We do a big fall fundraiser and one or two spring fundraisers. We had an executive board meeting last night and a hot topic was individual school fundraisers. There is a concern that if they get too big, they could compete with the PTO-wide fundraisers. One of the advantages we get as a 7 school PTO is better deals from the fundraiser companies when we sign with them. Another issue would be if a school decided to do a particular fundraiser on their own that the fundraising chair might have been planning to do a few months later as a PTO-wide one. We ended up deciding that for now any individual fundraiser needs to be approved by the executive board. We were uncomfortable with putting dollar limits on school fundraisers.

As to how funds are handled, the big PTO-wide fundraisers are put into one big "pot" for the PTO as a whole. In our expense budget, there is a section for PTO-wide needs, and each school has a separate budget of their own. Some of the school line items are the same amounts for all schools, like Assemblies, and some line items are dependent on the number of students/classrooms, like Field Trips. One of the advantages we see with a district-wide PTO is it helps to level the playing field, so we don't have "rich" schools and "poor" schools.

When schools do individual fundraisers, the funds go into a separate account on Finance Manager for use at that school. We have decided that this money can be carried over from year to year so a school can save up for something expensive, like playground equipment. When a school does it's own fundraiser, it is with a specific goal in mind, not just generally supporting the PTO.

This is our second year as a 7-school PTO. In the previous three years, we had two 3-school PTOs. As to your question about taking money from one school to give to another, that issue has not come up, maybe in part because, as I said above, we have tried to make things equitable among all the schools.

We do not have our own website, but we do post things to the district website: hollandpublicschools.org. We have info under Parent Links for the PTO as a whole, and each building may have PTO News in their section of the website. We also post to the staff section with items pertaining to teachers.

KATreasurer;138634 wrote: Our PTO supports seven schools (all schools in our district except an early childhood center and the high school): three K-3, one K-4, one 4-5, one K-8, one 6-8.

KAT...
Hello, Thank you for responding. I have some questions for your PTO. Seven schools, WOW!!
How do you handle distribution of funds? Do you do school specific fundraising AND district wide fundraising? We have a couple of fundraisers that are school specific and 3 big fundraisers that are for all 3 of our schools as a whole. If you hold funds to school specific as "what they raise, they get" do you ever make exceptions to allowing another school to take/borrow money from a different school? I hope this makes sense. Does your PTO have a website? Can I have the web address?
Thank you.
Tamy O.

Our PTO supports seven schools (all schools in our district except an early childhood center and the high school): three K-3, one K-4, one 4-5, one K-8, one 6-8.

I have be in PTO for 13 years. Served on three different PTO School. But here recently that we have moved to a small district, the PTO is for all grades Pre-k thru 12th. We are located all on one campus. But it is harder to deal with the 6th - 12th grades. But here all grades try to raise money for their end of the year trip. Now PTO has helped out the Junior class with prom and with different grade projects. Most of the parents that are in involved in PTO are also involved in Booster Club/FFA/4-H. Most of the parents are ready for changes but I think we are long over due.

Our PTO supports two schools. One is pre-k through 3 and the other, 4 & 5. There are about 450 students at the lower level and 200 in the upper.
One of my main concerns has always been that we do not effectively represent the lower el school when we use more than a proportionate amount of our money in the upper el school. I believe that if one group contributes more money, they should be the group that benefits from it. But most of the time, we "equal" out the money. For example, we give each school $1000 towards literacy assistance. AS you can see from the enrollment numbers, the upper school is receiving $4plus per student while the lower el is receiving a bit over $2. I finally made a dent in everyone's way of thinking this year and we made it a proportionate number in our budget.
Since we don't get near the amount of parent involvement from that school either, I don't think we are serving all the needs of those students either. We do sponsor the chess and book clubs there but we rarely get any feedback from parents or staff as to what they think the kids want.
I think for our district in our situation, maybe this is the best solution but I don't think it is a fit for most. I would want separate groups for individual schools.

Are there any PTO's in this forum that support more than 1 school? I am the new President of our PTO. We support 3 schools. Pre K through 2nd, 3rd through 5th and 6th through 8th. Thank you.