Resources

Membership Marketing

Promote PTA and reach prospective members through television and radio. The PTA Gateway Public Service Announcement (PSA) Campaign—launching for Back-to-School 2009—offers several spots for you to place with local media, with supporting Web banners. The spots present PTA as a way for families to connect to and enrich children’s learning environments and lives. The National PTA will distribute the PSAs to select markets across the nation, but your outreach is essential to the campaign’s success. Go to PTA.org/GatewayPSAs for all the materials you need to contact local broadcast media, preview and provide television and radio PSAs (with customized contact information), and track placements.

Additional membership marketing resources are available at PTA.org/Marketing. PTA’s membership brochures (Help Your Child—Join PTA!, PTA: Helping Your School Achieve More, and the new PTA: A Parent Group Unlike Any Other) describe for families, principals, and school groups that are not yet part of the PTA family the benefits of belonging to PTA. Continue your outreach with the templates and tools provided for PTA Membership Month (September), the January Membership Campaign, and your year-round efforts. There are customizable banners, posters, fliers, yard signs, letters, postcards, brochures, stickers, advertisements, and more. Just type in your PTA’s name, events, contact information, accomplishments, or other applicable text and print them out!

Official PTA Kit

Nothing is more exciting than a new school year. It’s a year of learning. A year of growth. A year of working together to make sure our children realize their amazing potential. The Official PTA Kit gives you the tools to help turn possibilities into realities.

First, the kit includes the invaluable PTA Quick-Reference Guides, which are easy-to-use primers for the PTA unit president, membership chair, programs chair, and treasurer. Then, four folders of materials address key PTA needs:

• Market PTA and Grow Your Membership—PTA’s latest membership posters and brochures help spread the word about the benefits of PTA for children, families, schools, and communities. Plus, there’s a PTA Store catalog and an introduction to the newly expanded—and free—online membership management system, OMDRplus.
• Get More Men Involved—Review the brochure on PTA MORE—Men Organized to Raise Engagement—and materials from MORE coalition members to find male involvement organizations to work with in your community and to help you recruit more men into your PTA.
• Implement Programs and Take Action—Build family-school partnerships, promote healthy lifestyles, and encourage students’ artistic talents with PTA’s program resources. Learn more about PTA advocacy by reading the executive summary of PTA’s federal public policy agenda.
• Take Advantage of Special Offers—Check out the offers and events from PTA partners, which are attractive added benefits for current and potential PTA members.

The Official PTA Kit is also online, with several online exclusives, at PTA.org/OfficialKit.

Just Between Friends

Last year, PTA began using Just Between Friends for member management, communications, directory creation, and volunteer management. National PTA worked with Just Between Friends to develop a system to strengthen your PTA and simplify your life. The system is offered free to local PTAs.

Just Between Friends replaces the OMDRplus system you may have used in the past. Data stored in OMDRplus will transfer easily to Just Between Friends.

Use Just Between Friends to:

• Manage your members, including printing membership cards
• Communicate with your entire school through e-mail and automatic reminders
• Create print or online directories
• Track and manage volunteers and participants, suitable for tracking Three for Me hours

If you’re not currently using Just Between Friends, get started by visiting www.JustBetweenFriends.com/PTAquickstart. You’ll be prompted through the easy sign-up process.

If your unit is using Just Between Friends, all you have to do to update is to enter the names of your new president, if you have one, and an alternate group administrator to the system.

Questions about Just Between Friends?

Visit http://www.justbetweenfriends.com/, click on Contact Us. Then, click onJBF Customer Support.

Our Children

Whether your children are in preschool or thinking about college and career, Our Children, PTA’s national magazine, has something for you!

Published five times during the school year, Our Children offers a wide array of content centered on PTA’s core concerns of parent involvement, student achievement, health and safety, and education funding. Recent issues of have offered advice on choosing a preschool, holding asthma/allergy screenings at school, homework strategies for busy families, teaching teens safe driving habits, and creating college-track experiences for middle schoolers.

