We haven't published the budget per se (although we will provide it on request). We've found it more effective to put an article in the school newsletter in narrative form that highlights major budget items and examples of budget spending that benefit a variety of students and families. I find it's easier to tell the story in words than numbers.

David

We publish a budget a the beginning off the year at our "Where's your $$$ go party/ mtg" then in one of the Wednesday packets and will soon have an excel spreadsheet available on the school/pta website.

I didn't do charts-just a spreadsheet showing the income and expenses for each event and program. It was easy to read and we went through it item by item. The charts would be nice to put in our display case. Since the spreadsheet is already in Excel that should take me all of two minutes to get some nice colorful charts.

Thanks Phil. We started off our year with informational displays at registration and open house that showed what our money was spent on last year. I know some people were surprised and impressed with the numbers. I told them that was why the fundraisers were so important. There were some board members who didn't seem to feel this was an important thing to do. I think we just have to be ready to handle questions if someone doesn't understand something.

Once it's finalized, sure, publish it for all. It could be great pr. Just be prepared to answer questions in case you get that one parent who wants to know why the staff appreciation budget is so high or why the 2nd grade only get $200 for field trips. We post ours in our display case, but haven't sent it out en masse.

Similar to Phil's PTO, when our budget is presented for approval, our Treasurer shows two pie charts: one is the breakdown of the source of our income dollars, and the other a breakdown of our expense dollars. Alot of people are bored by numbers, but charts make the info easier to understand. It's very easy to create charts in Excel.

We have a Close-Up book that gets distributed to every family in the school on the first day of the new school year. It includes the school rules, calendar, letters from the Principal, staff list, et.al.

The PTO gets a few pages and one of the things we include is the approved budget for the year.

I think it is important to find ways of reminding everyone involved about the things the PTO does to enhance the educational experience of the students. I remember how surprised I was at my first few PTO meetings about how much time was spent discussing fundraisers. It took the better part of a year before I understood all the things the PTO was doing in return.

One thing that is helpful for the group is to have the treasurer come to the first meeting with 2 charts : one a chart of the fundraisers, the other a chart of the services we supplied. Each chart was a bar chart by dollar value and it compared the last few years. The first chart helped to show what the trends were for the major fundraisers and where we should focus our efforts. The second one highlights the breadth of things the organization does for the school.