thanks for the feed back, it has its risk factors i know, but we are in a small town situation and it appears to be in our best interest to keep the SI and the commuinity happy. we will give it a try this year and see what happens. it may be a costly learning experience and then again it just might work. we are small and work very closely with the principal and staff, so we will just have to see..... thanks again. cs
The situation you described may work for you, but I would never trust giving our hard-earned fundraising money directly to the school and then trying to get them to return it to us. That's why we are a 501c3 organization - people can write off what they give us. The paperwork isn't hard and it isn't expensive to do this. We also hold our own insurance policy that provides liability insurance for the whol pto and also individually for the board. We have our insurance through the NPN network and saved over $500 from our previous policy - I think it's less than $300 for our policy each year. We are also looking into getting bonded through the NPN - that will help if one of our members steals money.
Is there some reason you don't want to be independent from the school?
Thanks for your input. I think the laws vary so much from state to state it is difficult to make heads or tails out of this.
We just met with the School System Superintendent and the lawyers that represent the county. It seems that since we are in Georgia we have soverign immunity. Also they are negoating their new insurance policy for the next 3 years and will have a rider on the policy to cut PTO a deal on individual event coverage. It was concluded that coverage on individual events (which is where most of our are) is the best for our situation.
It was also discussed that if the PTO was incorporated that it would be more appealing for sue happy people to seek out the PTO, Inc. vs. if we are not inc. then they would more than likely go after the school system.
The other discussion was in regard to Tax Exempt status. It was recommended that we run our donation money through the school's books so that doners can write off their donation, plus we can also use the schools tax exempt status. We as the PTO will still hold our own checking account for fundraising money raised. So, who knows. I guess we will try it out and see how it goes.
cws--Was she talking about a fidelity bond or some other type of surety bond? The type of bond Critter is talking about is a fidelity bond; through the NPN program (and generally), depending on the limits you want, it's very inexpensive--usually less than $100/year. But you would need a fidelity bond even if you incorporated--reasons for getting a fidelity bond and reasons for being incorporated are apples and oranges.
Let's say you're running the spring carnival dunk tank and someone gets seriously injured. Incorporating may protect your personal assets if you're sued (they would generally have to go against the PTO's assets instead). I'm pretty rusty on surety bonds, but I can't think of any that would protect you from this type of liability.
And, as Critter points out, incorporating is pretty darn cheap. In Virginia, I think it's $75 initially, then $25 to maintain your corporate status each year after that. I find it hard to believe that any kind of bond is cheaper than that.
I may be wrong, and I hope someone will correct me if I am, but I think we're talking about two different things here.
Bonding protects your PTO against the loss of funds due to embezzlement or theft by one of your bonded officers. It is a form of insurance you must purchase from an insurance carrier like AIM which works with the National PTO Network of PTOToday.
Incorporation protect your OFFICERS against personal financial liability if someone were to sue your PTO. Only the assets of the PTO are at jeopardy, not the personal assets (i.e. your personal bank account, your HOUSE!) of your officers.
Two very different things.
In our state, Michigan, we paid less than $30 for our initial incorporation and then about $15 per year for renewal. We do not carry bonding insurance.
Our treasurer checked on this for herself with our County Attorney. It cost alot and he said no more money than what we ran through(I think it was near $70K that year) that is wasn't worth it. I think it was very costly.