PTA leaders get extra help from Our Children in meeting the challenges of running a PTA. From recruiting members and volunteers to using social networking to connect with members, Our Children helps PTA units work effectively for their schools and communities. Our Children even offers occasional advice on how PTA leaders can use their volunteer experiences to advance professionally. Regular columns include:

• Leadership and advocacy,
• Diversity,
• Financial management,
• Membership,
• PTA programs and campaigns.

Individual subscriptions cost only $15 per year. Subscription information is at PTA.org/1564.asp. PTA.org includes an exclusive online Our Children, as well as archived articles from past print editions, at PTA.org/pta_magazine.asp.

PTA Annual Report

“Where do my dues go?” That’s a question local PTA members sometimes ask. The answer can be found in the PTA Annual Report. This yearly publication not only highlights the work done by PTA, but also ensures that the organization is held accountable to all the families, educators, citizens, and community leaders who support it through their dues and donations.

The next time someone asks you where PTA dues go, please show them the report, which also details the reasons the organization works so hard on behalf of every child. The most current report is for the 2008 PTA year. PTA has developed a poster that includes just a sampling of some of the things PTA is doing in each state. For a more complete list of national PTA activities in your community, visit PTA.org/annualreport and “flip” to the pages right after the map. Everyone is welcome to view the full 2008 Annual Report at any time online, as well as find a look back at the past year through a timeline and some compelling data on how PTA serves America’s families.

PTA Goes to Work

In today’s world of rapidly changing technology and economic uncertainty, there is plenty of confusion about what it means to be fully prepared for life after high school. To successfully make the transition, adolescents and young adults need guidance and encouragement from caring, supportive adults. Whether a student’s goal is to attend college or go immediately into the workforce, PTA Goes to Work can help your family make sense of the often overwhelming amount of information that is available regarding career planning and job training. The best decisions and choices made by transitioning youth are based on sound information that focuses on the talents, knowledge, skills, interests, values, and aptitudes of each individual. PTA Goes to Work offers a parent guide and a student guide—in Spanish as well as English—that provide practical strategies on career planning and helping students get on the path to exciting, rewarding careers. A guide for PTA and other school leaders also is available to help organize schoolwide activities for sharing information about career planning. To view these guides online and for similar resources from PTA and the Department of Labor, go to PTA.org/pta_goes_to_work.asp.

PTA E-Newsletters

PTA’s free e-newsletters provide a quick, easy way to get the latest information on important topics for all parents, educators, and child advocates:

• Parenting—The PTA Parent provides concise information twice a month on topics such as parent involvement, student success, child safety, and health and wellness. Information comes from PTA’s vast pool of parent resources as well as from other online resources for parents.
• Federal policy—The monthly PTA Takes Action Update offers the latest news on legislative issues affecting families, children, education, schools, and communities. It also provides resources for readers to get involved in advocating for children’s issues. Subscribers also receive Action Alerts with breaking news and calls to action.
• Local PTA leader resources—The twice-monthly Local Leader News gives PTA local leaders information on PTA programs and resources and offers ideas for improving their leadership and unit management skills.
• State PTA leader resources—Partners in Leadership provides state PTA leaders with up-to-date information on PTA programs and resources and is delivered monthly. (Available to state PTA leaders only.)

To subscribe or to read archived editions of any of these newsletters, go to PTA.org/E-newsCentral.

