or PTA leader is bringing a positive attitude to all things you do because it’s the start of a new school year and that type of attitude will serve you and others well.
Whether you started back in July or school is about to start, it’s still in the back to school season.
And you’re likely feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything because that’s the nature of back to school time, right?
Having a positive attitude will help you draw in whatever energy that’s being put out by you.
I find that a positive attitude is a bit contagious.
So if you’re excited and ready for the challenges (because of course there will be, no matter how well you’ve prepared), others may just respond with the same energy and attitude.
So you don’t want to be putting out negativity, because that’s not what you want in return!
And what’s more, people are going to be attracted to that positive, excited energy.
So bring that positivity whenever you can.
A new school year is a chance to skate off and begin again.
You’re aiming for your best, not necessarily perfection, so keep that mindset at the forefront.
President
As PTO President, the back to school time brings with it a host of things to manage as everything starts for the new school year.
And many of these to do items lay the foundation for what’s to come, so handling them early will serve you best in the long run.
Fill open positions
First, prioritize filling any open positions.
If there are open either committee chairs or officer positions, the tasks other volunteers would normally be handling will fall back on you as President to take care of.
So it’s best for you personally, as well as the group as a whole, to get volunteers in place to handle those tasks.
You won’t be overburdened with more than you can handle or get burned out and the group will have more parents involved, which is better for all.
If the positions are open because there was a lack of interest at the end of the last school year, know that the new school year is probably the best time to recruit new volunteers, so take that to heart as you reach out to parents
Parents are coming back ready for the new school year too.
Fresh faces and new families now have students at the school, so there’s a new pool of potential parents to approach about getting involved.
Some parents will be very excited to make connections with other parents and learn about the school, so they’l be easy sells to get involved.
It’s a good idea to draw upon that interest level at the back-to-school time (before they get involved with other things that fill their available time).
If they commit to another organization at the beginning of the year, that really leaves less time for your PTO since parents only have so much “free” time.
Don’t make the mistake of letting everyone settle in and find their footing before asking them to get involved in the PTO.
By that time they feel settled, they may have filled their time with another commitment or have lost interest in helping, generally.
Include in your pitch for them to get involved about all the benefits of involvement, like knowing what’s going on in the school, finding out about changes before others and forming strong relationships with the teachers and Principal.
These are all benefits that parents without PTO volunteer experience won’t necessarily know about on their own, so be sure to let them know and don’t downplay the opportunity being involved provides!
Coordinate with your Membership Chair to help recruit parents as both members and volunteers.
Meet with the Principal
If you haven’t yet, schedule a meeting with your Principal to get on the same page for the upcoming school year.
Meeting early in the school year (or before it even starts) will help to avoid problems down the road and could actually make things easier for you (and the PTO) in ways that you don’t even immediately recognize.
Run the plan your PTO crafted at the summer planning meeting past them and make sure there’s no conflicts with school activities.
Cover how you’ll communicate throughout the year.
For example, does the Principal want building permit requests and PTO event notices to go to their administrative assistant with the Principal cc’d on the email or do they want to review everything first?
Meeting with your principal before school starts is really important.
Carving out time for each other allows you to get to know one another better and build a rapport, which is important for having a good working relationship with the Principal.
Attend New Student Orientations
If the school offers a new family or student orientation program, attend as many sessions as you can, along with your Membership Chair.
Being on hand to answer questions that and support your membership chair and get information about the PTO to parents who attend the sessions.
It helps parents put a face with a name.
And some may approach you about getting involved, helping you add to your member and volunteer base!
Resources for PTO Presidents
Get resources for your entire PTO leadership team:
The Organized Leader Bundle: all you’re missing is the right set of tools to be an effective, confident, and knowledgeable leader!
Picture your entire board…
Knowing exactly what to do.
Having plug and play strategies and systems to get every aspect of your PTO organized.
Working as an organized team, reaching all your goals and then some!
