I did find this within the IRS website: The IRS requires a 501c3 group to document a donation of $250 or more or quid pro quo of $75. But I guess there is no other accountability for members to report/document donations/gifts received unless we specify in our guidelines for committees. I think we will have to amend our guidelines to include this.

The PTO should be creating the letter for the committee to present to the business about the event and the donation.
All businesses that donate should be provided a letter that is a Thank you, but also documents exactly what was donating. They need this for their taxes as well as the PTO needs a copy for record keeping.
You just have to have an honest group doing this otherwise, I agree, you could have impropriety going on.

When we send volunteers to solicit business donations, they go armed with a generic letter about the event, its purpose, our status as a 501(c)(3) organization. Mailing the letters alone don't work very well, but having a person carry them allows for the personal touch while still having some documentation.

Each volunteer is instructed as to what information to collect and it's turned in to a central coordinator who keeps it all in a spreadsheet. All the donors later receive thank you notes.

someone must have encountered this before...and has established policy for committees receiving gifts/gift cards/product.....in years past our committees sent out aknowlegement letters thanking contributors, had a testimonial at the event to thank contributors at the event, and the donors were thanked in our weekly newsletters home...recently it has come to light that some members are soliciting business' on the behalf of our organization for their particular event, but the organization it self has no documentation of who was contaced, were thank-yous' sent, did it comply with IRS guidelines for donations etc....

I have not found anything in Roberts Rules of Order and our bylawas do not address this-yet, Does anyone have any guidelines about documenting/aknowledging donations for a fundraiser/event ? i.e we have parents/going out on behalf of their particular committee soliciting donations from area businesses without the knowledge of the parent organization. I would think that to prevent the possibility of any impropriety of the direction of a donation there should be a procedure in place, a public aknowlegment of the donation and documentation of its receipt. Any help on this would be appreciated.