I think most PTOs (Parent Teacher Organizations) know how well they are doing. You are probably working hard. You probably had a good fundraiser, or not. But I’ve seen a few different PTOs and they suffer the same problem that many organizations face. They think they know their strengths and weaknesses, but they don’t have hard data.
My daughter’s PTA recently administered a survey for the first time in quite awhile. It was a good general-issue survey that my wife put together. She used to run a customer-satisfaction research firm, so she is unusually good at writing helpful surveys. Of course, she made sure that there were good questions about after-school enrichment classes in there, too.
We had a good response rate, and there weren’t any big surprises, but it did help us move into action. As a group, we no longer had to worry about ‘convincing the other guy’ because we now all had the same data. Less discussion and more action makes for happy PTO members.
PTO Today also has a good article on how to create an effective survey.
Here are some existing surveys I found lying around the web. You can look at them for inspiration (but don’t fill them out!). I’m also talking with my wife about how we could share a generic version of the survey she wrote, too.