Question: What are the repercussions of not following the bylaws?
A little over four years ago, I was asked/appointed to be president of our PTO by our principal, as was the president before me asked by the previous principal, and so on for close to 10 years. There was no interaction from the previous board when we came on other than the treasurer giving us a large bucket of notebooks and told us to be sure to file taxes. Now we have a difficult parent demanding to see the bylaws insisting that we are not running the organization correctly. We have since figured out that we were a 501c3 this whole time (hence the filing taxes) and have found bylaws that were written 10-20 years ago. My question now is where do we go from here? Do I hand over the outdated bylaws for her to post on social media and slander me and my board for not following them (even though we didn't know they existed)? Our overall mission statement has remained intact through the years even though we have not followed the bylaws for elections, voting, and meetings-everything we do is approved by the principal instead and newsletters are sent out to keep everyone informed. We have been filing taxes so our financial records are intact. What are the repercussions for not following the bylaws as they are stated? Are they guidelines that can be amended or can she shut us down simply by not holding elections, etc? I have only had two business days to figure out what is going on and she is threatening action before our Secretary of State's office opens next for me to ask them. Thank you!
Asked by Anonymous