I'm afraid you've started down a slippery slope that will be difficult to back off of.

First of all, you need to review your bylaws. Are there any provisions that would allow you to give money to these types of funds/causes? Probably not. In all likelihood, your bylaws set out the purposes of your organization are to assist in the education of the students at your school, to enhance their educational environment, etc. Therefore, giving money to a family or fund set up after a tragedy is NOT within the legitimate scope and powers of your association. This is NOT to say that helping a family is not a worthy cause, it's just NOT YOUR ORGANIZATION's cause.

Remember that you are entrusted with funds donated/raised by your school's families for the purpose of improving the school. These same families are free to donate to a tragedy fund if they so choose. In fact, your school might set up a collection jar for such a fund, but you should not use PTO money for setting up or collecting money in this case.

Think for a minute if you donated money to a charity -- say the Cancer Society -- and they used some of that money to help out an employee who had a death in the family. Not only would you probably object to this misuse of your money, so would the IRS!

So I would advise you to always remember the purpose of your organization, and learn to say no. It doesn't mean you're heartless; but it does mean that you are a good steward of your organization and its funds.

Hope this helps. (I was a lawyer before I quit to raise kids and run the PTO!!)

Recently in our small town we have had several tragedies. In two of the cases, a parent of students in our school have passed in accidental deaths. The PTO motioned to make a donation to the benefits drives of each in the amount of $200. Now a family has lost almost everything in an apartment fire. The question is this, at what point does the PTO not donate (or not quite as much as in the deaths)? Will people then start to come to us because they had say - a car accident and lost the family car? Where do we draw the line?? Any advise or comments would be appreciated. Thanks.