Not a lawyer nor an IRS agent. I know that a lot of groups do what you're doing, Shawn, and I haven't heard of any troubles.
It's definitely a gray area in the law.
You're supposed to be able to acknowledge/thank sponsors. But if you sell advertising per se, that's supposed to be taxable income. But what's the difference, really?
Jennytate -- if you do plan on going for it, Shawn's advice is good. I do think you'll want to stay on the sponsor side of the sponsor/ad line (even though the line is not clearly defined).
If its set up as as a onetime fee (sponsorship), whole year advertising plus newsletter, rotating banner. I dont see why any tax issues would be involved.
We sell signage on the school fence, onetime sponsorship fee, plus newsletter, soon website: the company, business, or individual is a sponsor and therefore no taxes are needed to be paid (grammar?)
If its setup the same no worries, correct?
<font size=""1""><font color="#"black"">Liberalism is not an affilation its a curable disease. </font></font><br /><br><font color="#"gray"">~Wisdom of Shawnshuefus</font><br /><br><font color="#"blue""><font size=""1"">The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is...
We are a district wide Special Education PTO, so we will be larger than a school PTO.
I was wondering how to structure it. I know some PTO have membership levels. Example $5 one person, $15 family, so could one level be $100 corporate includes link on website, $200 corporate includes banner/w link on website. or what ever is agreed upon?
I have one business asking to donate already, but I thought it would be best to make a set of rules to go by instead of a case by case basis.
I'm also concerned out the IRS/nonprofit issues, so if anyone is doing it or if you think the above outline would work please let me know. Thank you
The biggest trick is: how much traffic do you expect your PTO site to get? I'm all for building a good one, but I suspect even the busiest single-PTO websites don't really get the kind of traffic that make ad sales all that worth it. I suppose you could perhaps combine it with newsletter ads to increase the total number of advertising "impressions" (as they're called), but...
There's also some real questions of IRS/nonprofit issues. If you do sell true ads (and, for example, run them like revolving banner ads as we do on this site), then that revenue would likely be what's called "unrelated business income" and be subject to taxes. You could probably do things more as sponsorship or recognition, but it's a gray area.
Unless there was some real big revenue possibilities (which I'm skeptical of for one PTO), then I'm not sure it's worth the headaches.
I know there are a lot of people her that know all of the rules. Please help me. I'm getting ready to build a website for our PTO and it was suggested that we could sell ads to cover the cost of the site and to raise funds. Does anyone know where I can find the information about this? Or is your group already doing it? Please share the links, so I can see what you are doing. Also, please let me know any problems you have encountered. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Thanks for your help.
