Firstly, NEMO has some
great resources on Parent Involvement. Team 358 also has a
Parent Handbook - many teams apparently create guidelines for parents as well, including expected participation, which could be interesting.
This can all depend on how your team is individually, of course. If there's one thing I've learned on CD, it's that no two teams work quite the same way
My team has some parents that we're also trying to work with; on the one hand, they're incredibly helpful and we don't want to discourage them from helping, but our main goal I believe is to emphasize how many activities have to go through the mentors/team/school first. I'm not sure how to word that better, since we're just working on our handbook now, but basically we want to make sure that when a parent sets up a fundraiser, or reaches out to potential sponsors, or plans something nice for the team, that it doesn't come back to bite us. For example, some family members have gotten sponsorships that our team still has trouble getting publicity for, because they didn't fill out the form that we have to get their name & logo correct on banners & such; we had a few families work together to make a lunch for one of our competitions, only to have them bring it into a venue where no outside food was allowed. We're working on emphasizing that what they do is helpful, but how they do it could be improved.