PEABODY — The School Committee continued a conversation, sparked by Peabody Veterans Memorial High School students, to consider allowing the students to utilize online fundraising platforms, at its meeting on Tuesday.
At the Jan. 13 Committee meeting, student representatives asked the Committee to review whether students could use online platforms to fundraise, specifically mentioning the Snap! Raise platform. Committee members agreed that action should be taken to allow the students to fundraise online, as many no longer carry cash, and online fundraising may be a way to get students more funding for their various activities and events. However, many also acknowledged that state laws haven’t quite caught up with technology, and they would need to do some digging into various policies to see what they could legally allow.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, City Treasurer Ross Titelbaum shared his expertise on the matter. He first spoke on Snap! Raise, saying that it takes 20% from fundraising campaigns as a fee, which is a significant amount of money to be losing.
Regardless of his concerns surrounding that platform, Titelbaum emphasized that the state guidelines are strict regarding money leaving City accounts, which includes Peabody Public School accounts.
“Based on what the state guidelines read right now, we cannot have money leave the accounts without either myself approving it directly or the vice principal or principal, whoever’s signing that physical check,” he said. “We have… a checking account that you guys have approved. (There is) $50,000 in that account that (the students) can write a check out of. And then we have the savings account that all the money gets deposited into. That money, in order to have a credit card processor, we have to have another checking account. By law, we’re not allowed to do that. We have to have one checking account that gets money put into, so we can’t have two different accounts for the students.”
Titelbaum’s suggestion was for students to utilize and/or create PTOs or Friends of organizations to fundraise, since those organizations are not affiliated with Peabody Public Schools or the City of Peabody and have their own tax identification, bank accounts, etc. Those entities would then fundraise on their own and cut a check to Peabody Public Schools or whichever class or extracurricular activity they were collecting donations for.
“Friends of would be their own entity, their own 501(c)(3). They would have to go through that whole process of creating a 501(c)(3), doing all the paperwork, all the tax filing; all that is outside of the City’s control,” Titelbaum said.
Mayor Ted Bettencourt noted that there are a number of Friends of organizations throughout Peabody, like Friends of the Peabody Council on Aging, Friends of North Shore Children’s Museum, and Friends of the Peabody Institute Library.
“As was being stated by Ross, we cannot have any say over their operation. They have to have their own Friends group that makes votes that determine where money goes. The City cannot play any role in how the money is distributed and things. We can collect it for certain, specific things that are appointed or voted on by the Friends group, but City officials, City elected officials, they cannot serve on that board; they cannot be a part of any vote,” Bettencourt said.
He continued, “But our senior center, our library, and the Children’s Museum, the Friends groups have been instrumental in a number of programs, some new initiatives. The senior center has been able to purchase a number of buses to help with transportation, so they play a key role in helping assist.”
Committee member Brandi Carpenter thanked Titelbaum for attending the meeting and sharing plenty of information. She candidly noted that a lot of that information wasn’t what she was hoping to hear, but she was optimistic that there does seem to be a way forward for the students, which would be with the Friends of organizations.
“What sounds like an extremely simple thing has turned into a nightmare,” Carpenter said. “But with that being said, I’m confident that our students and their friends will have Friends of that can organize, and for those that don’t currently, I don’t want to hold back those that do… I feel confident that our superintendent can handle that, and I don’t want to hold them back any further. So just to clarify this and to hopefully get it moving, I’d like to make a motion to approve the superintendent to approve online fundraising for Friends of organizations.”
That motion passed unanimously.
Carpenter additionally asked Superintendent Dr. Josh Vadala to reach out to the student representatives who previously came before the Committee to ask about Snap! Raise and inform them that “they’re gonna need a Friend.”