PTA.org

PTA.org is a comprehensive, easy-to-use website that offers a wealth of information to anyone interested in PTA and its work. Information is organized by topic. Highlights include:

• Topics—Parent-focused resources in PTA’s areas of expertise: parent involvement, child safety, health and wellness, and scholastic achievement. Highlights include Back to School Central; homework help and working with schools; a parent-involvement resource and tip sheet; extensive resources on bullying prevention, media safety, and much more.
• PTA Programs—Descriptions of and suggestions about PTA programs such as Take Your Family to School Week, Healthy Lifestyles and Healthy Lifestyles Month, the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships, and the Reflections arts program.
• Take Action—Advocacy made easier with the PTA Takes Action Network, which covers legislative issues affecting families, children, and schools; PTA’s federal Public Policy Agenda explained; and the free-subscription-based Action Alerts and monthly policy update.
• PTA Community—The PTA Blog, with news and views from PTA leaders and National Ambassadors; a multimedia library that includes PTA Radio, news widgets, audio and video presentations, and much more.
• Running a PTA—Customizable marketing tools; downloadable Quick-Reference Guides for PTA presidents, treasurers, membership, and program chairs; fundraising ideas; the Membership Recruitment and Retention Toolkit; and much more.

Other resources in the PTA.org network include:

• The PTA Great Idea Bank—A social-networking platform for sharing parenting advice and swapping ideas about PTA events, unit management, and more.
• PTA Newsroom—Comprehensive coverage of and resources about PTA and education for members of the press and other interested parties.
• PTA Reflections—A site devoted to the PTA Reflections program, including galleries of past winners.

PTA Social Media

Communications among members of the PTA family have undergone a major revolution. PTA leaders, members, and others interested in education and child welfare can connect and mobilize through online social media. The National PTA is fully engaged in social media and invites you to connect with us on Facebook and Twitter, where we share and discuss headline news and current events; view our public service announcements and videos on YouTube; and enjoy our photos and slideshows from national events on Fotki. You can read and comment on the articles our leadership and ambassadors post on the PTA Blog, and listen to them and other guests discuss compelling topics via our PTA Radio podcasts. PTA’s social media network makes it easy for you to connect with your peers across the country and around the world! PTA social-media sites:
• www.facebook.com/ParentTeacherAssociation
• www.public.fotki.com/pta
• www.twitter.com/ptaeditor
• www.youtube.com/nationalpta
• http://www.ptanewsroom.org/pta_radio.html
• http://www.pta-blog.org/

PTA State Communicators Network

All PTA state leaders and staff who handle communications, marketing, public relations, newsletter/bulletin, website and other related tasks should take advantage of membership in the PTA State Communicators Network. The Communicators Network helps PTA communicators across the country share best practices, network with colleagues, and brainstorm solutions for distributing PTA news, information, and key messages. Leaders meet to discuss challenges and opportunities through quarterly conference calls, e-mails, social networking, and an annual roundtable at PTA’s national convention.

For example, among the issues discussed at this year’s Communications Roundtable were the following:

• Getting volunteers to serve in communicator positions
• Finding ways to tell others about PTA and its value to society
• Bringing more students back into the organization
• Reaching members online
• Transitioning to social media/networking
• Using and protecting PTA’s brand and trademark

Watch your e-mail and PTA e-newsletters for schedules of upcoming conference calls and other ways to stay in touch. In the meantime, send feedback, ideas, and questions to communications2@pta.org, or contact Judi Myers, director of strategic communications and marketing, jmyers@pta.org, or (800) 307-4PTA Ext. 306.

Spanish-Language Resources

PTA offers a wide variety of resources in Spanish for Spanish-speaking families and community members who need information on parenting, education, and PTA, and want get more involved. Timely tip sheets for parents cover the following subjects:

• H1N1 (swine) flu
• Safe cellphone, video game, and Internet use
• Child-appropriate music, television, and movies
• Career planning

PTA’s public policy agenda, Be an Advocate flier, and the National Standards for Family-School Partnerships are available to help Spanish-speaking parents understand how parent involvement and advocacy can help their children succeed. Comprehensive information on PTA’s popular Reflections arts program ensures that Latino children can reap the benefits of arts education in their schools. Many other PTA programs have Spanish-language components as well.

Finally, PTA.org’s Spanish website provides translated and exclusive Spanish articles from the editor of Our Children and much more. Invite your Spanish-speaking families to learn how important they are to their children, their schools, and PTA.