Parents Assocations - how does yours work

Hey guys,

I'm looking for other peoples experiences on parents associations - how yours is structured, how you get people involved, what are you goals, what you provide for the school, how you fund raise etc.

Anyway, we have around 75 families at our school (K-yr 9, but they add on a grade each year as the highest grade goes up, so it will go to year 12), around 145 students in total.

When i started 3 years ago there was 1 lady who was very passionate about it all, basically the head, and then 1/2 way through the year she suddenly died, and we as an association lost our way. We completed the major fund-raiser we had been planning with her, and made around $25k profit, but it was a huge event and it meant a lot of us were burnt out totally from it. Last year nothing much happened, no regular meetings etc.

This year after promising myself I wasn't going to be involved so much this year, I ended up taking on a major role again.. I guess it's just hard to watch something with potential flail and die.

I couldn't help myself at the first meeting, I proposed that people take on formal roles (president, secretary, treasurer, school liaison, fund-raising officer & special events co-ordinator)... Mainly in the hope other people would do it and I wouldn't have to be treasurer any more... We did get 2 new mums to take on roles this year, and the rest of us reluctantly took back on the roles we had been kind of doing over the past few years.

I guess I felt with specialised areas it would be more structured in the way we conduct meetings, how we vote on stuff etc, rather than having a group with no roles per se, and then we just get lost debating stuff.

So tell me, do you structure it like this, or do you have a group with no roles? How do you divide up stuff? Do you have any other positions? What does your president do - are they more of a figure head?

And the most important, how do you get more people to step up to the plate and help, or is it really not worth it as the ones who want to be doing it come, and the ones how would have to push to help aren't worth the effort?

All comments & experiences welcome.