I'm a Treasurer, too. I made a more detailed budget at the beginning of the year than the organization has ever had before. The PTO used to write 'blanket" checks for many things and turning them over to the office for disbursement. We had no records of how the money was spent and they certainly never got any change back. Now I am tracking everything and our books look better than they ever have. There truly isn't surplus money where we are concerned, but we were able to increase our field trip fund by $25 per classroom for the second semester. May not seem like much, but with 27 classes, it adds up. We were able to up the amount for Student Recognition and Teacher Appreciation. I think you would get into trouble just asking everyone what they want money for unless there's enough to give to everybody, someone is going to be turned down and then there's hard feelings.

As a new treasurer of a PTO and former teacher, I am struggling with trying to make our PTO board understand the importance of having a budget. Our PTO recently raised some "extra" money on a new event and over the past two months, everyone wants a piece of it. Requests have been flying in. In the past, we have had a system of looking at our surplus money (in March) and then asked teachers to submit requests for funding. We then sit down as a PTO and approve items based on how their benefit student learning and experiences. Am I totally off base here and being too rigid? Should the PTO be spending money now because we came into extra money. Or could this get us into trouble.