Oh boy. This is such a slippery slope. PTAs and PTOs leaders should educate themselves about financial practices and maintaining 501(c)(3) status before voting to spend money on anything that does not directly relate to the purposes and goals of the organization. The IRS is very, very picky in this regard.

In California, where I am currently president of an elementary school PTA, the CA State PTA specifically states how funds can be used, especially when it comes to things such as hospitality and volunteer appreciation. I highly recommend checking your state PTA toolkit for details when making financial decisions like this. For California, you can read some detail here: www.capta.org/sections/communication/dow...teerAppreciation.pdf

It also should be noted that if you have a fundraiser and advertise that you are raising money for something specific, such as playground equipment or classroom supplies, you MUST use those funds for those items ONLY. If you are collecting long-term for an expensive project, carryover funds must be reported in a specific way. Be careful!

If you are a PTA or PTO connected to a public school, PLEASE work closely with your site admin and school district when it comes to funding large purchases or paying for the salary of school site employees. Are you SURE your district is not required to pay for these items? When it comes to technology, are you positive the items you are purchasing are compatible with your district's IT setup? What about repairs, maintenance, or replacement of such items? What about when the tech becomes obsolete? Who takes care of that? If you purchase the items and do not have the district involved, they may disallow them altogether. That happened in our district. A school purchased over $20,000 in Wi-fi tech, and the district refused to install it. It's been a year and a half and the items are still sitting in boxes in a storage room, which is not only a shame for the students but a complete waste of donations made. Shameful.

Read your toolkits/materials from your state PTA orgs. Be familiar with IRS restrictions and requirements. Work jointly with your site administrators and school district. As non-profit group leaders, you have a fiduciary responsiblity to your members and to the students you serve to administer your funds in accordance with your group's purposes and goals and to the law.

That all said, spending money on training for your leaders should ABSOLUTELY be part of your budget. You cannot live up to your responsiblities as a leader if you don't know what you're doing.

I have a question hopefully along these lines. At what point do you say "no" to fund allocations? Example, we have a parent that is wanting us to possibly spend money on Ipads for classroom use. They feel that technology is the way to a better education. We have music teachers that have no funding so come to PTO with grant requests for new musical instruments for music class. We have a sound system in our gymnasium that is literally "for the birds", should it be up to PTO to fund these things? Where do you draw the line? In what way is PTO funding most beneficial?

I attended my first meeting last month and found that student fundraising money is used to purchase gym memberships for all teachers, and being conservative with that this is a 9000 expenditure, and that we fund a monthly appreciation day at 75/month an annual expenditure of 750. We also budget for meals for all 4 days of conferences but no dollar amount was mentioned. I have waited a month for a budget but have yet to have my request met. Our school does a spring and fall fundraiser, book fundraisers for each conference period, as well as night out money makers like eat here and the restaurant gives back 10%. Our school has 74% free/reduced lunch, and over 700 students. While we budget over $10,000 for teacher appreciation, our students received 2 new laptops. I am furious about this and want my student money to go to my students as I buy appreciation gifts for teachers myself. however our mission says:
As ** Families. we support high learning and behavioral expectations by:

• Promoting the ** Learning Compact.
• Demonstrating appreciation of ** Staff.
• Funding student and family learning events.
  is there anything i can do to help change this inequity? how would i go about doing this?

A question: Previous Boards have provided each teacher with $100 for 'whatever'. Near the end of the year some teachers were scrambling to 'use' this money. We are discussing whether it would be better to lump the money together and use it for 'house projects - this is a Montessori school- and get a bigger 'bang for the money'.
What are other's thoughts about this?

I believe that the funds raised should be used within the school as a whole. We are there to help the enviroment as well as the moral of the school and parents involvement. The parents are willing to help, but they also want to see the positive effects of their help. The school where I'm a member we try to set budgets for areas such as ; end of school budget for each grade level, teacher appreciation, and equipment for school playground. We prioritize the goals and agree upon the one that is most need for that year. We also have to utilize funds for items the organization need to operate. and sometimes a budget is not set. Committment and communication is what helps keep the organization on the same path to reach your goal.

I think the Funds should be used, for much needed items. Example I'm starting literary from nothing....Trying my best in a once big school, now very small in numbers to make miracles happen. We need important items like a mosquito machine to spray the area, more than a Fieldtrip!!

So I think times are hard and we need to focus on important things for our school first!!!!