sounds familiar. our PTO has NEVER had an audit by someone without check signing authority, from the public infos available. i dont know when the PTO was founded, but the school has been around for almost half a century! so you are not alone in the no audit area. i think a yearly external audit should be SOP if the incoming funds are substantial and would support such costs. jsut good business practice. after all, volunteers are just that, unpaid and do their best. mistakes are human and exteranl audits help maintian everyones trust and assurance, thereby also maybe increasing revenues, if everyone knows all monies are really going to where they are voted to go to!

Honestly, it's sad that people lose sight that it is about the childern and not the adults! We,too, have a treasurer and president who,together, make for a terrible twosome! But, we have all stuck it out for the year in hopes that it will come to an end at this year's elections! There has been missing money, lies, deceit, you name it and it has been done(pretty much). BUT through it all we have kept our principal on notice of this, so he knows. And people have suggested we go above the school system and take to another level. But we know with that the chances of our PTO being disband are very high. So, we are trying to just ride it out. It is unfair to the children that some of their money has vanished, but fortunately, not all of it! And there will be an audit done. Which, there has not been one done in over 5 years! How crazy is that???
I just hope that people understand 99% of the people involved in PTO are good people there just a few bad apples out there! Maybe with time the bad apples will roll away!!!

WOW! I am surpirsed that any PTO would be sued by a member. That is definitely not in the best interest of the kids. Have you ever thought of going beyond PTO to start another school support group? We are lucky to have a great group and a Treasurer that is a School Employee. She keeps the books for us, she is on our board and keeps maticulous records. (she is also the School secretary, and School treasurer) We feel fortunate to have her. She is involved at meetings and has a budget set each year. It has made our PTO much stronger, having members who like working together. Of course, as with any PTO, there are the tough members. We have members who come to meetings to disrupt, rather than to help. We move right along with our business and answer their questions to the best of our ability. I personally have never seen anything good come from a group who had to get the School Board involved! We are currently putting by-laws in place becuase we realize every organization needs them. Someday there may be problems with disagreements etc. Our past President did not want By-LAws when I brught them up while she was in office, she took offense to it! I believe we need them and now I see some thing we need to discuss about lenghts of terms in office etc. I would never want our group to be sued!

i was forcibly resigned from our PTO after a private meeting of our offiers, they informed me less than one week ahead of time that if i didnt show up to the meeting, they would resign me. i was on many commmittees. i will not be acknowledged at PTO meetings either.
they did not adhere to RRO nor does anyone seem to care. what a world we live in.
i found the following webpage insightful: www.bullyonline.org to help understand their actions. i recommend it to anyone with similar experience.

I am one who never likes dealing with money if I can help it. Since we do not have a treasurer and no ones wants the job it is shared between the president and vice president. We always disclose to the parents what is in the account at every meeting. If nothing is spent we let them know. It is always in the monthly minutes for anyone to see who bothers to pick up a copy. I'd rather be opened about it than have someone accuse us of doing something else with the money. Our parents are great and they know if it is something they don't understand we will explain it.

Wish me luck because March 7th is our meeting and I don't really expect the treasurer to even show..Here is the kicker our PTO was operating without bylaws and so we finally got them to get some and we still haven't approved them, that's what this meeting is all about boy do I have tons of questions..