Not sure about anyone else, but in our school district, SCHOOLS themselves are allowed only 1 fundraiser a year but our PTO is allowed an unlimited amount.... much to the chagrin of families at times and one too few volunteers!!!!!!!
Usually when a PTO is told such a limit exists, it stems from one of two places:
1) policy set by the school district or campus or previous PTO
2) limitations on how many tax-exempt fundraisers you can have. Not to say you can't have more - but you need to pay sales tax on the others (that are taxable - not every activity you do is).
Our district has such a policy limit set on our elementary schools. They didn't want the kids involved in more than two big sales type fundraisers per year - and it didn't matter who owned them, school or PTO, two TOTAL.
Sales tax rules are set by your state. Here in Texas. we are limited to two tax-free events (days) per year if a tax exempt entity. So obviously, you want to pick your two biggest and claim those. But you also want to be careful to learn what is taxable. We sell T-shirts throughout the year. They are taxable, but since we can only claim two days, it would be waste to do that. A spaghetti dinner wouldn't be taxable here, so you wouldn't want to waste one of your freebies on that.
Does anyone know if there is a limit to the number of fundraisers a PTO can do in a year? We are in Southern California and someone told me we are limited to 2.