Have your new board do the first fundraiser - contact local businesses for donations. Let them know your starting a PTO and are trying to raise $XX in intial funds to start the program. Give them some good PR for it too. Make sure the parents of the school know they help fund/kick-off your pto, and make sure they know they got the PR.
We contacted local business to raise funds about a year ago. Received a few small cash donations, but received a bunch of gift certificates. We we re-sold them to raise funds. One was for a 4-some at the local golf course, and a dad paid full price since he golfs there all the time anyway (that was $300). We raised about $1,500 total from this with really little effort.
Okay Blue, you've alluded to problems more than once in the last couple of days. you know we can help you through it! Long story or not, do you need to get it off your chest?
How about having a bake sale to come up with the initial fee. Maybe you could just document what you make and what you spend it on and record it once you actually have records. Just a thought! With a presidential election coming up that would be a easy lure for bake sale customers. ;o)
Blue -
There is plenty on info right in the forum on the paperwork involved in forming a non-profit corporation. We didn't even join NPN until most of the paperwork was done. It would have made filling out the 1023 easier but is not a requirement if you don't have the funds now. Our board finally agreed to pay for a membership when I pointed out the disount we would get with AIM. Good luck!
This may not seem appealing to some, but you could have your 'group' pay the $179 out of their pockets (even if you did it with just 4 officers, it is less than $45 apiece) and then reimburse the money to those who paid after your first fundraiser. If you have 10 folks who are each willing to pony up a bit, it wouldn't be such a burden on any one person...
Good Luck!
P.S. Type 'starting a non-profit' into a search engine... that'll get you started...
