Hi Patricia!
It sounds like you did the right thing -- and it sounds like you are very careful and thoughtful in your job as treasurer.
Perhaps the auction chair could refer to the combined numbers -- general and targeted auction funds d -- when she discusses her results and footnote that some of it was targeted for tech. funds.
Here is my question:
We have a budget we approve for each school year. The budget has projected income from Fundraisers (along with the expected cost) and expenses and projects to fund. It is important to note that all these are general PTO. Until recently, all of our fundraising has been for general funds to pay for expenses in our approved budget.
Several years ago we started a Read-A-Thon and the PTO approved a specific (I call it a targeted fundraiser) project to fund, to fix the school play yard. It was advertised that the money from the fundraiser would do directly to that project and it did.
My treasurer reports are organized as follows. There is a section that details all completed fundraisers where the income goes to the general funds for expenses approved in the budget. There is a section that details all expenses in the approved budget and YTD payment info.
I then have sections for the targeted fundraisers (such as the Read-A-Thon describe above.)
This was all well and good until this year's auction. In the past the PTO Auction income was always for general PTO fund. This year the Auction Committee decided to have a "paddle raise" in the middle of the auction event to raise funds directly for the school technology fund (not the general fund). IT WAS COMPLETELY ADVERTISED AS SUCH. So I split the auction income into two buckets on the report. Since the main auction was for the PTO general fund, I recorded the portion of the auction income and associated expenses in the PTO General Fundraisers section and created a separate section in the targeted fundraisers for the auction income for the school technology fund. To me, this is about reporting restricted and unrestricted funds correctly on my reports. Now the auction chair is up in arms because it "looks like the auction didn't make as much money." I kindly (well as kind as I could be) explained that I HAD to report the general income SEPARATE from income for a targeted (non-budgeted) purpose.
I know this i s convoluted so if you are still reading, thank you , and any feedback is appreciated.
