Our group was in your shoes about this time last year. The deeper we looked into things, the more convinced we got to file for 501 c (3) status.
This board helped me a lot with all the things in the archive. Special thanks to Joy (JHB). We are official now, and every minute we put into it was spent well.
There were last attempts to stop our move forward by saying that joining a PTA would achieve the same and be cheaper(not if you want all the parents, guardians and staff be members - our expenses to the National and State Organizations would be more per year than the one time filing fee of $500!! - having everyone be a member is a priority for us). When the word came that everyone is using the schools ID and that we ladies (note the condescending way) could save our moneys (the fee) for better use prompted us to ask the school district to give us in writing that we could use that number, otherwise we would go ahead. Of course, the school district officials could not legally do that, so they actually advised to go ahead with the filing process.
We had to rework our by-laws into articles of association plus by-laws, and we went ahead and incorporated for another $75, so we have articles of incorporation and by-laws now. We had a lawyer help with the incorporation and then also with the filing of form 1023 to the IRS. The following is a great web-site:
members.aol.com/irsform1023/index.html
We used information out of this archive to have our by-laws and articles of incorporation be IRS compliant before we presented everything three times and then voted on it. Once voted, we filed everything (last day of school and in the last days of the outgoing board). I happen to be on the new board and as a treasurer I must say I feel much better to be overall IRS compliant, because no matter what is written in an organization's by-laws about the duties of a treasurer, any person that is a treasurer has the duty to familiarize him/herself with the tax code, and once you start digging you quickly realize that 501 c (3) is the way to go.
Over the summer we received some letters that may sound scary - but it was just the fact that the mail did not get responded in time due to summer vacation and the school being closed. I called immediately the contact person listed to find out that those are standard letters that go out, that one receives automatic extensions, and that I shouldn't panic. I must say that he IRS official that is our contact person was very pleasant and helpful up to the end.
I definitely recommend going ahead and filing for 501 c (3) status.