Northeastern Region Director and Region Membership Chair (RMC) – Geri Lehane
Hi, my name is Geri Lehane and I am the Northeastern Region Director and the Region Membership Chair. I have been a member of PTA since 1998 when my oldest son started attending kindergarten in the Ballston Spa School District. I started my PTA journey as a volunteer at the PTA Book Fair. I have been an elementary PTA treasurer, middle school secretary and treasurer, and a PTA Council treasurer in my local school district. I have also been the Membership chair for the elementary and middle school PTAs. I really enjoyed this position.
In the summer of 2012, my good friend who was the Region Director at that time, asked me if I would be interested in becoming the Region Treasurer because the current treasurer was relocating to Virginia for her job. I jumped at the chance to help other officers in the region. I was an Associate Director for 3 years, and I am in the third year as the Region Director.
When I am not doing PTA duties, I am a wife to Dan, and the mom of 3 young men, Sean (27), Danny (24) and Timmy (21), and a daughter, Colleen (19), who is a sophomore at Nazareth College. I have a busy life that keeps me out of trouble (most of the time.)
#12-116 Colonie Central High School PTSA in Colonie, NY has already met their Membership goal of 332 members this year!
The Officers and Membership chairs stated, “This was a team effort.”
Here’s what we did:
1. Consistently promoted membership at the beginning of the school year.
2. Took advantage of volume on the Facebook page and promoting membership according to traffic. (We have 845 followers on our Facebook page.)
3. Recognized the goal the NYS PTA placed on CCHS and shared how close we were at each PTA meeting.
4. Teacher Engagement!!
5. Family Memberships!!
We recognized that families wanted to stay connected during this unusual year and we maximized our social media usage. We consistently invited a special guest from the high school to each meeting to attract attendance. We shared the membership link at our meetings as well as via social media. We are very excited about the Savvy Membership recognition!
#12-168 Kensington Road PTA in Glens Falls, NY exceeded their Membership goal of 106 – they have 120 members so far!
The officers had the following to say:
The PTA at Kensington Road Elementary School in Glens Falls, NY is incredibly thankful for our strong membership numbers, particularly this year as we have faced the challenges presented by COVID-19 since the start of the school year. We are fortunate to have exceeded our membership goals for this school year in large part due to the extraordinary support of our KRS and surrounding community! We are lucky to have such engaged parents, families, educators and community members.
In addition to that support, we held a membership drive in the Fall, which included sending home membership forms and emailing out forms to encourage people to become PTA members. We collaborated with teachers and asked them to send membership and other information home via email or otherwise. We have used NYS PTA contests, such as the “Early Bird State Award,” to help increase our membership numbers. We have (randomly) selected PTA members to win gift card prizes as incentives for becoming a member.
We utilized social media, weekly if not more, and our PTA web page, to spread the word about membership and other PTA efforts. This has helped us to reach a wider audience for membership and engagement. We use MemberHub for membership, as we recognize it may be more convenient for people to sign-up online versus a paper form.
Lastly, we have held PTA meetings nearly every month, virtually of course – and this has been a success for us, a silver lining of COVID-19. Since our meetings are virtual for the time being, we believe it may make it easier for members to attend meetings and be involved in that way. We have had several meetings this year with increased attendance, and we attribute that success to the virtual aspect of the meetings.
#12-325 Albany School of Humanities also exceeded their Membership goal of 40 members – they have 64 members this year!
The Albany School of Humanities (ASH) PTA is doing what we can to be “savvy” with membership during these difficult times. Our school currently has 265 in-person and 241 virtual students, making the need to be creative when communicating with the ASH community, essential.
Our main point when it comes to membership has been consistency. We share our membership link in every virtual meeting, club, or event that we do. When using Google Meets, we drop the link into the chat and also offer to show people how to use the MemberHub site to become a member. The ASH PTA also regularly re-shares the link on all of our social media platforms (Facebook, Dogo, ClassTag and more, there are so many,) which has been very helpful. Using the virtual world to our advantage when we can, while consistently sharing the link to our MemberHub site has literally and figuratively paid off for ASH.