PTA Finance can be FUN

If you’ve ever seen a PTA budget report, there’s a good chance you acted like you understood it but were lost about five lines in… or you straight up fell asleep. Because truth be told, a PTA’s budget breakdown isn’t the shiny fun part of what we do. It doesn’t tug at your heartstrings like seeing the children have the time of their lives at the Fall Carnival you helped organize. It doesn't match that feeling when you make a teacher smile with a special treat. The finance side of PTA can be confusing! It’s constantly moving and honestly a whole lot of number crunching.

In an effort to bring the FUN into the finance side of PTA, we’ve taken all of those jumbled numbers and mapped them out with an eye-catching graphic that will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Well, still maybe not that level of excitement, but it will hopefully showcase all of the efforts our PTA goes through all year long including summers, holidays, weekends and late nights to keep the business side of PTA flowing correctly.

Each spring we ask for the expected income and expenses of every PTA Committee Leader, Admin, Teacher, and staff member. As long as the request is within a reasonable budget and in line with our PTA goals, we add it to the budget. Where it gets tricky is estimating what we think fundraising events are going to make (Walkathon, Auction, etc) and match that up to what the leaders mentioned above think they are going to spend. The most difficult part about it all is that our biggest fundraising event is in the spring!! So it’s a dance we are in constant step with. If an event doesn't make what we projected, we have to adjust something somewhere in the budget. On the flip side, say we make more than we thought, now it’s time to find a place to spend it (of course with an approval vote within a PTA General Meeting).

The fundraising side of PTA allows us to do the things we need to do. We raise the money to pay for the Teacher Wishlists and other items classrooms need. We raise money to throw the EPIC Carnival for all the kids each Fall, and to host all the other events like Family Dinners and Movie Nights that bring the community together. We raise money for large-scale improvements to the campus like the sports court last year. So here’s a little summary of everything we raised during the 2022-2023 school year, and a breakdown of how we spent it. Hopefully this gives you a glimpse into where your donations and efforts go. It's also a little more fun than reviewing a spreadsheet.

Thanks for all you do to make our little gem of a school special!