Question: PTO Grant Funding

A group of teachers has worked on a fundraiser for supplies and staffing to support the social and emotional needs of students at our school. They raised $10,000 and want to write a grant request to receive those funds so that they can deposit it into the school account to use at their disposal. They advertised the event to the public specifically for funding social and emotional supports. There is a lot of back-history with this but essentially a few members of our board are quite upset that they are doing this because they feel that all of those funds should go into the PTO account and then have grants written for specific needs when they come up. We don't typically do this where a sum of money is approved for use at their disposal. It is MY opinion that if the parents and staff approve the grant request and feel that this is important then what we as a board think doesn't matter. We are a bridge between parents and staff to support the students and the school. I am anticipating some "drama" at our meeting when this topic is discussed so I am just looking for actual information about the legalities of grant funding requests and how other PTO boards would feel. This is my first year (I will taking over as president next year) and I want to make sure that we are doing things correctly as well as avoiding unnecessary conflicts at meetings. What are your thoughts? Is there somewhere that I can go to read about approve funds and the rules/laws in regards to that? (We are a 501(c)3)

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