If you are under the school umbrella, I'm afraid that the school (the principal) can do this. If you have your own status with the IRS, then you are a separate 'business' and you would always be able to operate your group away from school grounds as long as you keep to your mission statement and as long as your bylaws don't literally say that the money made this year has to be spent this year.
Regardless of your status with the IRS, she can prevent you from sending flyers home with students and prevent you from using students as your sales force as well.
As for your decorations and such, store it in someone's garage for the time being. Talk to the teachers and let them know where the stuff is and how to go about getting it from you. Do Not Send A Note with this info. Talk to them face to face so that if they have questions or problems, you can handle them at that time.
Seek legal advice for your 'rights' as a PTO. Surely a parent at your school is an attorney or knows one who would be willing to donate an hour or two. If not, call Legal Aid and ask for their advice about finding an attorney as a non-profit group. They may not be able to help you, but they will know who can.
Tell them at your meeting tomorrow your legal intentions and your storage intentions. You don't want to hide your intentions by agreeing to disband or something. As long as you are operating as a separate entity from the school under the non-profit laws, you aren't doing anything wrong by seeking legal advice and storing your groups things away from the school.
Why do you have to sell everything? Whatever the new group is will need start-up materials, not to mention start-up money. We were in a somewhat similar position (7 years ago now!).
A new school opened and the population was comprised of parts of 2 existing schools. Both the school we came from and the other school had a successful PTO. We started having joint parent meetings in January before the school opened in September. Together we chose whether to be a PTA or independent group, write the by-laws, do the non-profit leg work, elect officers, etc., etc., etc.
Both PTO's gave a sizeable monetary contribution to help us get going since we had been instrumental in raising the funds those groups held. I think one gave $5000 and one gave $10,000. (Yes, we were very fortunate.) By June we had everything in place. We had a golf tournament fundraiser in July and a new teacher/parent dinner/dance in August and started school with a LOT of money. We've been going strong ever since.
A new high school opened on our campus this school year (directly across the street from us). It serves for the most part our elementary school alumni so we returned the favor and gave them a sizeable monetary donation to get a parent group off the ground. It's a nice way for parent groups to bridge the transition and "pay it forward".
To make this short and to the point. WE have a great PTO in our school. WE do tons of things for our teachers, kids, etc. We are combining with another school next year in a new building. WE will be getting the principle from the other school. They have a very weak PTA. They have had 3 or 4 presidents just this year. Each one quit due to lack of interest of parents etc. (Our President has been extremely involved daily for 3 years)..They have very small events and very little involvement.
We raise thousands of dollars for our school etc.
They are lucky they have any money during the year.
OUr events bring 400 or more people. They put on an event and maybe 30 come. Get the idea?
Problem?? The new Principle is very controlling,and I think is treatened by what she proceeds as 'our parents have to much control'. We are not in 'control' simply we like to help our teachers and we are very close with most of them. She has just announced that she wants our PTO that we have worked hard and have grown over the past years to disband by the end of this year!
We have to break down and get rid of all of our school store items, decorations, paperwork, money, EVERYTHING. She wants to start a new parent group at her new school. Where does that leave us?? Can she just walk in and say, finish up? Don't we have some rights? We simply thought we would go to the new school and work out ways to blend our groups together. WE are very flexiable and easy to work with....how can we show her this? Most important is, do we have any say as to what happens to our PTO?
The meeting is tomorrow...please anyone have ideas?
