Have you already done cost / benefit analysis? Is the time you might invest in getting the things back more valuable than investing your time in something else that will benefit your school? (not to mention the bridges you might burn).
Standing back from the "They're doing us wrong", they sound like an (albeit unusual) organization the might be also trying to help the schools in your area.
Yep, they have incorporated as their own non-for-profit using the committee name but not PTO attached. It's very confusing for parents who aren't aware of the conflicts. The Principals (there are 4 since there are 4 schools in the district) don't have anything to say. It's our school board who actually funded the start-up for this new organization (without finding out why the PTO asked them to wait a year). The money is supposedly going to our schools but, having dealt with this group for over a year, they've made threats to the PTO to take the profits to another school (our high school is a seperate district) if we don't do things their way. I haven't read their by-laws but supposedly, with the new organization, they do have them. I'm just concerned with getting PTO materials back. I will have to go back through receipts to see what all they have.
Thanks for your advice!
is the offshoot group calling themselves a "PTO" of the school then? to incorporate I thought you needed bylaws, do they have them? Are they non for profit and 501c3? non for profit is not tax deductible I believe and if they are soliciting items for the auction they may be misrepresenting the degree the donor can take a tax deduction. What has the principal had to say about the second group? Where is the money raised going to go to and who will dictate its spending? As far as gifts(equipment) received in the past to the organization, once given- the giver relinquishes any claim to its' use.period.
What are they raising money for? Seems really odd that a second group would go to thte trouble of incorporating just for the sake of the auction. Are their goals in conflict with the PTOs? How does the principal play into this situation?
I'm no lawyer, but it sure seems that any item that is labeled with your PTO's name belongs to the PTO, period. The new group is a new group, not the old PTO committee. If the PTO choses to donate equipment to the new group, that should be voted upon and documented in your minutes. Anything purchased with PTO funds in the past was intended to be used on PTO projects unless formally donated to another group (in your minutes). If you really want to pursue this, I guess you could dig thru your old financial files and look for receipts to prove that the PTO paid for the items under question. But if you can't find the receipts, and the items are not labeled "Propoerty of xxx PTO", it would be hard to prove the items are yours, even if everyone knows where they came from originally.
Our PTO is very large and profitable. This is my 4th year as president. Prior to my first year we had a standing committee that did a dinner/auction but there were a lot of problems. When my exec. board came on and no one wanted to chair that committee we discontinued it. We served 2 years (the max according to by-laws) and a whole new exec board was elected and served for 2 years. My VP & I returned to (hopefully) serve another 2 years along with 3 new execs. During the time I was gone this problem committee came back on board with many unreasonable demands. They were allowed to walk all over the board and PTO. When we were elected last year we put a stop to some of it but there was a lot of trouble throughout the year. We asked that they take a year off and do their dinner/auction every other year. To make a long story short - they decided to go off on their own and incorporate as a non-for-profit organization. They used our committee name (which I've always thought was wrong but they said we had no "rights" to the name) but they've also taken all the materials that have built up for years to run this dinner. For the most part, it's stuff we can't re-use but there are things like a charge card machine (donated to the PTO for this event), display boards (also donated by a person who now says she donated it to the committee, not the PTO) and, I'm sure, many things we don't even know about. No inventory was kept so we don't really know what they have. My question is, can they legally keep and use all of this? I did get some stands back (in a round-about way) that say PTO on them but they're harrassing us to give them back because they were given for use by the committee. My thought is, these items were given to the committee when it was part of the PTO and, therefore, the property of the PTO. This one committee has made serving last year and this totally miserable for everyone! I really thought when they went off on their own we'd be done with them. PLEASE HELP!!!
