Tag Archives: volunteer management

September 20, 2014 · 11:43 am

Stuck with the Book Fair

It’s that time of year again, when leaves begin to fall and preparations are underway for the annual Scholastic Book Fair. This is a wonderful way to raise funds for the school, get more books for the classroom, and build literacy.

It’s also perhaps one of the most painful tasks that a PTA or parent volunteer group can manage.

Parent volunteers have to publicize the fair, unload the books out of those enormous Dalek-like metal carts (thus dislodging some poor teacher for a week), manage the cash register, and of course pack it all away at the end of the week. Don’t forget about special orders and restocking shelves!

Of course, the vast majority of book fair sales are not books but trinkets: big funny pencils, novelty erasers. A disturbing amount of volunteer time is spent preventing shoplifting. (An ingenious parent at my own school hit upon the idea of hot-gluing a sample of each gee-gaw to a big stand-up display board along with prices so the kids could see the things without putting their grubby mitts on them. The tiny treasures were kept behind the cash register table.)
Another temptation for children: those stupid books with a piece of jewelry or a toy attached to the cover. Better keep those behind the counter too. If the trinket gets separated from the book, it’s a loss.

Let’s also not forget sales tax drama. How many children’s hearts have been broken because they were missing the last seven cents? How many volunteer parents have dug through their pockets, muttering, for that spare change?

So I’ve painted an exhausting picture here. Why again are we bothering with the old-fashioned Book Fair in this day and age? There are alternatives:

Scholastic does offer ebooks through its Storia app – or at least, they used to. The Storia app is closing and is only currently available for teachers. (Too bad, we used it at home…)
Scholastic also offers an online Book Fair option at the same time as the standard book fair.
Barnes & Noble offers a book fair, and while parents have to publicize, it’s held at the store as well as online. A lot less work for parents.

So there are options. But can they really take the place of the good ol’ in-school book fair? Here are a few things to consider.

There’s just something about those real books. Kids are tactile. Kids like to touch stuff, including books. And having a home library contributes toward a literate home environment.
It’s affordable. Scholastic offers some cheap stuff – much cheaper for the most part, sadly, than most other book stores. I’m certainly not in love with all the gee-gaws and trinkets – and yet, it’s nice to see that a kid with only a dollar to spend can still participate.
It’s there. At our school, all the kids are encouraged to visit, once with their class to fill out a wish list and then on their own. Parents don’t have to haul everyone to the store. We also have had success having the fair open for one evening shift, to coincide with a PTA Ice Cream social.
It teaches kids about handling money.
It makes your school look good. Book Fairs are disruptive, and school administrators are not in love with disruption. Yet they tolerate the Book Fair. Building literacy is one reason; the other reason is that, frankly, it looks good for your school to host a Book Fair. Not all schools have the volunteer support or organization to pull it off.
It’s a nice change of pace for kids. Short recesses, lots of seat work, lots of testing, fewer field trips…isn’t it good to have something to make the kids look forward to at school for a change?
Not everyone is online. I can’t stress this enough. Not everyone in every community has regular Internet access. Don’t leave a significant part of your neighbors behind.

So, difficult as it is, I think we’re all stuck with the Book Fair for the foreseeable future. And maybe it’s not a bad thing. Now, where did that flyer go?

Musings from a Volunteer Coordinator

As I recover from producing a flurry of emails asking for volunteers, a few things have reminded me to step back from the keyboard and think about the best way to really recruit people to help. Keep some important things in mind going forward as a potential volunteer and someone who needs volunteers.

1. People are busy. For real.

Our school has been hosting an educational evening activity that requires both kids and parents to participate. It’s been very useful, but it’s been a real time commitment as well. When I volunteered in a classroom one day, I asked a kid I knew if he and his mom would make it to the evening activity that night.

The kid said mom got home and went right to sleep, too tired from work.

When I feel impatient about not getting enough volunteer responses, I have to remind myself to back up and look at the big picture. Volunteering is hard, especially after a long day of work. Appreciate the volunteers you do get, and remember that you’re helping to make your school a better place for everybody – especially for that tired mom. No guilt trips allowed.

2. Something that’s easy for me is a huge burden for someone else. And the other way around.

I know a parent who is tireless in her pursuit of donations for our PTA from local businesses. She has the amazing ability to walk up to a business owner and them to sponsor our fun run, or donate a prize for a raffle. I do not seem to have this ability—and I feel guilty sometimes that I don’t.

This parent also does not use email except under extreme duress. She doesn’t always read her email. And I’m okay with that.

That’s the beauty of getting a broad team of volunteers together. We all have strengths and things we like to do or that we’re good at doing. It’s okay to admit that you hate doing something and that you need help.

3. Connecting one-to-one is still important.

Recently I became discouraged when I sent out a request for volunteers to translate flyers, only to be greeted by chirping crickets. But when I took the time to get in touch individually, a magical thing happened: people replied!

