Volunteering with your PTA can be overwhelming—but you’re not alone. This section offers encouragement from experienced members and a sincere thank-you for everything you do.

Updated: June 2025
Every week we bring hands-on fundraising advice meant to help K-12 school groups smash their fundraising goals. Join our 10,000+ member community!
Volunteers are essential for keeping a PTA organized and running well. When your volunteers feel supported, they sign up more often and work harder to make your fundraisers successful—so using the right tools and strategies to attract and engage them is a key part of your school group’s long-term success.FutureFund supports PTA volunteers with tools that help your team stay organized and in the loop. Here’s a guide from our team you can use to help your PTA attract new volunteers and enhance parent engagement.
Our platform comes with powerful tools that can help you successfully run your calendar fundraiser more effectively than ever before. These include:
Get started with FutureFund today or book a demo to see how it can work for you.
Back-to-school season is the single best time of year to sell memberships, sign up new volunteers, and secure donations. That’s because of two reasons:
For PTAs looking to grow, the message is clear: you’ll get more volunteers the earlier in the year you start. In fact, you’ll probably do even better if you start recruiting before the school year even gets going.
FutureFund’s FirstStep program can help. It lets users of our platform sign up donors and volunteers to support multiple fundraising projects in advance of the school year—so your school can hit the ground running and hit key PTA goals faster.
While back to school time is usually the most popular time to recruit new hands for your community projects, keep in mind that every fundraising event is an opportunity to expand your volunteer list.
You never know when your next group of volunteers will be ready to sign on the dotted line, so make sure to have sign-up information available and ready. Create QR Codes that are linked directly to your sign-up forms so you can automatically register new members and organize their contact information within your secure database through FutureFund.
Don’t just depend on school parents for your volunteer pool. Consider your community members and their preferences when looking for volunteers for your events!
If you’re using FutureFund, this part is easy. New members are prompted to select their volunteer preferences as soon as they sign-up using a quick online form. Then your database is updated with a list of what every volunteer wants to do—along with their contact info, so you can get them on board for the right opportunities. Learn more on our Volunteer Management page.
Don’t be afraid to throw in a few freebies or emphasize the benefits to your volunteers for their time:
With incentives like these, you’ll not only show your volunteers your appreciation, you’ll give them something tangible to take home after they’re done helping with your event. And you’ll make them more likely to help with the next one!
Hold annual membership drives or plan them at specific intervals throughout the year. These drives can be planned as “events” with the purpose of recruiting members into the PTA and the volunteer pool, or they can be paired with other school-related events as well, such as back-to-school or registration nights.
FutureFund makes it easy to run a membership campaign online. You’ll be able to:
Learn how to do it in our guide: How to Run a Membership Campaign with FutureFund.
FutureFund makes managing PTA members incredibly easy by giving you a single platform you can use to sign-up, communicate, and engage your members. Create custom sender profiles and audiences, and reach out to volunteers in specific positions to seamlessly coordinate fundraising efforts.
Anyone who signs up to volunteer for events deserves a call back or a quick chat for the generosity of their time.
Even if it’s just a quick interview to confirm their availability and their comfort levels with different aspects of the event process, it’s important that they understand that you see them and you appreciate their willingness to help. This makes people feel valued and encourages them to volunteer in the future.
FutureFund makes it easy to follow-up with your members by allowing you to keep a digital volunteer directory. This provides a safe and secure way to store parent contact information, and lets you customize permissions so that only the people who need access can see it.
We’ve all been the newbies in a given situation, and feeling confused and out of the loop isn’t fun. Make sure all of your volunteers are on the same page for their tasks.
Also, if anyone seems lost, feel free to give them whatever tips and tricks that you found useful at that stage in the volunteer process. We want to make sure that everyone feels included, comfortable, and confident with their job, so that they know they’re a valuable part of the volunteer team.
To help brand-new PTA members get oriented, check out some of FutureFund’s useful resources written by and for parents and teachers:
Be aware that it will sometimes take several conversations before a potential volunteer is ready to report for duty. This is perfectly okay. Just be mindful of when someone crosses from thinking about it to being uninterested, and respect their need for space if they request it.
Try to give a job to anyone who is available, even if their availability is only once every other week to once a month. If one of your volunteers has young kids and they’re having trouble finding a babysitter, try to give them a job where they can bring their kids with them. Your volunteers will notice you going the extra mile to accommodate them, which will inspire them to sign up again and again.
Try to pair volunteers to activities within their wheelhouse if at all possible. This can be more creative than just matching volunteers to their preferences in FutureFund (although that’s a great place to start). For example:
Trying to match your volunteers with their comfort levels will not only let them know that you value their contribution, but it will allow them to feel like their time volunteering for your event was their time well spent, which is a win for everyone involved.
Here are some words of wisdom from current and former volunteers who have walked this path before—use them to help new members develop confidence!
Saving your volunteers time and reducing their stress makes them happier, and more likely to participate in your fundraising activities—which in turn helps your school group meet your financial targets. By streamlining communication and automating key processes in one easy-to-manage database, FutureFund gives you the tools you need to make volunteering easier than ever.
Get started with FutureFund here to learn about the specific ways that we can help your PTA attract, engage, and retain volunteers. For more details about some of the key tools we offer, browse the FAQ below.
FutureFund’s messaging system lets you:
FutureFund is designed to streamline key aspects of fundraising and selling—which means your volunteers can spend less time raising more money.
FutureFund reduces unnecessary paperwork and automates key administrative tasks so that your parent volunteers can do more meaningful work in less time. Key features include:
See what other parents and schools are saying about us!
Volunteering with your PTA can be overwhelming—but you’re not alone. This section offers encouragement from experienced members and a sincere thank-you for everything you do.
What’s a quorum? What do SEC and ELAC stand for? This glossary breaks down essential PTA terms and acronyms so you can stay in the loop and speak the language.
Running a PTA takes work—but the right tools make it easier. This guide for volunteers rounds up the best free templates, digital tools, and official PTA resources to help you succeed.
Not sure what to expect as a new PTA volunteer? You’re not alone. This guide answers common questions and shares practical tips to help you get started with confidence.
Starting a PTO benefits parents, teachers, and your school community as a whole. Learn how to start one here with this guide from FutureFund that lays out the process in a series of easy steps.