Perhaps I should qualify - the teachers get a $5.00 per student "supply" grant at the beginning of the year, and when we have funds we give them more. The mini grant is above and beyond that for special projects that are not necessarily funded by the district. We don't necessarily evaluate - we do count on our principal for that, the reason it came about years ago was to avoid certain grades or teachers thinking that others were getting more than they were - it's a paper trail more or less.

We have a pretty comprehensive budget which has individual accounts with their own amounts budgeted. (I'll email you a copy.) If a need for money arises, it must fit within an account in our budget, or the PTO must vote to approve unplanned spending from any surplus we may have earned in fundraising. We DO NOT take on the responsibility of evaluating the merits of a teacher's request for funding. Our PTO is not qualified to decide what the teachers need. Instead, we rely on the principal to filter the needs. Also, we allocate a specific amount of money ($115 per teacher this year) to each teacher to spend on classroom materials as they see fit. We reimburse their purchases without question. We trust the professional educators to know what's best. With a cap, the staff know what PTO can spend. Special requests go thru the principal to us.

Sorry, but I have heard of the "mini-grant" idea at another school. At that school, the teachers get a maximum of $50 per grant, if the PTO decides the request is valid. I am very uncomfortable with the idea that we, as parents, think we can evaluate a teacher's request. At the school I know of, the teachers have basically stopped requesting grants because they kept getting turned down, and $50 isn't worth the hassle.

Don't know about a formula - but we have a "mini grant" request formula which is when a teacher is requesting money for a specific project they have to complete a form, provide copies to the board and present to the next board meeting after the board has 2 weeks notice. It helps to document where money is spent on a specific class or grade as opposed to something that benefits the entire school. Would be happy to send that to you if you like. Let me know.

I was hoping you could help our group with one dilemma. We would like to put together some guidelines for how to appropriate our funds. Lately, because we have some monies we are agreeing to every request. We would like to be more specific. Our idea is to directly benefit the children with the money raised. However, last year we paid a teacher's salary and now are not happy with the idea of that. Can you suggest some parameters that we could incorporate into our bylaws for all monetary requests? Possibly a formula to which each monetary request can be applied.
Thank you.