Hi Karen,
If you are looking to raise funds for this teacher, you may be better off doing a collection as parents rather than doing an official PTO fundraiser. The reason? Some folks within your school community might object to the PTO doing a fundraiser that doesn't fit exactly with the core mission of the group which is typically centered around the kids. So, this is really a matter of not ruffling feathers or bringing unnecessary negative attention to the group. You will likely find lots of parents interested in helping out this teacher, so try a less official donation drive and you are likely to get a good response.
This is really a crazy sounding question-but can a school's PTO host a fundraiser and then give the money from the fundraiser to a teacher as a help with personal medical expenses or to a parent from the pto (not board, but a pto paying member) to help with personal medical expenses (esp. if it was not "billed" as such with the fundraiser)? I am going back to the same part of the rules as no one member should ......Thanks.
One school parent group board I was on had the VP take up a collection of money from all the board members willing to donate and obtained a gift card for the President at the end of the year.
All the other parent group boards I've been a member on had a slated amount they used for a gift card. It varied from $25 to $100 depending on how large a budget/fundraising group they were. The line item area it fell under for accounting was either "Administrative" which was for any office or business expenses, etc. or "Miscellaneous" (which was a useful line item area of our approved budget in case unexpected expenses encurred or the school needed some emergency type funds for something quickly.)
When I looked into this years back, the IRS rep told me that this kind of thing was fine as long as it didn't amount to a "substantial" amount of our budget. I don't think there's a rule that defines "substantial", but I doubt you'll get into any trouble with relatively modest gifts. As long as most of your funds are spent on activity that advances your "exempt purpose", you're fine (that's the purpose that your PTO used in its applicaiton for 501c3 status).
Wow--Ciaara--tough love. Of course teachers follow their profession by choice, we all do. But if, like me, you believe that the PTO is there to support the morale of the school as a whole then a token gift of appreciation is a small part of that (certainly not the focus) and keeping our teachers spirits up is good for our children. I'm not talking Godiva chocolates here, but a 5 dollar "cup o joe" on us gift card can make a difference.
I will say that any gifts of substance I buy personally as well, for those I want to thank; but I've always supported a portion of our funds allocated to teacher appreciation. We use them to create gifts on occassion, put together goodie bags and even give a small thank you when we celebrate their profession and their support of our children.
Where you put that money in your budget is up to you--no need to hide your efforts to keep your teachers feeling great about your school.
