At our recent General Membership Meeting, Jamie shared fantastic insights on how technology can save PTAs a lot of money and streamline daily operations. He has developed an open-source project specifically for PTAs and provided the following information and resources for our community:
The “Fellow Nerd” Role To make the most of these tech tools, Jamie recommends having a “fellow nerd” on your board. Consider creating a new role—essentially a VP of Enablement—whose job is to keep the ship running technically, safely, and securely, while helping to add more ways to grow via fundraisers and other initiatives.
PTATools Wiki & Open-Source Plugin Jamie has created a dedicated wiki and a custom WordPress plugin. Because it is open-source, anyone can use it, contribute to it, or raise bugs. The community can continue to maintain it long-term.
Free Non-Profit Licenses You can claim non-profit Microsoft Office 365 and Azure licenses to run your backend operations.
What You Need to Get Started You will only need WordPress and Office 365. (Note: Until you move WordPress to your non-profit credits account, you may be paying for the hosting). Jamie’s PTA plugin includes everything except the storefront (WooCommerce, which is also free). Features of the plugin include:
- Newsletter
- SSO (Single Sign-On)
- Tickets
- PTA role mapping (and dynamic role map) – [Insert Link to Example]
- Classes (enrichments)
- Sync WP Media to OneDrive/SharePoint
- Calendar embed/sync from OneDrive
- Donations
- Site backup
Please note: This plugin is still a work-in-progress, but it is nearly finished.
Want a Walkthrough?
If your PTA is interested in seeing these tools in action, Jamie has kindly offered to run a 40-minute Teams call to walk interested leaders through exactly what he has set up for Wilder Elementary (and for LWPTSA). Let us know if you’d like to get connected with him!