This bundle combines essential officer success and binder kits, customized for each role:
- President’s Success Kit (Planner + Agenda Template + President’s Insider’s Guide)
- Treasurer’s Success Kit (Planner + Editable templates + Treasurer’s Insider’s Guide)
- Secretary’s Success Kit (Planner + Newsletter template, Calendar Template + more)
- Fundraising Success Kit (Planner + Strategy Guide + A-thon Kit + Fundraising Insider’s Guide)
- Parent Involvement Success Kit (Planner + Strategy Guide + Video Training + Editable Templates + Membership Insider’s Guide)
- Family Events Binder Kit (Planner)
- Historian’s Binder Kit (Planner)
- Staff Appreciation Binder Kit (Planner)
- Vice President’s Binder Kit (Planner)
Purchasing the bundle saves 20% over buying the kits separately.
Being PTO or PTA President doesn’t come with a manual. That’s basically why I built the President’s Success Kit.
It’s the actual binder, planner, and meeting agenda templates I wish I’d had my first term as President… plus an insider secrets guide covering the stuff nobody tells you until you’ve already made the mistake.
Everything’s ready to print or load into your favorite planner app, so you’re not building your own system from scratch at 11pm the night before a meeting.
Grab the President’s Success Kit and make this the term everyone wonders how you’re so on top of it!
Membership and Parent Involvement Chairs
August is the prime time for PTO Membership and Parent Involvement Chairs.
Take Full Advantage of Back to School Events
The back to school time is the best time to entice parents to join and volunteer with your group, so take full advantage of the back-to-school excitement and energy.
Make plans to attend any new student orientation your school offers.
Eager beaver parents will be yearning for information about how to get involved and the orientations are a great time to showcase your PTO to these exact parents.
Ask your Principal for a few minutes to talk about the PTO during the orientation sessions.
Have hard copy information ready to give to parents about next steps for PTO involvement, whether it’s joining or signing up to help with events.
Look at the schedule of back to school events the school has planned.
What events can you have a PTO table to advertise to attendees and recruit new members, get parents signed up as Room Parents or to help with upcoming PTO events?
Take advantage of these kick off events as many as possible.
This is such a busy time for all, so parents won’t necessarily go out of their way to learn about the PTO.
It’s a better strategy for you to be front and center and hard to miss!
Now is the time to be just shy of obnoxiously welcoming and charming so that you draw in as many people as possible.
Bring that big energy!
Firm Up Membership Drive Plans
At this point, your membership drive for the fall should be mapped out and ready to go so you can hit the ground running for all of the other events planned for the beginning of the year.
Don’t forget about specifically targeting this segment of the school population!
Part of the plan should include getting parents who signed up last year to join against this year and commit their involvement for the new year, as well as a plan to teachers and staff to join.
Need help with this? Check out the membership drive resources below.
Resources for Membership and Parent Involvement Chairs
My first year trying to recruit PTO members, I made one flyer and called it a strategy. Didn’t work so well.
So I built the Parent Involvement Success Kit… actual action plans instead of a flyer and a prayer.
Inside you get the Membership Master Plan, ready-to-use welcome packets, back-to-school info templates, and new member orientation, all set up so families actually show up and stick around.
Grab the Parent Involvement Success Kit here
Family Fun Chairs
Having a plan in place for the events for the school’s students and families before school starts is the best way to ensure you don’t get overwhelmed as the Family Fun Chair.
It’s really hard to plan and execute at the same time, so sketch out a plan of events for the year.
Compare your plans with the school calendar.
Where is there outright conflict or too much happening in a week?
Reschedule your events as necessary to spread out the programming as whole since this will also help with volunteer management.
With the initial plans in place, create flyers for the events and write out blurbs to post on social media to help advertise the events and create volunteer sign up sheets for the first PTO meeting.
Families can’t participate if they don’t know about them!
Having the sign up sheets for the first few events available at the first PTO meeting of the year is a smart way to immediately line up helpers.
This will also be your first indication of whether you’ll have enough volunteers to bring the events to life.
You should not personally be the only one making these events happen!
Don’t hesitate to bring a few reliable volunteers in to help you pull all of your fantastic plans off!
