We have a line item in our budget for "mini-grants". The purpose is to fund things we haven't thought of as we aren't in the shoes of staff and administration. (We do not evaluate whether or not what is being requested is "worthy" just that it meets the criteria set by the PTO. The requesting party must submit an application, and explain what population of the school will benefit - not just one classroom having a pizza party or something along those lines, it is for the purchase of tangible items that will be marked with a label indicating that it is property of the school, provided by PTO from funds raised by the students, staff & community.

Here is what I think you are looking for - we require that attached to each request is a letter from the department head (i.e. music curriculum leader at the district level) or principal stating that no other funding is available to fill the request. I would say that if our principal came to us with a request we would ask for the letter to come from the district level.

Each year when the budget is developed it is determnined how much can be allocated to "mini-grants". The budget then goes to the general membership for approval.

I know someone that works for a school district and he/she said that when the Principals
stay under budget they receive bonuses. How true that is I don't know. I think that Principals need to take into consideration that if they use their monies in their budget then next year ask for more. PTO has budgets set up and we try to stick to it. So, what do you do. Explain PTO has already allocated monies out for the year. I would think to myself out of what PTO sponsored event is money going to be taken from. PTO's usually don't have extra money set to the side. What happens if a fundraiser doesn't bring in the money it's suppose to? There are lots of scenarios that can be looked at. Does this project fall under the mission/vision of your PTO. And I know when I first started out we had a Principal that always wanted extra money here and there. I was just a secretary then I learned the ropes of how they - continue wanting PTO to fund their wants when it should be money from the school budget. Then PTO falls short and had to have extra fundraisers just to make up the difference on upcoming sponsored events for the kids. I am not against helping them out if it's for a good cause and there's extra money allocated for misc. expenses but it's usually a rare case now days that the Principal ask for extra money they receive a copy of the budget at the beginning of the year and they know exactly where funds are going. There was one year where we had an extra $3K left over so we spent it on purchasing some goodies for the kids, books that they could take home and keep. We let the teachers pick - out for their class and gave us the invoices and paid it. We knew early in March so this was a big surprise that our fundraisers had gone well that year. Ask the members of your PTO if they think it's a worthy cause and take a vote. Maybe your Principal can give a presentation to the members and go from there.

we consider all requests on a case by case basis with the amounts known ahead of time - we discuss and vote on these at the next meeting. a necessity if you want to know if you'll have the funds as well as our bylaws state the amount needs to be posted if over $600 for two weeks prior to vote. a bill or receipt must be given to the pto after purchase and our treasurer writes the check from that. usually the check is sent to the vendor for large items. like critter, for things agreed on at the beginning of the year we alot a budget - for example medals or trophies we alotted $1500. the bills are still given to our treasurer to pay.
in this way we don't run into too many bad discussions or feelings if the answer is no. we also consider whether or not we would be able to afford the things for the entire student body or class and if it fits into our goals. for example we denied a request for reimbursement of a field trip expense because we couldn't afford it for all the classes.
good luck!
lisa [img]smile.gif[/img]

Does your PTO set up an annual budget? If so, you can allocate a certain, agreed-upon amount of money for your principal to spend as he sees fit. Having a budget will save your PTO so much discussion and potential for conflict. If it's not in the budget, the answer is NO. Nobody has to be the bad guy. If you don't have a budget yet, you can probably still set one up for this year.

In our PTO, we gave our principal $1,000 out of our total budget of about $20,000. He can spend it on whatever he wants. We also have two other general accounts, "Building Extras" and "Educational Materials", each with about $1,200 allocated. As the year progesses, our principal/staff can submit requests to us for items from these accounts. For example, we just approved $150 for a CD player for the music teacher. Since we have budgeted line items, the staff and principal know at the start of the year how much we are able/willing to fund them. And we don't have to discuss every individual request at a meeting.

There is an article about PTO budgets in both the September and October issues of PTOToday magazine. You might find them helpful.

We have a principal who has made four requests to the PTO in a two month time period for either something he would like us to pay for or something he would like us to share in the cost of. When we ask for dollar figures as to how much he wants from the PTO he says he doesn't feel it's appropriate to state an amount. The most recent request concerned an actual construction issue and we know that he has money in his own budgets to cover this cost. As a matter of fact, he has had money in his budgets to cover all of the four requests he has made so far. Some of these are not typically requests the PTO has ever funded in the past. Are we wrong to think that the purpose of the PTO for requesting funds should be after other resources have been exhausted or simply are not there, particularly when the request is coming from a principal with his own budgets? We don't view the PTO budget as a shared bank account with the principal. Any thoughts?