Parent council money

[Chasa]

Hi ladies, I recently joined the parent council (PTA) at my son's school. The christmas fayre is soon, and it would seem that some of the parents on the council are putting their own hands in their pockets to pay for the prizes/games and whatever else is required for said fayre. I am in charge of a stall and had to buy a few things, roughly amounting to £30. I was under the impression that I kept receipts and claimed the money back from the PTA money pot? I now feel like I am going to look like a skinflint (which I am not) when I had over receipts. The whole point is to raise funds for the kids through these activities, not pay for it ourselves??

Please help.

The cost of the prizes should be deducted from the takings then you get a net profit.

But you shouldn't buy things before asking for what you need first. You need to speak to the person in charge and say "the stall I'm running needs X, Y and Z. Who is supplying these?". If they then say you, then you say "OK, shall I pay with my own money and claim it back at the end from the takings?".

You give up your time, so they should NOT expect you to give up money.

Hi, yes I did ask what I needed for stalls and said do I just keep receipts and I was told yes. Since then in the chat, it's been "I've bought this and such and such has donated money for blah blah" so I'm like...

When I was PTA Chair we always encouraged people to claim things back like this as well as stuff bought for events like Tbags, coffee, milk, biscuits etc
Some people did and some didn't but it didn't affect my view of any of them

Oh, that's good to know, thank you. I think you're right. If people want to pay for things the fine, but don't expect everyone to?

We did a bit of both depending on the type of stall, what people could afford, whether they wanted to or not.
I was often happy to purchase a specific prize for a stall out of my own pocket but I didn't do things like buy any raffle tickets (always terrible prizes in my opinion 😂) or buy from the prosecco stall - which many parents did.
So buying the prize was my contribution.
Basically it needs to be agreed before hand and the budget discussed.

Our school runs a mufti day for donations like sweets, biscuits, bric a brac.

Someone usually asks for donations from businesses e.g. the parent hairdresser offers a hair cut, the butcher offers a pack of steak etc, the Baker makes a cake etc.

Noone buys anything.

If a parent (or whoever) decides to donate prizes rather than claim back the money, it should still be recorded by the PTA so they have a clear idea in the future how much each stall costs to run. If they don’t know how much money a stall makes each year, they can’t then decide which stalls to run - they either need to be profitable or be so attractive that they draw people into the event, even if they run at a loss.

It doesn’t then pressurise future committee members into feeling they can’t claim back expenses because the previous person didn’t. You give your time over and above most other parents, you shouldn’t feel obliged to also give your money in the same way.

OP, submit your claim and if it is refused, make sure the refusal is in writing and then take it up with the school. PTAs are structured in different ways and not all are separate charity entities (we pulled ours in-house over 10 years ago so the school had better oversight of how the money was being “managed”) so the headteacher may be able to sort this for you.