To gjcoram: It's always a little scary when there are a lot of brand new board members and you've got a big event coming up where lots of cash will be changing hands. As mum24kids and lilmouse97 mentioned, it doesn't have to be two board members at all times handling the cash as long as you have some designated parent volunteers to handle the cash. It is a good idea to have two people at the cash table at all times and you want to be careful counting it up (have two on hand for this as well) and get it deposited soon after your event.
We have non-board members selling tickets for our events. As mum24kids said, it's best to have two people there and have them both count the money.
The other thing I like to do, and have instituted for our events, is record the starting ticket number from each roll before selling any tickets. Then, at the end of the event, look at the first unsold ticket on each roll -- and be sure to keep the last ticket from any roll that gets used up! Then you have a good estimate of how much money there should be.
It probably won't be exact, because someone will have given incorrect change or counted off the wrong number of tickets. I know it gets pretty crazy when there's a big line of people wanting to buy tickets. But if someone tried to pocket $100 or more, this would catch it.
Who told you only the officers could handle money??
I think everyone would probably agree that it's generally not a good idea to have kids handle money. And I wouldn't let Joe Smith who just walked in off the street and whom no one knows sit at a table by himself and take cash.
When taking cash, I would just make sure that there are some controls in place and that at least one person is a pretty reliable volunteer. Make sure there are at least two people working together, and separate the duties so one person is handing out the tickets and the other is taking the payments for them. At the end of the shift (or night), both people count the cash together and sign a paper showing how much they have. Then they can turn that over to an officer. I'm not sure why being an officer would have to be a requirement for sitting at the ticket table.
We are having our 2nd carnival in a couple of weeks and with only 4 of us on the board and 3 out of 4 brand new board members we aren't sure what to do. We were told that ONLY the PTO board can handle the money during the carnival which means at least 2 of us will have to sit at the 2 ticket table all night because we can't ask anyone else to take money. The question is can we have a person/people who are on the carnival committee take the money? Can we give them that "power" just for that night?
I am sorry if this sound like a silly question but the bylaws we have or that we have read just don't specify, and I as the secretary am one of the newbies.
TIA for any help.
Jessica
