PTOCES - thanks for letting us know about the online version. It's been a few years since I filed one and I had hoped they would change the policy in light of all the security concerns over SSN's these last few years.
I remember (at the time) we stopped ours mid-entry online because I didn't want to use my SSN, but it wouldn't allow the field to be blank. But they took it over the phone without it.
JHB- The form on line will actually not let you send your ssn on line. It tells you that being a "other" non-profit you do not have to fill it out. I thought that I would let everyone know that online you can skip it.
I would think that unless you had a 501c3 approval letter from the IRS (and State authorities) that any donations to your group would NOT be tax deductible to the donor. Of course, this assumes you are an independent organization. This is one of the reasons we went 501c3 - we didn't want to deal with the fallout if one of our donors was ever audited by the IRS only to find their donation to our PTO was disallowed (causing them interest and penalties on top of a tax bill - talk about punishing good deeds!).
If you are going for $30K of grants, the grantor may be under restrictions to ensure their grants go to a Non Profit organization. Most largte companies will also not make donations unless a 501c3 is in place. So ultimately it is up to you to decide if it worth going for Non-Profit, regardless of how small your bank account is at the moment.
If you do go that route and get it, you will have the advantage of only only filling out minimal paperwork each year - if you don't raise more that $5K (and don;t expect to) then you basically fill in the front part with the name of your org just to show you remembered the paperwork.
If you are an arm of the school, then checks should be writted to "XYZ Elementary School" and not to the "XYZ PTO". Same thing if the school has set up a special account to raise money for the playground. However, you need to understand that however the money gets into that account, the school owns it and can spend it on anything they want, even if it is not the playground that was intended.
I don't think the school would be willing to receive donations and give them to the PTO. That would have to be illegal somehow.
Good - glad you found what you needed. When you fill that out, there are several ways to submit it: mail, phone, online.
But be aware that it asked for someone's SSN (or it used to). That's actually not a required field, but I'm not sure if you can skip it online.
Last time I did one, you couldn't - so we submitted ours over the phone.
You really don't want your own SSN on any documentation affiliated with the PTO unless there's no way to avoid it.
I have a question. We are not 501(c)(3) as of yet. I just started filling out form 1023 from the IRS. My question is this: do we have to have an EIN before I can fill out the 1023? How do I go about that?