Creating an at a glance calendar of PTO events for the year is a great tool to have at your disposal, especially at back-to-school time.
Not only are parents looking for this sort of information at the start of the school year, but with such a calendar, they’ll know what’s coming up next, and be more likely to participate as a result!
Coordinate with the PTO Secretary to create the calendar (more on this below).
This post has fantastic ideas if you have a few family fun event spots left to fill.
Resources for Family Fun Chairs
Fundraising Chairs
Fundraising is one of the biggest jobs in a PTO because it’s harder to run the group without money.
Your group has such wonderful plans for the year and it’d be a bummer to have to recalibrate those plans and downgrade the wishlist if the money’s not there.
Plans for fundraising should be in place by now, with the fall fundraiser chosen and lined up.
Do as much work to prep for promoting the fundraisers you’ve planned ahead of time as possible.
This way, you’ll not have to worry about what you’re going to say, just the how.
You’ll be able to spend time ensuring you’ve put the fundraiser information out on as many different platforms and in as many ways possible to boost your chances at smashing your fundraising goals.
It takes more than one exposure to something for people to take action, so you want to make sure you’re telling everything and their mother about your fundraiser, why it matters, and exactly what they can do to help.
This post is a great resource for all Fundraising Chairs with tons of ideas and PTO can do to boost income and fundraising participation!
Resources for Fundraising Chairs
Fundraising is hard. I ran it for years as Fundraising Chair, so I get it.
The Fundraising Success Kit is the plan I wish I’d had back then… step-by-step strategies, not a vague pep talk.
It works whether you’re running a classic catalog sale, a full-on a-thon, or anything in between. Publicity plan, templates, forms, the whole planner kit, all set up so you’re not starting from a blank page.
Grab the Fundraising Success Kit here
Staff Appreciation Chairs
Staff Appreciation Chairs, go ahead and get something planned to welcome your staff and teachers back to the new year.
In the past, I have done something as simple as a welcome back breakfast, and that just required a big shopping trip to Costco and the grocery store.
The nice thing about a breakfast event is you don’t have to be there in person to serve anything.
That means you don’t have to be at school at the crack of dawn and try and beat the teachers in, which is such a challenge when you’re trying to get your kids ready for school at the same time.
It’s really something that you can set up the evening before, and put items that need to stay cold in the fridge.
Post a sign on the fridge to let the teachers know there’s more goodies inside.
You can even ask the school secretary or the Teacher Liaison to pull things out in the morning for you, it’s as simple as putting the cream cheese next to the bagels.
A Near Disaster Welcome Breakfast
A funny story about one time I arranged a welcome back breakfast for the first Friday of school.
It turned out to be a heat advisory day and school was canceled the next day after I set it out, and then the next day too because of continued high temperatures.
Luckily, unlike much of the rest of the school, the room I’d set the breakfast in was air conditioned, so nothing spoiled.
But the Principals still had to come in for those two days, and they thoroughly enjoyed the danishes that would have probably otherwise gone bad in that time.
Everything else was still perfectly fine for when the teachers came back after the unexpected two day break!
But I was sweating it!
All part of being a PTO volunteer- rolling with what comes and making the best of the situation!
Make a Plan for the Rest of the Year
With the initial welcome back event taken care of, pivot your attention to how you’ll show your staff appreciation throughout the entire school year.
It’s not too early to figure out a plan for Teacher Appreciation Week, typically observed the first full week of May.
Early planning gives you the widest number of options for bringing your plans to life, especially if you’re counting on donations to supplement your budget to shower your staff and teachers with love.
Resources for Staff Appreciation Chairs
Treasurers
For PTO Treasurers, hopefully, by now you have gotten back your audit, or will shortly.
Once you get it back, review the results and implement any changes that you may need to make to your finance management system accordingly.
Do a final review of the proposed budget with the Executive Board and then present it at the first PTO meeting of the year.
If you don’t know what kind of systems you think you should have, or if you don’t know what systems you should have, or you’re unclear on how to get them, I highly suggest you check out the Treasurer’s Success Kit (see below).
