Depends on your bylaws, really.

Leaders should not be able to act outside of a meeting to decide to spend money.

That being said, our president has discretionary spending of $100 per month for a situation like this.

In your case, your question does not list a dollar amount, so maybe the pizza place will make you 30 really big pizzas? [img]smile.gif[/img]

Or, if you are over budget, maybe they'd donate the extra ones?

Or, you could spend out-of-pocket for the overage and vote to get reimbursed later.

I would not be comfortable writing a check for too much more than the original amount and voting to 'approve' later.

Also, next time, as has been said, be more vague. Vote to purchase a 'reasonable amount of pizza to serve 75 staff members,' and give yourselves a little freedom. If you are using Robert's Rules and it's a motion, make sure the wording is specific but not too restrictive.

We also had a built-in estimate-- remember a budget for cost at beggining is just that an estimate-- plus the board was usually the ones buying -- so we've done cell 2 cell-- email and other types of adjustmnet -- then at next mtg its adedded to agenda (or ammended), motioned and voted on.

[ 08-17-2006, 11:27 PM: Message edited by: Shawn ]

I could count on my fingers and toes of my five kids the number of times this has happened to us before we learned to approve at least $25 over what was projected. Anymore I look at it as having two parachutes to jump with instead of one.

If the event will occur before a meeting and an e-mail can be sent, let your Board know of the issue and represent the actual bill to the membership asking to approve the extra amount. ie "At our July meeting we approved $125 for 30 pizzas and in discussion with Sam's Pizza we realized this would not be enough. We need to approve another $40 to cover the cost of the additional pizzas we needed to accomidate everyone."

What do I recommend? Don't sweat this. This is an minor oversight.

If you need them before the next meeting then I'd say fire off a quick email message to get a concensus. Then, at the next meeting you can officially ammend the vote.

For future reference, one way around this is to make a motion such as: "I move to purchase pizzas for xyz event in an amount not to exceed $xxx." If, say, you allocate $200 but only need $175 then you put $25 back.

I am the newly elected president of our PTO. What is the procedure on amending a vote? We voted on ordering 30 pizzas for teachers and then realized we needed more. Do I go to all the members or can I make an executive decission? What do you recommend?