Email lists, social media, and online signup sheets are my friends, and will always be my friends. Yet I have received the best response by approaching potential volunteers on a one-to-one basis, whether by phone, in person, or by individual emails. Yes, it takes extra time, but it’s worth it if you can fit it in.

Some reminders to myself that I felt like sharing. No matter what technology or method you use to recruit people, don’t let yourself become so preoccupied with filling slots that lose sight of the big picture. We’re all parents – and we’re all here to help each other make our lives a little easier, right?

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Filed under General Stuff on Volunteering, Volunteer Management

Tagged as PTA, PTO, School Volunteers, volunteer management, volunteer recruiting

March 3, 2014 · 1:23 pm

Sign Up Genius for…Fools

It was easier back in preschool. Parents marched in, dropped off the kids, and marched out – but first, everyone had to pass the same bulletin board. Everyone had to see the same paper announcements. Everyone saw the same paper sign-up sheets for activities and potlucks and fundraisers physically stapled to the cork, a pencil dangling by a string next to it. Yes, simpler times.

Once kids hit elementary school, parents hardly darken the school doorstep. No one passes by the same bulletin board every day, let me assure you. So how can you reach out to potential volunteers and tell them to help out at the fracking bake sale already? Oh, you can send home paper flyers, but we know how efficient that is. Five people sign up to bring brownies and no one signs up for cleanup.

There are many online volunteer sign-up solutions available. As a PTA volunteer coordinator this year, I’ve had success using Sign-Up Genius to get people to sign up for these sorts of activities. Many groups have been taking advantage of this for years – but your school is anything like mine, it can be a slow process to get out of paper’s cold grip.

Here’s why I like it:

It’s free. It’s paid for by advertising. (Like everything.) If you upgrade from their free Basic service to one of their Pro packages, you can eliminate the ads and can go up in volume. I can see how having multiple admins for one event would be useful, for example. Another Pro feature is limiting the signup dates.

But for most PTAs and other parent groups, the free service honestly should take care of most of your needs. (There is an interesting Payments feature for collecting donations and payments as long as you have a PayPal account – you can use this with the free basic service and they are very clear cut about the fees. I have not tried this feature yet but it looks promising.)

It’s simple and flexible. It’s easy to make myself an account to create sign-ups – I just needed an email address. More importantly, it allows volunteers to sign up online without having to create yet another account for something. Asking your volunteers to make a login id,choose a password, blah blah…it just gets in the way sometimes. I can mail the sign-up to an address book of volunteers directly from SignUp Genius, or I can just copy and paste the link and then send it out via our existing Yahoo group or post on our web site. It blends in with the tools we already have. Yet contact information for volunteers is still private and you can require further privacy features such as a special code.

Another flexible feature: Administrators can enter users directly onto an event sign-up themselves. This feature is huge for me, because at my school we are on the awkward edge between paper and electronic communication. Many families still lack regular internet access but still want to volunteer. Technology should not make barriers; I like that SignUp Genius acknowledges the fact that not everyone has email. If we still have to send out paper flyers, we at least have a common electronic sign-up to track the info.

That being said, there are a few tricks for building effective sign-ups I’ve discovered as I’ve gone along.

As I said above, all you need is an email address to create a free Basic account and start making sign-ups. Whoever creates the sign-up is the administrator and can make changes, add names, and make other changes. With the Basic level you can have only one admin per sign up, but you can handle this in several ways. The chair of the event can create the sign-up and be the admin. Your volunteer coordinator can create and be in charge of the all sign ups. Ad if you are a terribly crafty PTA or PTO, you can make a new email handle just for making signups (ex. signups@whateverpta.org) (Got this trick from the SignUp Genius FAQs! Look under “Can I have more than one sign up administrator?”)
Just choose one of their preexisting sign up themes and get it done. There is an option to upload your own image, but I would advise against it unless it’s crucially important. You may have to wait for your uploaded image to be approved before you can finish your signup.
Most of the signups I’ve created use the One-Time option – good for one-day events such as bake sales. The Time Slots option is good for shifts on multiple days (think Book Fair). The Recurring option is good for “standing” events (something that happens every Monday, for example). Note that you can still add time slots after you complete your signup, but you can’t change a One-Time event to a Time Slots event. Think carefully about your volunteer needs before you choose one of the options.
The Settings tab is where you choose what info you need to collect from your volunteers – name, email, and/or phone. You can set your notification preferences for you as the admin and for your signupees (Signupppers? Let’s stick with volunteers.) Here too you can require your volunteers to leave a Comment. (Example: if you put down a slot for “Cookies” for your bake sale, the volunteer can put down what kind of cookie so you don’t end up with the aforementioned five pans of brownies.)

I find that the site in general has good help available, include FAQs and Webinars. There are also some general tips for nonprofits. I found this article on coordinating volunteers to be pretty useful. I plan on using Sign-Up Genius this spring for some more complex events: our Earth Day school grounds cleanup project, and International Night, perhaps the most glittering event on any school calendar. Have any SignUp Genius tips you’d like to share?

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