Ahh, another year has come and gone (can you believe it?!) and it’s time to begin looking ahead to 2016 and the yearly tradition of setting New Year’s Resolutions. While resolutions are typically something set by individuals, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the New Year as an opportunity to sit down and reflect on what the past year held for your organization, and jot down some ideas for how to make improvements in the coming year.
Check out our New Year’s Resolution series from 2014 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) for even more inspiration!
Getting The New Board Ready
Of course you want your current executive board to make huge strides and change the landscape of your community’s parent-teacher groups, but a great leader will be looking ahead to see the challenges that their successors might find, and will be trying to set that group up for success. After all, if you lay a solid foundation then their success can be attributed to your legacy.
Board election season is right around the corner – and you can help to begin preparing next year’s board by offering the discuss the ins and outs of your position with anyone who may be interested in running. Guage interest by surveying your membership to see if there is anyone who would be interested in attending an info-session with the current board to get an overview of responsibilities and participate in a Q&A session.
Of course once the elections have taken place and the new board is elected your job isn’t done. Before the official switch over occurs, allow your successor to shadow you for a bit, or give them the reigns and work side-by-side with them to ensure a smooth transition.
Learn Something New
We aren’t saying that every member of your team needs to go back to school and get a new degree, but if your members add a few extra skills to the repertoire then you’ll be more successful as an organization.
For example, if your community is one where Spanish is a language that is spoken by many parents and grandparents at home, but your membership speaks mainly English, it would be a great boost to have a couple members learn a bit of Spanish to be able to better converse with those parents (there are some great apps that allow you to learn languages at your own pace, and with surprisingly high efficiency – our favorite is Duolingo). Or, better yet, ask a multilingual parent/guardian who isn’t a member to consider joining, and ask them to spearhead a committee aimed at increasing inclusiveness and strengthening community bonds.
Another great task to undertake would be to ensure that board members in specific positions, such as Treasurer, are up-to-date on any relevant “best practices.” Being the Treasurer of a parent organization isn’t necessarily on the same plane as being the CFO of a large corporation, but it should be treated the same. Your Treasurer might consider taking a weekend seminar at a local community center or college to brush up on basic accounting principles.
Take It Digital
In today’s world of 24/7 connectedness there’s pretty much nothing you can’t do online – and managing your parent organization shouldn’t be any different. Many parents are probably sitting in front of a computer for at least part of the day anyway, so why shouldn’t they be able to make payments for school lunches or field trips, or sign off on permission slips right then and there? There are a ton of great apps that can help your organization move into the digital space – from free website hosts, to awesome tools for managing group to-do lists, and – of course – Pay4SchoolStuff.com, where you can manage all of your forms and payments digitally and securely.
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