Your support of PTA is more important than ever! PTA membership allows you to stay involved with your school and neighborhood community, and keeps you informed & updated on legislation important to all children! Everyone can join PTA. Please reach out to neighbors, parents, children, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and siblings.
Monthly Membership Checklist
- Remit manual membership dues each month – PTAs are required to remit the portion of the dues collected via check, cash, or any other payment source other than TOTEM. Units submit the portion of their dues (per bylaws) to their PTA Council or Ninth District PTA if they don’t have a council. Council PTAs must then remit to Ninth District PTA each month.
- TOTEM members – TOTEM is a tool that can be used to collect members electronically. PTA’s don’t need to worry about remitting the portion of dues as mentioned above. TOTEM is a tool that does this for you automatically.
- Membership cards - PTAs have access to physical cards to give to their manual members. Contact your PTA Council or Ninth District PTA to receive membership cards. E-members who join in TOTEM have access to electronic cards. Manual members that are entered into the TOTEM system will then have access to electronic cards.
Membership list – Each PTA should keep track of their membership list for the year. This list is used to balance for financial reviews, invite all members to every association meeting, reach out for volunteers, etc. To make a list of both manual and e-members, you can either download a spreadsheet from TOTEM to combine with your manual members spreadsheet or you can enter your manual members into the TOTEM website for Totem.
Ideas for signing up new members….
- Post your PTA membership link or PDF of membership form on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms.
- Have a PTA Membership Sign-up Day during the months of January and February.
- Ask the Principal to email parents the PTA membership link with a message about activities your school's PTA supports.
- Set up TOTEM for your PTA by clicking here.
Questions? Contact Lori Fentress, Ninth District VP-Member Services Director at member-services@ninthdistrictpta.org.
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Electronic Membership with TOTEM!
TOTEM, the electronic membership system, is an additional way to collect memberships. Units, councils and districts are not required to use the new system, but we encourage you to check it out. Click here to learn more about TOTEM or to follow the easy set-up guide. PTAs can continue to collect and remit membership as you always have.
If you need help signing up for TOTEM, talking about membership strategies, or have general membership questions, please contact Lori Fentress, Ninth District Vice President - Member Services Director at member-services@ninthdistrictpta.org .
TOTEM FAQ's
- Is this the only way we can collect memberships? No, use ALL of your resources to sign up members! Please use envelopes, websites, and TOTEM.
- How much will it cost? There is no cost for a local unit to use the system. Each member that joins using the electronic membership system will pay a $1 convenience fee per membership. This will cover all the processing fees and other costs of the system. This dollar will be paid by the member and it is added onto the membership dues. It will not reduce the portion of dues deposited in the local PTA unit bank account.
- Can a unit opt out of using the donation part of the program to avoid the 5% fee? TOTEM can set up an account to eliminate offering the donation options to members. We believe that offering donations here will increase overall donation amounts to units because of the ease of to donate, and that the 5% fee will be outweighed by the increased donations. TOTEM is working on giving members the option to the pay the 5% in the near future to allow your units to keep 100% of the donations amount.
- Does the auto renew occur at the beginning of the school year or one year from purchase date? California State PTA’s membership year is July 1 to June 30. An auto renew notice will be sent to the members the last week in June and auto renew will occur near July 1 (depending on holidays). Bulk upload this year’s members to make sure they receive an automatic renewal message. New bulk upload feature on TOTEM! Now you can upload all your members into the e-membership system and have one source for all your membership information. You can do it yourself with the Google sheet and FAQs from TOTEM, or for a small fee, TOTEM can set it up for you. All members in the system will receive renewal notices to make joining your PTA easier.
California State PTA Resources For Leaders and Members
Online Toolkit
9/14/2024