I would agree on the funds - they are for the school.

When we do something to raise funds outside of the pto, its made clear that is what its for. Most of the time, we do this at one of our events to help support the community with a donation box or something. The money we raise in fundraising, etc is for the school.

If we were to match funds, our bylaws would require us to have a general membership vote on it if it was over $100 anyway, so that would make it hard to match funds for anything for us.

What about when the PTO says it is going to "match funds". I have a problem with that. The funds that are raised should stay within the guidelines of your mission statement and for our school that means the students and school. I think funds raised by the students and parents should be used within the confines of the "school". Doing community outreach is a great thing but not with the funds that the students and parents are being told are for the PTO.

Does anyone have a problem with the new board people "Presidents" not going by the bylaws and charters of the organization...and running basically amok? i.e: using funds in an inappropriate manner?

We've allowed similar things in the past. Over the past couple years we've made "community involvement" important in what we are doing and partnering with others locally.

For example, at our Secret Santa shop in Novemeber, we do a clothing drive for our local shelters. We do a food drive (dontated locally again). We've done other similar things and made people aware what its for (not the PTO).

We may be putting a donation box up at our dance in a couple weeks for the Tsunami victoms - it will be clear what it is for and who it will be donated to. We're still talking about this one, but we'll probably do it.

We use an agenda. If people start getting off track,(they often do) I gently say ok we are a bit off track lets get back to the meeting and we can talk a ab out it after. At the end I ask if there are any questions or anything else that needs to be addressed. If there isn't enough time invite that person to write you a note or call you later or e mail which ever works, and see if you can work it in the next time or arrange another informal meeting to discuss. We have 1 meeting a month but we have several informal meetings between officers.

This also happens to us and we use an agenda. We handle it by just informing them and the principal is always at our meetings and if it something for her to handle we usually just tell the person to talk to her at the end of the meeting. People are generally polite and just don't know who does what and as long as we are nice they are fine.

Is it keeping your group from getting all the needed business discussed? If so, do you use an agenda for your meetings? We hand out an agenda to everyone as they come in and we just work our way through it, then at the end of the meeting we have an "other issues" time where parents and teachers can bring up topics that are PTO and non-PTO related.

The PTO meetings are a great place for folks to bring up ideas for the school and community and we don't discourage it, we just make sure it doesn't take over our meeting.