the groupery blog

Parent Leaders: Get Organized Now for an Efficient Back-to-School

Last week, Lynne Steffens did our inaugural webcast, "How Parent Leaders can get members organized, 
take the Summer off, and hit the ground running this Fall"

She points out:

Typically summer is the time for families to disconnect from the rigors & rituals of the school year.  For the parent leader however, summer can be a time of working hard to prepare for the upcoming year.  Many leaders are hesitant to enlist the help of their Board and opt to go at it alone.  Far too often the result is “leader burn-out” before the school year has even begun. 
 

She presents a detailed plan of action to help leaders get prepared now so they can relax this summer and hit the ground running in the Fall.  Download How Parent Leaders can get members organized (.pdf).

Virality is an Interesting Thing

As many of you know, we've been focusing not only on the software side of things, but also on ensuring that leaders get the benefit of our learning and each others' wisdom.

It seems to be paying off!  Here are two membership maps: the first is group leaders from around the country and Canada.

The second is from our "Home Base" of the San Francisco Bay Area:

We're really pleased to be providing a mechanisms for the cross-fertilization of how to do the work of community leadership.

Webinar Series for Parent Leaders - TOMORROW!

We're reworking our Leaders' group to provide a forum for people to collaborate on those issues that concern them.

As part of this effort, we're offering FREE webinars! Lauren Klein will interview Lynne Steffens -- former school parent leader and member of the groupery staff -- about what group leaders can do now in order to take the summer off and still be ready to go this Fall.

Tues, May 27, 2009
Online, from 2-3pm.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/969661763

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Next Week: MEC 2009 and CA Charter School Conference!

Next week the groupery will be at two conferences:

MEC 2009 short for "Microcomputers in Education Conference" -- in its 28th year! -- in Tempe, at ASU.  Topics range from gaming to podcasts, and I'll be presenting in Coor Hall Room L1-54 on how to improve parent volunteerism.

The California Charter School Conference will provide several opportunities for us to talk with people who are there, or even nearby in the LA area.  

We will be exhibiting, in booth 1129 (go in, make a left against the front wall, and then go up the first aisle near the food).

We're also presenting The Value of Smart Parent Involvement, co-presented by the Principal Wanny Hersey, of Bullis Charter School, a school that uses the groupery software!  That's in Regency C, in the Hyatt Regency Thursday 3/12 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

And we've also scheduled a mixer Thursday 3/12, 5:30-7:30 at Smooth's Sports Grill, inviting those who are currently in the Los Angeles area but not necessarily at the conference to come join us.  We'll have with us Jamie Woolf, author of Mom-in-Chief, and a guest blogger here.  Details forthcoming.

Arizona Charter School Conference

We're excited to be at the Arizona Charter School conference.  We're in Booth 24 and will be giving away an iPod during the raffle. Be sure to drop by!

New Look, New Speed

Our users told us loud and clear that we had issues with performance and site navigation.  So we're happy to let you know of new improvements to the groupery!
                         

• Easier Interface: You can get to anywhere from anywhere, and all the places you can go are clearly visible. You can always find "Home" "My Info" and your group site.
• Works for Everyone: You can get to the same places in a few ways in order to accommodate different approaches.
• Faster Performance: Now pages will load faster and performance will be more consistent overall - the pages shouldn't feel "stuck."

            

We are committed to continuously improving performance and creating a pleasant user experience!
 

Volunteer groups deserve great productivity and fundraising tools too!

A couple years ago, as parents with kids starting school, we suddenly came face-to-face with the classic problem faced by every parent of school-aged children: “Junior, what did you do with the field trip sign-up form your teacher gave you to bring home today?” 

Of course, that was the tip of the iceberg, and not only from our naïve parent perspective.   We soon realized that t he pain involved in coordinating the most basic volunteer-driven group activity is truly astounding: long email chains to recruit volunteers and agree on a meeting date, dealing with numerous paper forms – many of which need to be repeated year after year, checks and cash payments leading to painstaking spreadsheet and accounting work, having people forget their volunteer obligations, and so on.

Most volunteer groups -- PTA’s, PTO’s, troops, clubs, teams, and even sophisticated philanthropic organizations -- suffer from many of these same productivity, efficiency, and fundraising challenges, and have been left behind to deal with them using tools from the 1980’s (emails, spreadsheets, and phone calls). And yet, year-after-year, because of their dedication to the cause, volunteers dutifully persist, taking their turn at the coordinator wheel. 

So, we started the groupery, met with a lot of people with years of experience at those coordinator steering wheels (some of whom then joined us!), and designed our online solution around the elements that matter most to family-oriented volunteer-driven groups, such as: how to keep in touch with each other, remind each other about what’s going on, organize volunteer schedules, place orders and make payments and even process payments efficiently if you happen to be the Treasurer. A lot of software is designed based on the way computers worked, but we used the languages and concepts that communities use:  family guardians can act for children; flyers can have sign-ups and order forms attached; and groups and subgroups can be easily setup to model their real-world counterparts.

For a more analytical example of the challenges facing one segment of volunteer-driven groups, check out our previous post on "Parent volunteers coming to the rescue of US schools."

- Dave & Darren

Hello World

Welcome to the groupery's new blog!  We look forward to keeping you up to date on company news and to providing best practices regarding using the groupery software.

We also hope we can enrich your understanding of volunteerism in a way that helps keep you motivated and connects you to others in the broader volunteer community, we'll provide resources we think you might enjoy.

Thank you for visiting, and if you have something to say, rest assured we eagerly welcome your comments! For those of you unused to blogs, this is a public environment and this web page can be accessed by anyone, so please keep that in mind if you find yourself particularly passionate about a topic!