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PTO Experience
PTO Experience Can Help You Get a Job
Whether you've been a stay-at-home Mom (or Dad) for the past 5 years or considering a career change, experience with your school's PTO can help you get a job.
Employers like to see continuous work experience on a resume. To an employer, time gaps mean you have not worked to improve your skills. So while no one would dispute the fact that caring for a 3, 5, and 8-year old is challenging, it's not something you should reference on a resume. However, the auction, carnival, or annual scholarship drive you planned at their elementary school is certainly resume-worthy.
It's important as you prepare your resume, to include pertinent experience. Experience should not just include participation, but instead, list substantial leadership roles and responsibility. These may include:
Leadership
Serving on the PTO Board or as a Committee Chairperson shows you've taken on a leadership role.
- President: Serving in this position shows you can lead others, delegate duties, and oversee projects effectively.
- Vice President: Serving in this position shows you can organize and oversee committees, raise money efficiently and cost effectively, and a willingness to step into the higher-level role of President in their absence.
- Treasurer: Serving in this position shows you have an understanding of budgets and financing, can pay invoices, maintain bank accounts, track income & expenses, create budget reports for the membership's review, and comply with state tax reporting requirements.
- Secretary: Serving in this position shows your ability to maintain accurate records and files and can write effective letters.
- Committee Chairperson: Serving in this position shows your ability to organize a collective group of people to carry out a particular project/event, manage people & projects, track income & expenditures, solicit sponsorships, present project ideas to a group of people, advertise and sell products for fundraisers, and evaluate and report back on the results of the effectiveness of the project/event.
Willingness to Work
The fact that you're willing to work in an unpaid position shows you have the drive to make things better. Successful work means you're willing to work hard to get the job done.
Motivational Skills
Increasing membership, meeting & event attendence, and fundraiser participation means you have the ability to motivate others. It shows you can effectively and positively advertise.
If you've increased PTO involvement, it likely means you've been able to change the public image of the PTO so that it now has a more positive image and is a group in which others want to be involved. Imagine what this could mean to an potential employer that has low or decreasing sales. They need someone that can turn their image around as well as get the word out (advertise!) about that new image.
Sales & Marketing
If you've organized a fundraiser that resulted in a profit, you've had positive sales experience. You likely researched several different fundraisers and chose the one that targeted your market best, promoted product or services through print, web, and word-of-mouth advertising, kept expenses in line with your budget, analyzed sales data, and reported outcomes.
Budget Planning
Serving on the Board means you've been involved in budgetary planning meetings. Sitting as a group and reviewing each income and expense line item to create a balanced budget, presenting this budget to the membership, and overseeing to ensure that it stays in-line throughout the year, are all relevant.
Event-Planning
Planning a fundraiser or not-for-profit family fun event involves researching potential events and activities, putting together a committee of volunteers, planning committee meetings, scheduling, assigning tasks, soliciting sponsors, advertising, tracking income & expenses, distributing product, and reporting results.
Communication Skills
Public speaking and the ability to effectively present information to groups of people are practiced traits - the more you do it, most likely the better you become at it.
Managerial Skills
If you've served on the PTO Board or led a group of people to carry out a project or plan an event, then you've managed people. If the project/event was successful and the group acted productively, then you've likely managed the group effectively.
Being a manager means from time to time you'll have to deal with conflicting personalities. Were you able to take a group of unlike viewpoints and get them to focus on a common goal? Perhaps you assigned particular tasks to appropriately “fit” the strengths of each individual.
Managing also means you'll have to deal with and resolve problems as they arise. What did you do when the you got a call from the delivery truck telling you the 40 cases of frozen cookie dough was going to arrive 3 hours late? Were you able to reschedule your volunteers and notify the school families in time and still be sure all 400 boxes of cookie dough were delivered to the customers the afternoon before school vacation began?
Organizational Skills
Organizing events and meetings are skills that can carry over into any type of employment. Preparing a project plan or meeting schedule, reserving a meeting or event space, meeting with vendors, and keeping all of the documentation structured and readily available for others for review are all marketable organizational skills.
Grant Writing
Applying for grants can be an extensive process in many cases. The process involves researching available grants to accurately determine which one best fits your organization, researching past grant submissions, gathering and organizing the submission data, and writing the grant proposal in a format that's concise, factual, and convincing. These are key skills that take effort to become polished and skills that an employer will not overlook.
Software Skills
List the software you've used regularly, such as
- spreadsheet (Excel, Lotus)
- word processing (Word, OpenOffice)
- accounting (QuickBooks)
- presentation (PowerPoint)
- graphic design (Illustrator, Corel, PageMaker, Quark)
- email (Constant Contact, Outlook)
- etc.
Ability to Achieve Results
List your accomplishments, including amounts and percentages. Document the proven results of your work.
Achievements
What positive changes and improvements were you able to implement during your time on the PTO? Were you able to introduce a new fundraiser to the school that resulted in 60% higher profits over last prior years' fundraisers? Or perhaps you were the one to spearhead implementation of a health & wellness program at your school.
On your resume, list the size of the budget you managed and the amount of money you helped raise and/or save the organization.
Ability to Evaluate Success and Failure
An important part of carrying out any project and event is the ability to openly, honestly, and accurately evaluate it's effectiveness. Compare the end result to the previous year's event. Understand what elements made the event a success and document these. Conversely, there may be times when you need to admit failure and either resolve not to run an event for a second year or understand where changes need to be made to improve.
Evaluating also means obtaining feedback from your committee members and event attendees, documenting results, and reporting back to the membership with a summarized written and/or verbal report.
Ability to Maintain Accurate Records
Planning events means you have to be able to maintain accurate income and expense records. When school families have placed over 400 checks and cash in the PTO mailbox in response to a walk-a-thon fundraiser, you need to document exactly how much was received by each person. It's also important to document expenses and file every receipt associated with the event so that in the end, you can accurately determine your profit - Income less expenses equals profit.
Ability to Maintain Confidentiality
Being so involved in the school means contact with the students and their families. There will be times when you're privy to confidential information. You're entrusted to keep this information to yourself. Whether it's an education, medical, legal, monetary, or family issue, it's your responsibility to act as a professional, trustworthy school representative.
Need More Experience as a PTO Leader?
If you've been a PTO member that has carried out tasks assigned by others, but need key experience to include on your resume, try introducing a new type of fundraising to your school.
"The first year I planned the PTO Ideas' Educational Challenge at my elementary school, we raised over $13,000! Since our typical fall fundraiser averaged only $4,000, this meant we were able to increase profits by over $9,000!" - Vicki Blaze, PTO Ideas' Editor & Publisher.
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