I had started similar subject see below:

Topic: Donation Documentation

Message:

involvedMom;138059 wrote: I have not found anything in Roberts Rules of Order and our bylawas do not address this-yet, Does anyone have any guidelines about documenting/aknowledging donations for a fundraiser/event ? i.e we have parents/going out on behalf of their particular committee soliciting donations from area businesses without the knowledge of the parent organization. I would think that to prevent the possibility of any impropriety of the direction of a donation there should be a procedure in place, a public aknowlegment of the donation and documentation of its receipt. Any help on this would be appreciated.

10-18-2007 04:01 AM
involvedMom I did find this within the IRS website: The IRS requires a 501c3 group to document a donation of $250 or more or quid pro quo of $75. But I guess there is no other accountability for members to report/document donations/gifts received unless we specify in our guidelines for committees. I think we will have to amend our guidelines to include this.
10-08-2007 05:33 PM
OneandOnly The PTO should be creating the letter for the committee to present to the business about the event and the donation.
All businesses that donate should be provided a letter that is a Thank you, but also documents exactly what was donating. They need this for their taxes as well as the PTO needs a copy for record keeping.
You just have to have an honest group doing this otherwise, I agree, you could have impropriety going on.

This post hits a nerve for me. Last year, our board planned our family nights as break-even events when we set up the annual budget. We didnt' want the parents to have to pay to participate (ex: movie night), just come and have a night out with your families in thanks for their very generous support of our fundraiser. So, we allocated enough expense budget to cover the materials, food, etc. No profit planned.

About a month into school, before any family event, the new Pres and VP got this great idea that we could make money at our famliy events if we got all the materials donated rather than buying them with PTO money. They figured the "unused" money could be redirected to their pet project which wasn't in our original budget. They proposed this change in plans at a PTO meeting and our members approved it, even though just one month before they had approved a budget with no-profit family nights. The committee members went begging all over town for donations, plus added a raffle to each event with purchased tickets, using more items they got donated from our community. By the end of the year, they raised several thousands of dollars from "break-even" family nights. The money was used for physical improvements to the school that were nice, but not critical.

Is that a bad thing? Not if you look strictly at the end result of new school equipment. But is it the right way to get the $$? Our PTO's name was used all over town requesting donations. We had allocated the money to run these as free events. We didn't need the donations. All that soliciting put pressure on other committees to search for similar donations to help "save" their budget money. Plus it added a money component to events that were supposed to be thank you's to our families. The budget change was done properly, thru a proposal, discussion, and vote of our members. But in hindsight, it left a very bad taste in my mouth. I wish we had done what JHB suggested....discuss this issue and all of its implications ahead of time and write down some policies governing budgets vs. donations.

The issue isn't really "cards" but donations. Your group needs to discuss and set guidelines for how the committee works. If the committee has X amount budgeted for specific items and then they manage to get some of those items donated or gift cards to buy them, does their budget get reduced accordingly or do they get to expand their plans?

There is no one "right" answer. It could vary event by event, but your group needs to dictate what's expected.

A committee should be reporting everything receives as a donation (items, money, gift cards) and everything they spend. Otherwise, you don't know what it really took to pull off that activity.

I think a can of worms has been opened and I need help closing it. My committee's are allowed to get donations from businesses which may be a item or gift card. One committee recently went to area business to get some gift cards. They were able to get 5. The problem is we don't have any guidelines or procedures as to tracking the right way of using these cards. I.E -what was purchased with cards, amount of card, what event it was for, etc. Do any of you have somesort of paper trail for these types of activities or am I worring to much about people not being honest when using these cards. I don't want to ruffle any feathers but when they have a budget for a event and then get over $100.00 in cards and still use a large amount of budget money I feel there should be some sort of tracking. We are trying to put in a large playground this year and really need to keep every penny we can. If any of you use a tracking form for donations recieved i would love to take a look at it. Please email it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . I would greatly appreciate any feedback or help on how others handle this type of situation. Thank you so much for your time and reading this.:confused: