The White County School Board exploring changes to club and team fundraiser requests.
School Board Chair Bob Young said school extracurricular activities who want to have fundraisers can currently make a request anytime, but establishing a request deadline would allow time to review and adjust requests. Young said extracurricular fundraising is important since many of those expenses are not covered by local and state government.
“From the same side, we want to make sure that, for the donors that are generous to give to these programs, we just want to make sure that they feel like their funds are going for those specific needs,” Young said. “And in the event, year after year, that they know that they’re contributing to the actual expenses that that program may incur.”
Young said the White County School Board believes transparency is important. Young said at the same time, the Board should continue to ensure money is going to the right place to keep donor confidence high.
Young said the amount of savings an organization controls could be a factor in whether fundraisers are approved. Currently, administrators are more aligned with program finances than the School Board.
“We trust that [administration] is looking at these things in light of the expenses programs have, but again, we’re going to come back and verify that because it is something that should be reviewed,” Young said. “And just making sure from a program standpoint that the funds are being used for the purposes and intents that they’re intended and not just accumulating cash for the sake of accumulating cash.”
Young said under current policy, fundraisers are submitted and reviewed through a chain of command from the organization up to the Director of Schools.
“If we’re doing our job as a Board, we should be scrutinizing those,” Young said. “But given the vast number of organizations, a little more structure to the reporting is really what we’re looking at to make sure there’s continuity.”
Young said organizations did a good job with requests this year, but it is still an area that can be cleaned up. Specifically, Young said several different versions of the application are floating around, and it would be up to the Director of Schools to make sure everyone has the updated version.
Potential changes are still in the discussion phase.
