25k in the bank

[supermario10]

I have joined the PTA at my twins school and at a recent meeting found out there is 25k in the pta bank account. They are at a small school and this seems excessive, shouldn't it be spent on the children rather than sat in a bank? They are looking for new fundraising ideas but surely they should be spending some too? How do I raise this or is it normal. Thanks in advance for any advice.

OP you are too daft for words raising the question on mn- ask your PTA this question.

Have the got an constitution? That will say what the money should be spent on and, as long as there's a need for that sort of thing, you should be spending it! What's your annual income (not profit - income so all money)? If it's more than £5k per annum you have to register with charity commission and then you have to have a constitution

@HirplesWithHaggis Not sure what your P&C is, but I'm pretty sure it's not the same as an English school PTA

It’s Australian. Theoretically it’s Parents&Citizens Association for the school but same as US PTA. It’s where parents (and community) raise funds for the school the children attend. My experience is with public school. Essentially the parent group raise money via sausage sizzles, fetes, putting on disco’s at the school, raffles etc. The ‘community’ bit comes in where you try and get local businesses to do their bit by donating, e.g. prizes for raffles, sausages or bread for sausage sizzles to decrease outlay and increase profit. Then there is annual ‘voluntary contribution’ the parents can make, it’s requested but not mandatory. The school has a ‘wish list’ which the principal or delegate puts forward and the P&C members (those who can be bothered turning up to meetings) vote yes or no and the money raised goes to those things voted yes. At our school it was always additional staffing as schools first priority, then infrastructure/equipment (being public school they would never get it that funding from government) as second priority then stuff like new readers, sports equipment or so forth as last priority. P&C accounts had to be externally audited annually.

It's a reasonable question OP, because on first glance it looks like a lot of money just sitting there.

If it's a charity, there is a requirement to have a certain amount of "reserves" in the bank. Without it, your accounts might not get approved by the Charity Commission, and you'd find it difficult to get insurance or fundraise. The concept is that it's there for emergencies or if your income is suddenly gone.

If you're not a charity, it's still good governance to have reserves.

You should ask. Like pps have said, we have money earmarked for specific things the school needs: subscriptions to learning software, earphones to go with the kids' chromebooks, money for each class for STEM week, or specific big projects. We part funded an outdoor classroom and now we're supporting the refurbishment of the school library.
Parents don't like continually being asked to support the school financially without an idea of where the money is going.
We have a float but nothing like £25k!

The amount of reserves you're required to have is relative to your income/expenditure so we can't really say whether £25K is too much or too little to be sitting in the bank.

But do ask your treasurer or chair! It's a valid question and good that you're actually reading the numbers.

How long has it been there? My issue with it is that parents and kids will have left the school who have contributed to the funds.

@HoppingPavlova

In my experience U.K. PTA's don't generally have anything like the remit your P&Cs. They don't fund staff salaries for instance!

Even if your are new to being on the PTA, I'd expect that if they had £25k sitting in reserves that it would be for a significant project, and if that's the case then I'd expect that parents would be well informed of the PTA's intentions.

It's not appropriate to raise £10s of £000s from parents and not be clear what it's for, especially if you are looking to fundraise even more!

If it is just an unallocated balance well in excess of your annual spend (and in my
experience PTAs don't spend this amount of money annually on routine stuff) it's massively excessive.

Why not have a look on the charity commission’s website. You’ll see the annual income and expenditure for a few years. Our income dipped during covid as couldn’t have events so they may have been trying to recover their reserves a bit ahead to help with cash flow. The last published accounts for our one showed a cash reserve of about £20k which was then depleted during covid as expenditure was greater than income. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to have reserves.

Our PTA is targeting £38k for a specific project, and two years ago spent similar sums on another large project. Computer room, Music room and instruments, Playground climbing equipment, Forest school, outdoor classroom, physio room for additional needs, updated library and tech resources, science lab... There are lots of projects that can cost more than £25k. Check the school newsletter as that often says what money is being raised for, or ask someone.