The other thing you should be doing right now as a Treasurer is going ahead and preparing your annual charitable organization registration (if your state requires one).
And also, do yourself a solid and get your 990 filing done now and don’t wait till the November filing deadline.
Sometimes issues pop up, and you might need to get some technical help to complete it, so give yourself more time than you think you may need.
It generally takes less than 30 minutes to complete both filings, but don’t procrastinate.
Get it done early.
Getting those required filings done now will mean you don’t have to worry about it for another year, leaving you time for full attention on other money management tasks for your PTO.
Resources for PTO Treasurers
Truth time: spreadsheets used to be my nemesis too. Not exactly a math person over here (recovering attorney, not accountant).
That’s kinda why I built the Treasurer’s Finance Manager… a Google Sheets system that does the math for you.
Plug in your numbers and it builds your budget, tracks every transaction across up to three accounts, and spits out your monthly Treasurer’s Report in a couple clicks. No formulas, no fuss.
It’s a one time purchase, $99, no annual subscription creeping back on you every year. Buy it once, use it every term.
Grab the Treasurer’s Finance Manager here
Confession: I’m a recovering litigation attorney turned professional organizer who can’t turn off the systems brain, ever.
So when treasurers kept telling me they were piecing together deposit forms and monthly reports from scratch every year… I built the system I wish someone had handed my PTA.
That’s the Treasurer’s Success Kit.
Inside you get a fully organized binder and planner with ready-to-print forms for deposits, reimbursements, and vendor payments, and a 40 page Insider’s Guide that skips you past the mistakes I’ve seen treasurers make. You can add on the Treasurer’s Finance Manager, a system that builds your budget and reports for you. No math required.
Get it set up in about thirty minutes and spend the rest of your term actually running your group’s finances instead of reinventing them.
Grab the Treasurer’s Success Kit here
Secretaries
Before the first PTO meeting of the year brings a few opportunities for PTO Secretaries to get organized and set for the year to come, both personally and for the entire group.
Get the list of all PTO events from your President.
Take the information and put together a calendar of events that can be published to the entire school community- students, parents, teachers and staff.
Getting the information out early allows all to plan to attend.
Because once again, people can’t participate if they don’t know about the event.
Publicize the calendar wide and far.
This post has a list of 21 different ways to spread the word if you need ideas.
A huge mistake PTOs make is thinking that parents know what’s going on.
They’re busy and slammed with information, so you’ll need to get PTO information out to them early and then repeat your message to further promote your events, programs and fundraisers.
If the events are happening at school, get them added to the calendar so parents will have another opportunity to see what the PTO has going on.
Set up a public Google Calendar PTO members and school families can subscribe to so they’l have the latest event information available on their phone.
This way, they will have like a no can’t-miss kind of reminder if it’s right there on their phone, and they can see what PTO events, meetings and programs are up next and make plans to attend.
As far as getting personally organized, Recording Secretaries should decide how they’ll manage meeting minutes.
Corresponding Secretaries can get a list of staff birthdays from the Principal to prepare for sending cards to acknowledge their special days.
Resources for PTO Secretaries
Stop drowning in Secretary paperwork.
The Secretary Success Kit gives you the exact officer binder templates you need… meeting minutes, board summaries, contact lists, the whole thing, already built for you.
Whether you’re the Recording Secretary or the Corresponding one (or somehow both), this is how meeting prep, the meeting itself, and the follow up stop turning into a scramble.
No more reinventing your system every single term.
Grab it and take control of your PTO role today!
12 Month Newsletter Template Set
Watch This!
Over to you!
For many school parent groups, August marks the transition from summer break to a brand new school year.
And the transition brings so much to pay attention to, so it’s good to have a handle on what to have on your to do list as a PTO volunteer.
Each PTO officer position comes with a distinct set of duties to manage for the year overall and everything begins in earnest in August.
The great thing about PTO and PTAs is that they follow the school year, which is cyclical.
The same things happen at the same time of the year.
This means you’ll know what to expect for August next year, too- huzzah!
If you’re looking for advice on what to look forward to in the upcoming months, check out this post:
