Our build is over. I can now breathe--I think. We are Jewish Day School with about 200 families.
It was amazing, it turned out that 180 volunteers showed up the day of the build. I still don't know how some people heard about it. We also had 80 kids that we provided children's activities for.
Everyone was thrilled with it. I couldn't have ordered a nicer day if I tried. The weather was perfect. Parents were walking around saying that we should do something to clean up the school or build something for the school every summer. Of course, the Head of School thinks this is wonderful. I think it is wonderful too--as long as I don't have to chair it : )
Here is how I laid out my recruitment. I recruited a grade captain for every grade. I communicated with them and they communicated with the parents that they knew from their grade. They made personal phone calls to nail people down. We also had someone in charge of the Board of Directors. I tried to find someone to recruit teachers, but they did not want to give up the last day of their summer vacation--understandable.
I also kept it in the forefront of everyone's mind. There was an email update every week from the time we decided to do it until the day before the build. We did this in less than 4 months--so we are a little crazy. But those emails really helped.
We sent out letters to alumni. Ask college groups to come (although it was move in day so we didn't get very many). We got other community groups to recruit for us: Pittsburgh Cares, Shalom Pittsburgh, and The Gay and Lesbian Alliance. One of the local synagogues even announced from the pulpit the day before the build.
Everyone came out. We had parents from every grade, including the incoming kindergarten class. These parents had a ball getting to know each other. We had board members, administrators, alumni and community members. We had a few students from CMU who saw it on a community service board. They came and stayed all day. I don't even know how it got on the board. We had a whole bunch of our middle school students who need community service hours, play with the younger kids--limiting the number of adults that we needed for children's activities.
The best story of the day was that of the local high school soccer team. The captain of the team in an alum of the school. He really wanted to come help, but he had soccer practice. Well it turns out that the captain of the team gets to decide where they are running each day. It is kept a secret so that no one takes a short cut. So he jogged them over to the school. Where they moved mulch for a good hour or two. 15 strong high school students--it was great--it probably let us finish an hour or two early than we would have. I had no idea they were coming, but they were welcome.
Everyone but two families on my sign up list came--amazing. I sent out personalized confirmation letters the week of the build. It listed how many adults and how many children were coming. It also listed what they should wear, reminded them of the schedule and asked them to bring certain supplies. This was also very effective. Then I sent an email to the entire school list saying if you didn't get a confirmation letter, you weren't signed up. Therefore, a whole bunch of people emailed me that week telling me they were coming. This allowed me to go out and buy more food since we thought we would only have 100 people including kids. The day before the build I had 114 adults signed up. Then another 60 or so showed up without me knowing. Thank goodness I sent someone out for more food.
The last thing I need to do is send thank you notes. To keep the parents involved, we are sending them a separate letter that is signed by the chair of this year's PTO as well as myself. We are hoping the excitement of the build will keep people coming back for other PTO events. We had 41% of all the families in the school participate in some way with the build, whether it was making phone calls, chairing a sub-committee, digging 48 holes, picking up vegetable trays. We are absolutely thrilled at the turned from our parents.
School starts Monday and the kids are coming back to a brand new playground. It is going to be great.