Organizing Your Board

How Do I Set Up a PTA Board?

The great thing about PTA is that it is not a one size fits all program. You can set up your board to fit the needs of your PTA. It may look just a little different each year based on the programs and events wanted by the community.

The best way to find out those needs is to do a needs assessment. This will tell you what is important and not important to your community and where to start.

About the Structure – Setting Up Your Board

There are guidelines in your bylaws that you need to follow. Every PTA should have a president, president-elect, secretary, treasurer, and a set amount of vice presidents based on the number set in your bylaws. Do you know how VPs you should have? Hint: Check your bylaws!

Your bylaws will also tell you if the chairman you have over committees are elected or appointed.

Setting up your board:

1. Look at the volunteers you have
2. Start at the top with the required positions
3. Then go to the bottom and list the committees you know you need/want
   • Try grouping them together by area of focus (example: safety, education, or community engagement)
4. When you have all the committees, assign commissioners needed based on groupings
5. See a sample board of directors

Tips on Filling Your PTA Board and Committees

You need to have as many parents as possible involved in your board. This will give other parents the opportunity to be more involved in their child’s school.

• Create a good team, look for qualities you need in others. Don’t just get your close friends, open it up to all.
• Not the same old, same old, or “We always did it this way”. Think outside the box, talk to people, don’t be afraid to try new things, but run those ideas by your board. If the ideas are not inspiring people, find new ideas that more people support.
• Your job as president is to bring out the best ideas from your board members, not to tell them and make them do what you want. Work together to find win-win solutions and ideas.
• Try to reflect the diversity in your school with parents on your board. 
• Put the T in PTA—involve teachers. Go to a staff meeting and ask them what the students and parents need. Be involved in the choice of your teacher VP.  Get someone who wants to be there, who will come to the meetings prepared to report on the staff goals and activities and willing to take PTA goals and activities back to the staff.
• If your PTA board has traditionally been made up of a handful of the same volunteers year after year, you can bet there are more people that want to be involved but don’t know how to “break in” to the group. Send an invitation out to all parents to volunteer.  
• Use the “seasoned” volunteers as commissioners. Divide up all of your committees so they are all under one of these commissioners. These “seasoned” volunteers can be a great help to you as they mentor and help the new committees under them. 

• Make large jobs smaller. A good example is Reflections. You need a chair for Reflections, but get sub-chairs over each category. Find parents who have special training or interest in specific categories who can take care of getting judges for just their category. Then you have a committee who can help with the awards program.  

• If you can't fill all of the positions available, put up a poster or a white board by the office showing whats available. Have a marker available for people to write in their name and volunteer for the open positions.