Question: Funding requests - what to fund

We are a private International school. We have a very dedicated PTO that works very hard in raising money to help better our school and the experience our children have. One area we are struggling with is funding requests from the school. The school has resources to fund many programs that the PTO has been assisting with for years. They are programs like visiting authors, Professional development and visiting specialist in various circular fields. Recently a consultant came to our school and said that the school has enough resources. As a group, we would really like to spend this money on community events for students and parents. We don't want a negative relationship with the Admins. My question is what kind of things should the PTA pay for. The school buys all the equipment the kids need.

Asked by Anonymous

Answers:

Advice from PTO Today

Rose H writes:
It sounds like you are hoping to provide some community events and that's such a great idea! We get what you are saying about the administration, but let them know you want to do this because building community is a vital part of your mission and will make for a better overall school experience for the children. A good community event where families connect and feel connected to the school has long-lasting and positive results.

Here are a few articles you may find helpful:

What Should PTOs Pay For?

20 Fun Family Events

16 Ideas for Quick and Easy Events:

Good luck!

Rose C.

Community Advice

WEB writes:
We are definitely hoping to do more community building. We work our volunteers really hard, too hard IMO. We raise a lot of money during our main fund raiser, but if we could lower our financial support of the school we could make the event less grand thus working our volunteers less. Some members of the Board do not think we should pay for some of the things we are paying for but the funding requests keep coming. Should we go to the board not the administration? PTA president reports our activities to the board, should we partner with them on this? It is so hard to say no to the school because our kids do benefit from these programs. We don't want to create an a bad relationship. How can (if you can) the PTA find out if there is school fundings that they just don't chose to spend. We have a couple of example where a funding request came in for over 13000 USD where we just said No and the school found the money. They just built a wonderful indoor track without an additional fund raising, sponsors etc for the price tag of over 650,000 USD. Our team feels very deflated.