School communities across the country rely more and more on parent involvement. In fact parent volunteers can positively impact your school in a number of ways. Parent volunteers can be a great resource for teachers and their participation shows their children and others in the school that school is important and worth their time and effort.
Additionally parent involvement has shown to improve student success, create stronger communication between the school and parents, and improve attendance. However managing parent involvement can be a big task to take on. For schools that require parents to volunteer, it can be taxing/frustrating to stay on top of all data. Helper Helper’s goal is to keep everything organized, simple and actually increase the amount of engagement you get when it comes to parent volunteerism.
Below are 5 ways to help you engage more parent volunteers while not becoming completely overwhelmed.
1
Make school needs easily accessible to all parents. Having a solution for posting events and managing sign ups is crucial for keeping parents in the know of how they can support the school.
Helper Helper has allowed our school (PS-12th grade) to streamline all volunteer opportunities across our campuses to one location. The app is user friendly and easy for families to navigate. Our volunteerism has increased schoolwide since we began using Helper Helper. The customer service team for Helper Helper is also fantastic to work with. Helper Helper has been a well worth investment for our school.
2
Get creative. Some parents can volunteer more than others so be sure to be creative in the types of volunteer opportunities you offer. For instance – include volunteer opportunities like bringing snacks or donating school supplies. Also, include opportunities that can be done from home like writing gratitude notes to teachers or drafting fundraising letters for clubs or sports.
3
Communicate clearly. Many parents have busy schedules so it’s important for the school to clearly communicate what, why, when! Get a solution that will allow you to communicate via email, app notification and text.
Helper Helper has been a great addition to our parent volunteer program on campus. The app enables our parents to easily find & sign up for volunteer opportunities, all in one place. Before this, we had many volunteer opportunities posted on various sites and it was difficult for our parents to find. The reporting function makes it extremely easy for our school administration to know how many hours each family has completed at the end of each school year. One of the best features is the ability to message or email the volunteers with the touch of a button. If we need to communicate details or make last minute changes, we can easily send out a text or email to all the volunteers. We are very happy with the Helper Helper site.
4
Collect Feedback. Volunteers have a ton of insights and their feedback can make the experience for future volunteers a ton better. Be sure to survey parents after big events or half way through the year to learn ways to improve the parent volunteer experience and also how to engage more parents.
5
Recognize Parent Volunteers. At every opportunity you get, show appreciation and gratitude for parent volunteers. This can be as simple as sharing the total hours that parents have contributed to the school in a newsletter or at sporting events. Many of our schools have an hour requirement for parents and the reporting functionality in Helper Helper makes keeping track of this a breeze.
Parents can be a huge asset to schools and student achievement. Helper Helper is a volunteer management solution that is great for improving parent volunteer engagement.
With the platform a school can easily communicate needs and recruit parent volunteers. Once they have the volunteers, schools can use Helper Helper to communicate via text, email and app notification. Schools can also collect feedback from parents via the survey tool in Helper Helper and report on total hours or hours by family.