Our k-4 school just raised funds to give to the Red Cross. It was the idea of one of the staff to simply put jars in the classrooms, made an announcement that the school wanted to collect funds to help the hurricane victims. The students were told their goal was $500, if they raised that in a week everyone in the school would get a sno-cone on Friday (the PTO donated the supplies and manpower), the students brought in over $1000 on the first day, total for the week they raised just over $3000.
The intermediate school in our district is doing a bracelet sale (the rubber kind everyone is wearing now), all proceeds from that are going to be donated to a school in Houston that has taken in students from the affected area.
I would try to get the school to involve the students and if the PTO wanted to contribute that would be great. I think it is rewarding to the students to know they are helping out.
I forgot to add, that this is helping the kids realize that they are helping others in need. All that is on TV lately is about the Hurricane and I know a lot of the schools are talking about it to the kids to help them deal with it better.
our school just had a Fun Friday. The kids got to wear hats and basically paid $1 and they got a peice of candy for doing this. The money we raised which was 122.00 (because all the kids do not pay)went to the Katrina Relief Fund. The PTO decided to match this amount since we have funds in our acct still from last year.
Maybe you could do something like this. If you don't want to do a hat day I know our school has Pajama days (we do a Fun Friday on the first Friday of every month to bring in a little extra money) The pajama days go over real well.
Hope this helps
Dawn
If your PTO is a 501c3 organization, it is perfectly permissible in the IRS's eyes to donate to another 501c3 like the American Red Cross or any number of other registered charities. The other part of the question is more philosophical....is such a donation consistent with your PTO's mission? That's a question for your board and members to resolve. You can certainly make the argument that donating to hurricane relief will benefit children (though they aren't in your school).
Rather than taking profits from an established event, you might want to consider organizing a separate event just for hurricane relief. Your studnets could take an active role that might be more meaningful than just taking profits from the Fun Days.
I have a teacher who wants us to donate some money from our fun days (a mini fundraiser that usually amounts to 900.00 a year) for the hurricane Katrina victims. Is this allowed, and would there be tax implications? I am feeling very uncomfortable about this. I alway thought we were only suppose to spend money on things that benifit the children.