Hahahahahaa!!!!

We have lots of money in our account too. A big chunk of it is ringfenced for community projects as it was fundraised from the local council. The people who did that fundraising have left though. (Kids at high school). No one really wants to run with it so the money might have to be returned. It does seem like more parents are working full time these days in comparison with five years ago when people had more free time and were keen to help.

I'm the same to be fair. I work full time if I can I will help out at evening events but I don't want responsibility for a "project".

@Tuilpmouse sorry, maybe was not clear. The funds from P&C were not used to pay teachers per normal employment, I.e. if the school is meant to employ 15 teachers then 15 teachers are employed, and paid for by the Dept of Education. That 15 will fit the number of kids at the school per ratio/required allocation. The school and P&C wanted more teachers again to enable smaller class sizes than prescribed minimum so the school employed them on a direct contract rather than them being employed by the public system teacher employer, being Dept of Educ.

OP I totally get your frustration. I was secretary of the PTA at my son's old primary school. When I took the role, we were doing almost weekly fundraisers for a piece of playground equipment which cost around £6k. Parents were being asked to sponsor things like NatGeo magazine for the library, as there was no money to pay for this, but there was already over £15k in the bank, and the HT wouldn't let us spend any of it in case something major came along. It was ridiculous!
I would ask what the money is there for and try to encourage the chair to ask the school what they need.

PTA money shouldn’t be spent in repairs.

^ this. The charity commission have very strict rules about how much money can be sat on. I was chair at our pre-school PTA and we had over 50k in the account at one point because we were building an extension. You should familiarise yourself with how a PTA actually works and what projects they have planned before assuming they are hoarding cash.

Ask them what they are doing with it?

It likely been raised over several years or from donations.
Our PTA fund is healthy. The PTA want to keep it that way as know one knows what is coming in at next fundraiser.
At meetings we discuss and agree how to spend the money. Pupils put forward ideas of what they want. If feasible this is done. If it's costly item pupils want then we would agree to work towards that target.

Pupils definitely benefit through in last couple of years bigger items include outdoor learning area, climbing equipment. Discounted school trips, a gift at Christmas, books for every child to keep, Easter hunt prizes and lots of other things that really make the school nice. Pupils voice is a big thing and the pupils definitely get to voice their opinions

If all the money is spent now just for sake of it then the bigger items /more costly things aren't going to happen as by the time the funding is raised the pupils who wanted / needed it won't be at the school

It will be in the minutes and it’s easily a question that can be raised at the next meeting.

If they are fundraising , not spending and have no plan for money then yes it’s a bit concerning - however that’s unlikely.

Not excessive at all. Sensible to have a decent amount in savings behind them.

Perhaps there was a one-off donation, maybe they just had a fundraiser.

Yes, this. It could have literally just arrived in the account. Also, for all you know, it could have been a restricted gift that can only be spent for one particular purpose - possibly a purpose that takes a lot of planning or organisation, or even something huge and significant costing (e.g.) £50K, meaning that they need to raise the other half themselves before the gifted money can be 'unlocked'.

I used to be a PTA chair, we sometimes had that sort of surplus in the account if we'd had a really good fundraising year and the Head was yet to decide her priorities for spend.

But although the Treasurer did keep some funds always in reserve so the accounts were never empty, I would be pushing the committee to decide what to do with at least £20 - £23k of the cash.

Repairs are the thing it absolutely shouldn’t be spent on!

Also agree with this - it depends on the constitution of the organisation, or the structure of it, but ours said something about providing extras which were not core aspects of schooling but which were of a broadly educational nature to benefit all the children.

So we paid for things like Scottish Opera workshops, a visit from a planetarium thing, fancy new playground equipment, a parallel reading scheme, extra iPads.

Not books, teacher salaries, fixing the roof, a new carpet and things like that.