Our story
It started at a PTA meeting.
Not with a business plan. Not with a market analysis. With a conversation — actually, several of them — with the volunteers running Wellington Elementary PTA in Woodinville, Washington.
The picture they painted was familiar to anyone who's ever served on a school board. A website that hadn't kept pace with how families live. No way to sync events to a phone calendar. Volunteer sign-ups happening on a separate platform that asked parents to create yet another account. A board spending hours every week on coordination work that pulled them away from the reason they showed up in the first place.
Kids first. That's the PTA's core mission. The tools weren't built for it.
James Whelan — founder of ChAImp and a new Wellington PTA member — left that first meeting and started building. Not because it was a good business idea. Because it was an obvious problem with an obvious solution, and someone needed to do it.
A few days later, Wellington had a new website. A few weeks after that, the scope had grown: if this problem exists at Wellington, it exists at every school in America. SchoolPTA was born.
The mission behind the product
More Mission. Less Admin.
ChAImp exists to bring enterprise-grade technology to community-level nonprofits — organizations doing meaningful work, often without the resources their mission deserves. For many of the organizations ChAImp works with, the engagement is entirely pro bono.
We believe AI should amplify human connection — never replace it.
The SchoolPTA chat assistant doesn't replace the PTA president. The AI newsletter drafter doesn't replace the board's voice. They handle the coordination work so the humans can focus on the community.
That's not a feature. That's a philosophy.
The founder
James Whelan
Founder & Executive Director, ChAImp
James spent 25 years at Microsoft — across Engineering, Product, and Support — solving complex problems for enterprise organizations. He founded ChAImp to apply that same rigour to the organizations that need it most: community-level nonprofits doing important work on lean budgets.
SchoolPTA is a ChAImp product — built first for Wellington Elementary PTA, then expanded so every school community could benefit. What started as a response to one board's frustration became a platform for every PTA and PTO that deserves better tools.
Where it started
Wellington Elementary PTA
Wellington is where SchoolPTA was born and where it lives today. Every feature on this platform was shaped by real conversations with Wellington's board members and tested with Wellington's families.
Wellington Elementary PTA
Woodinville, WA · Northshore School District
Wellington PTA approached us with an outdated OurSchoolPages site. Their parents now sync events directly to their calendars and volunteer sign-ups fill without anyone chasing a soul.
Ready to focus on what matters?
SchoolPTA exists so your board can spend less time on coordination and more time on the community. That's the whole idea.