What do you do when you have a pricipal who wrote the bylaws and wants complete say over the pto. If the pto puts something up for a vote she changes it to what she wants. She never does what the pto wants it has to be her decision. The pto has a secretary but the principal and secretary wont give the check book to them. Everyone is sick of it. Help please need advice
It is most unusual that bylaws would allow viewing of financials by non- members. IRS requires nonprofits to make available 990s on written request of anyone but that's it. Could you quote exactly what your bylaws state about this?
According to our bylaws, anyone in the community - whether they are a member of the PTO or not - has the right to request to view financial records. The Board of Directors cannot refuse. However, an audit may only be done by an individual or committee appointed by the President.
So what do you do when you have been working hard to become an active PTO for quite some time and finally get a chance and do great work for them and never get a thank you... the small clique that run together went out to dinner on the PTO funds and never invited anyone else that helped throughout the year. We were excited over getting a new administration and have meetings and only a few parents showed up at the begining and we asked for elections and bylaws principle said he would handle that and get those in motion and that the acting president and treasurer would stay in this year and then we would elect a panel for next year. NONE of it happened and we recently found out that our brand new principle and our acting president have started dating... uugghh now there is no hope to get a good solid PTO going. I want to say thank you to everyone that helped get information for our auction because it was fabulous help we had some great baskets. I would love to continue to try and not let them win but we have no help in getting anywhere because even more so now what they want they get because the principle has the final say in all of it. We have a great giving community and a thankless group of people running our PTO. . They didn't even send out thank you notes to any of the donors of the stuff for the auction!! CRAZINESS!!
MiDad has a good point about sending a message to the principal. Your bylaws might indicate the principal can't demand access to the books for an audit, but it helps to try to not alienate the principal when you work through this. How about letting the principal know you are going to get an audit done and you will keep him appraised throughout the process? That might be a good compromise.
Maybe; do your bylaws say anything about who can see your books and when? (If not, they should.) But even if your principal doesn't have the "right" to see your books, I don't think it would send a very good message (to the principal or to parents) to refuse. OK, you're behind; show him or her that's just because you've got busy lives (including the huge chunk you spend trying to help your school), and not because you're trying to figure out how to cover something up -- which might be how it would look if you're both behind and insisting on privacy.
I want to say thank you to everyone that helped get information for our auction because it was fabulous help we had some great baskets. I would love to continue to try and not let them win but we have no help in getting anywhere because even more so now what they want they get because the principle has the final say in all of it. We have a great giving community and a thankless group of people running our PTO. . They didn't even send out thank you notes to any of the donors of the stuff for the auction!! CRAZINESS!!
