Community Advice

firefighter464 writes:
They raise money on Celebrity Apprentice for one cause and then award the $ to another cause when the other team wins all the time...

That said, if the original cause has already been fully-funded, I'd see no problem/complaint about changing. And simply posting a memo to cheer that you were happily overfunded and found an excellent use for that leftover money. If not, you ought to have a darn good reason for switching gears.

That also said, I've seen it happen countless times in our PTO. And for the most part the donors are never the wiser. Just the folks who come to the meetings. Not a good practice, but it happens. A lot. Depends on how you want to feel when you go to sleep at night, I guess.

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Advice from PTO Today

Rose H writes:
Hi,
The issue here is not quite black and white. If the group asked for donations for a specific cause and stated all funds raised would go to that cause and then shifted gears dramatically (say the donations were for iPads for each classroom and they ended up going to Teacher Appreciation celebrations), then that's an ethical breach. Those donors would be justifiably ticked off and would have trouble trusting your group going forward. But there are some shades of gray here. As firefighter pointed out, if the original cause had been over-funded, additional money could go to another expense. Or, perhaps the original cause needs to be adjusted or tweaked because of changes at the school or availability of resources.

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