Why didn’t we think of this great Schoop application?
Following our successful branching out into corporate engagement, we thought the Schoop school application would carry on thriving pretty much organically, expanding rapidly into the same arenas. It’s become obvious, though, that there are even more areas where Schoop can aid parental involvement.
We were contacted recently by a frazzled PTA chairperson who was finding the rallying of the troops both an administrative and time-consuming nightmare. Relating the pressure she was under to a friend one day, they came up with a novel solution. Her friend’s school was using Schoop in the traditional manner and was happy to note that parental engagement was increasing exponentially. So why not look to rolling out Schoop for the PTA?
A ‘thankless task’
The PTA chairperson told us that for a recent fund-raising event, she personally had to produce hundreds of letters informing the school’s parent body of time and location. Luckily, her school is very supportive of the PTA and was willing to undertake the distribution of the notices. However, with the best will in the world, due to the busy schedules of teachers and admin staff, things don’t always go out on time or from every class. For those who do undertake distribution, she ruefully told us, ‘I produce hundreds of letters, it takes me ages to get everything together – yet I shudder to think how many actually reach the parents. Either the kids discard them or they never get taken out of the bag. It’s a thankless task!’
‘Just send them an email’ was one solution that helpful committee members came up with – however with stringent data privacy laws now in place with the introduction of GDPR, the school was sadly unable to share parent email addresses.
Lightbulb moment!
So she had the brainwave of coming to us! We must confess, we should have noticed this great application for the Schoop app before, but we immediately saw its benefits. The PTA committee could now produce a rich text invite or newsletter, with photos from previous events or even videos to showcase the fun, and send it directly to the phones of every school parent – and be sure that it wasn’t disappearing into a school-bag black hole! Using the ‘Forms and Surveys’ feature, the PTA was now able to query parents to find out successful initiatives, dates that worked best for meetings, as well as canvassing ideas for future events.
We love being surprised by clients and this experience sets us thinking that there must be so many other areas which would benefit from engaging individuals via Schoop. We’d love to hear your ideas – or if you believe you have an organisation that is a great fit already, click on the link below and ask for a free demo!
