PTA Treasurers what does your role involve?

[chompybot]

Hi I have been a Treasurer in my PTA for a couple of years now. My question is, apart from the banking / floats / accounts, are you expected to do other responsibilities too? I feel I am being expected to do too much and I wondered if this is normal.

My problem came about last year when our Chair stepped down at short notice for personal reasons, so I ended up doing a lot more. This was a pretty stressful time. I agreed to stay for another year but only if I was solely doing the finances.

What I have found though is that people don't realise how much is involved in the Treasurer role because it's not very visible (if you are a Treasurer you will know exactly what I am talking about). Just getting everything ready for the auditor took hours! Plus I do all the 'official' stuff like licences and I usually order in most of the supplies (on instruction from the rest of the team) as I have access to the bank account. We do have a Deputy Treasurer which is great but they can only help a little bit due to work commitments.

I have been told I worry too much and that it's my own fault I get stressed because I take too much on and I get too involved. So I have deliberately pulled back a lot over the last year and focused on my role.

Of course I expect to help at all the events, but what I don't think I should be doing is managing volunteers, organising activities, writing newsletters.... At the last event the committee kept asking me about stuff (e.g. where stalls were to be located) and then looked surprised and annoyed when I said I didn't know. Afterwards I had a comment (about stuff that hadn't been done) 'well we all have to muck in' so I got the impression they felt I hadn't done enough. The Chair is really nice but I feel relies on me too much.

I now want to step down because I can't handle the stress anymore. I think if I stay I will lose friendships. It might be good to have some new blood who can start afresh. I will give them the PTA Treasurer role description but I wanted an idea from other Treasurers of what their role involved in addition to the financials. Am I being totally unrealistic that a Treasurer can avoid being dragged into all the other stuff?

I've been our PTA Treasurer for 3 years now, don't have a Deputy. We're a small school (about 90 pupils), and there are 12 of us on the Committee. I was never given a job description.

I handle most of the finance for the fundraising, if I'm not at an event, someone else will collect the money and pass it to me, but if I'm there its my job by default. We run a big event in the summer, which involves sponsorships from individuals and companie, as well as funds on the day - that takes a fair bit of time, and we have a separate Committee to organise it, which I'm on as well.

I do all the banking, run the ledgers, manage the asset list, and produce the annual financial reports and Treasurer's Report, file with the Charity Commission, and work with the auditor.

I handle all payments, whether related to fundraising, or school requests. I check that the school requests link to the budgets/agreements/etc and circulate to Committee for payment. Have just put out the last batch for approval this weekend, as we need to get payment to the school on Monday (only managed to get the invoices on Friday!).

I keep a check on the school requests, and inform Committee of changes, additions etc, implications on funding limitations etc, ie - we're not a bottomless pit!

I take and present a financial report at every Committee meeting.

I create our fundraising expenditure budgets, and do the post-event analysis, so we can investigate areas we can decrease our costs.

All above, fairly standard I suppose - have never had the opportunity to speak to other Treasurers'.

Then I also:
Manage our Charity Commission registration
Manage our Lottery Registration with the Local Authority

Outside of my Treasurer role, I also do general PTA organising, doing etc.
Helping in the setting up and running of events
Cake baking - (but we don't sell to parents)
Just taken on some of our advertising
Minute taking when Secretary is absent
Ensuring we abide by our Constution and keep it up to date.

Would be interesting to know what other people do.
As I said, we're a small school PTA, so probably handle less money than other people. This year we've raised £13,000, and given the school £11,000.

That sounds pretty much like what I do.
I think the problem is we don't have a separate organising team for the big events so it's falling on a few shoulders. Our committee is 5. Our school has about 500 pupils.
I am always happy to bake cakes/run bars etc at events but it's the managing of the events I struggle with.

OP as a fellow treasurer and given the size of the school I would say you need way more volunteers to take the load off you. However I came to this role having previously run our local NCT branch so when asked agreed to do it on the basis that I did the money only as I do not have time (or indeed the inclination or talent) to run events. Which sounds a bit harsh but reflects the fact that a) I work 4 days a week and have another regular volunteering commitment b) you're much more likely to get more volunteers if you say "x isn't doing job y any more, we need more people to help" c) voluntary work can eat up all your time and energy if you don't decide on the boundaries. (Don't get me wrong, I love it but finding a balance is key)

thanks elltee.
I also came to this after volunteering from an NCT branch and we had a much bigger team and the roles were more clearly defined. I don't work at the moment, but part of the problem is that I am spending so much time on the PTA role that I am not left with time to think about anything else. I think sometimes if you don't work people assume therefore you have time to take on more volunteering.

I have tried saying I will only do money, but seem to be expected to do much more - so it is reassuring to read your post.

I think having a Treasurer who does only the money is a lot better than having no Treasurer at all!

How many people are in your committee and do you have teams to run events?

There are around 8 committee members - 2 co-chairs, treasurer, secretary and the rest are general members. The co-chairs organise the three seasonal fairs but for example there is another person who just organises raffle prizes.
I agree there's a lot of less visible stuff that comes with the treasurer role - such as counting and banking cash from 50p non-uniform days (think £250 in change).

I would suggest having a volunteer recruitment drive in September and using that to redraw role boundaries. Having joint chairs often helps I would say. If you're after a job description, have a look at PTA UK's resources.

I haven't been a Treasurer, but from your description I'd say you are being expected to take on a number of tasks I'd have assumed were the role of the secretary and chairperson. I've been a PTA secretary on a similarly fluid committee, and in the end I gave it up and went back to being a simple event workhorse, because the role had expanded to such a ridiculous extent I had to cut it back to fit anything else in.

Perhaps they've had someone in the past who actually wanted to control things like organising volunteers and writing newsletters, but now you need to eliminate any non-financial bits and get them re-allocated to other committee members. Or walk. It's pretty shitty for you, to put in loads of hours then get the feeling that people think you're not pulling your weight.