Budgets are priceless in my book. The incoming board comes up with the budget and includes any and all expenditures that we already know will happen. It can be amended at any meeting with a 2/3 vote. (We had to increase our budgeted expenditure for one catagory once) A motion is made at our first meeting and discussed and approved with or without amendments. It makes life so much easier to not have to keep going back to the membership to vote on expenditures. It also makes it easy on the treasurer to clearly see the legitimate expenditures. If there is an expenditure that was approved at a meeting I have the treasurer mark the stub with the meeting date it was approved. No guess work at audit time. The president of your PTA will receive the National PTA Resource Manual very soon. In that is an entire section called Money Matters which has all the information you will need. Until then National PTA also has information on how to develop, approve and adopt a budget on their members only site at www.pta.org/cfplus/local/mmbud.asp
and the entire National Resources Manual there also. I have emailed you a few samples. Best Wishes
Please know that when a PTA/PTO formulates their budget, the executive committee needs to approve all monies (incoming, outgoing). The executive committee is finanically and legally responsible for all monies being distributed. i.e. Membership Project Manager submits a "plan of work", according to our bylaws. In the "plan of work", all incoming and outgoing monies need to be disclosed as well as the project plans for the next school year. The executive committee discusses, approves or disapproves, the appropriation and activities. The executive committee advises the Membership Project Manager what projects and monies he/she will have for the next year. The final say will be a vote from the general membership.
Does anyone have a copy of their Budget that our PTA can use as a sample? As long as I've been a member of our PTA we haven't had a budget and I'd like to see one to get started.
You can e-mail it to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
