Productivity Tools for the PTA : Dropbox

This is a series of posts we are writing on productivity tools for the PTA for organization, scheduling and communication. As the first in this series, we are introducing Dropbox for the PTA/PTO.

Parent Organizations in schools (PTO/PTA/HSA/PA) are the backbone of the school, running a number of fundraisers and after-school activities for the students. They collaborate with fellow members to run these activities and fundraisers. Dropbox can be a great productivity tool to organize all of the PTA fundraising and events. Dropbox  is one of several productivity tools we use at MobileArq to help with secure and convenint sharing of files.  In this article, we will discuss how you can setup and use Dropbox for your school or state PTA at no cost to you.

Dropbox is a great tool for sharing your files and folders with other members in your PTA in a safe and secure environment. The files can be accessed anywhere anytime on all devices. Basically, you keep your content organized in a private and secure place on the cloud with a mirror image of the same folders on your computer.

Dropbox, an organization tool for PTAs

Dropbox is extremely useful for your PTA to share files within a group of members. For example, if the PTA board members would like to collaborate on planning a fundraising event, they can store all of the details on the Dropbox folder shared amongst the members. You can create a folder that is shared only with your board members.

This can be especially useful for state level PTAs when they organize PTA convention that brings together delegates from across the states. Planning Information for the event can be shared between the state PTA board members easily via a Dropbox folder. Many State level PTAs receive paperwork regarding their membership recruitment from the schools. This could be stored in a central Dropbox folder accessible to the administrators.

The best part of Dropbox is that it automatically synchronizes between the Dropbox files on your local folder and the files on the cloud.  So if a PTA member A had several changes to the documents related to the organization of a fundraiser, they would automatically synchronized and uploaded to the cloud as soon as his/her computer is turned on. If a PTA member B had her changes on a different computer to the same files, Dropbox synchronizes and makes copies of files that have conflicts between A‚ and B’ s changes.

Dropbox synchronize files for PTA Members

Sharing folders with other PTA members on Dropbox