Happy Take Your Family to School Week, PTA/PTSA family and friends!
We are now about halfway through the 2021-2022 school year, which means that now is also a great time to share your PTA/PTSA’s successes and progress with your members and your community. This is no time to hide your light under a basket! Share how your PTA/PTSA has implemented our association’s mission (to make every child’s potential a reality!) with their support.
Increasing membership is vital for our PTA voice to be stronger and more influential. And we can all agree that our children need a powerful voice to speak up for them, especially as our communities navigate this ongoing pandemic. So, let’s use this mid-school year milestone as an opportunity to ask those who have not yet joined your PTA/PTSA—but have enjoyed your PTA/PTSA events or benefited from your resources—to join your PTA/PTSA now so that you can continue to provide critical resources and support to your community.
The research that National PTA conducted to develop our award-winning membership campaign shows that the number one reason people do not join PTA is that no one ever asked! That’s right—while we may believe that everyone in our community knows that they can and should join us, the data proves that people actually need an explicit, personal invitation to feel welcome.
So, there is no better time than the present! The easiest way to ask people to join your PTA/PTSA is to tie that invitation to a demonstration of the value you bring to your community. Make it a habit, now and throughout the remainder of the year. For example, whenever you host an event, ask attendees to join your PTA/PTSA at the end of the night; or, whenever you share photos on social media of resources your PTA/PTSA has collected for your school, include a link with instructions on how to join your efforts.
Another powerful way to do this is to create and share a (short!) report of how your PTA/PTSA has stepped up to care for your students, families and teachers this year—especially with respect to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Not sure how to do this? National PTA is here to help!
We have created templates you can quickly and easily customize, including a Sample Mid-Year PTA/PTSA Letter/Email and a Sample Mid-Year PTA/PTSA Status Report. There is also an example, completed report for you to use as a reference.
The Sample Mid-Year PTA/PTSA Status template is a fill-in-the blank report to help you:
- Share PTA accomplishments and contributions so far this year.
- Thank your PTA members for joining, supporting or investing in the PTA mission.
- Thank all the people who have volunteered their time and talents to support the work of PTA.
- Share member benefits.
In addition to your members and families, be sure to send your Mid-Year Status Report to businesses and community members who have supported your PTA/PTSA so that they can see the impact of their support. If they haven’t joined yet, ask them to join your PTA/PTSA, too.
For more ideas to grow your membership, you can check out 125 Ways to Increase Membership and the 10 PTA Membership Myths & Truths.
We’d love to join you in celebrating your PTA/PTSA accomplishments. Please share your Mid-Year Status Reports by emailing them to Membership@PTA.org.
Have a successful second half of your PTA membership year!
