Thank you so much for the replies. I sure appreciate it.

I think it's great to have budgets. With more history to draw upon, you can make more detailed budgets. We take a what's probably a simplistic approach and publish a summary budget as listed below. We have specified amounts for our routine programs, but then we lump all the rest together as "Funding of School Programs and Purchases". That amount grows or shrinks if our revenue projections are off. As we go through the year, we decided how to spend it - teacher supplies, new computers, math and science materials, etc.

As we have more history to draw upon, I imagine the buget will become a bit more detailed. Also note that specific categories have as detailed individual budgets as needed. T-shirts wouldn't need much, Spring Fling is quite detailed. Also we report to the parents during the year (and at the end) as to how the catchall category was distributed.

I'm embedding a copy of one year's budget below, but I reversed the order so it will display better in this message box. Usually it would be in a spreadsheet with the numbers on the right plus a few explanatory notes.

(Hmmm, looks like the list automatically takes out the extra spaces I was using to line this up - I'll try to add a character to make it line up, but not sure how you'll see it on your browser.)

Revenue
___36,000 Fall Fundraiser - Catalog Sales
____4,000 Spring Fling
____2,500 T-Shirts (Break-even activity)
____1,000 School Directory (Advertising)
______800 Membership Dues ($3 per family)
______500 Breakfast with Santa
____1,000 Misc (Donations, Skate night, GM Boxtop)
=========
___$45,800 Total Projected Revenue


Expenses
___19,800 Fall Fundraiser - CGS
____1,000 Spring Fling
____2,500 T-Shirts
______500 School Directory
______500 Breakfast with Santa
____1,200 Hospitality (Teacher Apprec & Misc Hosp)
______800 Track and Field
______700 Bank Fees (Primarily NSF Fees)
____1,000 Administrative & Operational Supplies
______700 Donations and Memorials
___17,100 Funding of School Programs and Purchases
==========
___$45,800 Total Projected Expenses

[ 05-16-2002: Message edited by: JHB ]</p>

We are finishing our second year at a new school. The first year our budget was strictly speculative. We had a few parents and teachers with ideas of what they wanted to work on, so we included those as revenue generators or expenses we wanted to put out. Realistically, some of our ideas for spending the money never were utilized because no one started a project, or because they didn't know there could be funding for something like that. The next year was better when we had an idea of what people wanted to do, and what kind of requests they were making for the funds. Now, our third try (for next year) is much more precise.

Keep in mind. The budget is a plan, but it's not set in stone. I'd poll my parents to see what events they plan to put in place ( fund raisers and projects) and the teachers for events and needs.

The first year we sent out a letter at the beginning asking parents to contribute to start up our program. With 150 kids, we received about $1000 from the families. That helped to seed our Spaghetti dinner which was our first fund raiser.

Good luck. It will evolve. It just takes time.

I have some information I will email you - basically a core dump of my knowledge about creating a budget for a PTO. I don't have any experience starting a PTO from scratch, but maybe our budget layout will give you some ideas.

P.S. I use Quicken to control our transactions on my PC. It works out great, even our 5 year old version. I have heard MS Money might be another good choice. Don't try to track it all by hand!

I know there a lot of pros out there. I need some advice. We are a brand new charter school and we are trying to get organized before August. We are working on our budget. If any of you can give me help, I would appreciate it. What are some of the expenses does your PTO have during the school year & how much do you plan on spending for each expense? If any of you have a budget that I can use as an example, I would appreciate it. I know that we will have teacher appreciation week and playground expenses. Do any of you do anything for the students/teacher's birthdays? What about assemblies? How much of your income do you plan on getting from membership dues? We have about 80 families. I thought if 50 families would pay for their membership dues, that would be a good estimate. We have to pay $500 to be tax-exempt. So, I am trying to figure everything out. Thank you.
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