<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by SFilak: I am fundraising chair for our K-6 elementary school. This year for some reason, we've had an abundance of bad checks written to the PTA. At our meeting this past Friday, I brought this up, and was asked to get together with the treasurer to write a policy on how to handle bad checks. Up til now, there has been no "official" policy, but it has never been that big of a problem. The treasurer and I called all of the offenders, most made good on the checks and fees, but it is unbelievable that some people have yet to respond, (fundraiser ended sept. 26 and checks started coming back the following week) some are even ducking my phone calls. Pick-up is next Wednesday, and I'm just not going to give the orders to people that have not settled their account.
I guess my question is: Does anyone have any suggestions on what we should put in our official policy? Does anyone have a policy that I could use as a reference?
Any input would be greatly appreciated!!
Suzi
ps...I just have to get this out, one parent who wrote us a bad check has a child in 2nd grade, every phone # the school has for her, including emergency #s is disconnected. God forbid if something happened to her child, no one at school can get in touch with her. Sorry for the rant, but that just irks me to the core!!!!!!!!!!!<hr></blockquote>
So much has changed for us too since this post was started. Our school (we follow their policy) now pays a check recovery service that reports to the credit agencies. The PTO has been too lucky with this but the school hasn't been so they had to go to that. A friend in the office told me there is one parent with $500 in checks all for school lunches and refuses to pay! She agrees that many of the checks she sees are oops and the parent feels terrible.
This may sound terrible, but personnaly I get a bank issued check from our credit union (I pay a buck for it) or I pay cash, money is really tight and the last thing I need a call from my friend in accounting at school, lol!
After reading all the posts in this message, I just wanted to put in my thoughts. Last year we were burned so badly with bad checks that this year we adopted a new policy, NO PERSONAL CHECKS, period! We only accepted cash or money orders this year. It worked out great for us and the parents didn't complain too much.
Everyone can probably check with their local District Attorney's office they usually have a sample of a letter plus a small poster size (reduce it down)if what can happen if you write a bad check to the organization. We usually send home a copy with the fundraising information just as a friendly reminder. This past year we had no bad checks. Hope this helps.
Can anyone send me a copy of the letter they use for bounced checks? We usually don't accept checks for our fundraising because we've been burned many times. The checks that are returned are also written for the full amount of their child's order (they took everyone's money, then wrote one big check).
We've tried making phone calls and they keep telling us that they will bring the money in but we have yet to see it.
