Back to School: Where are PTA Thrift Shop Funds Going?

by | Sep 22, 2018 | Schools | 2 comments

Did you know that the PTA Thrift shop no longer funds schools through the PTAs?

Our community has been fortunate to have a marvelous thrift shop, the PTA Thrift Shop, whose profits once were dedicated to supporting students, teachers, and staff by helping fund to the PTAs in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS) district. Thrift stores are a wonderful way to recycle useful goods like clothes, furniture or books back into our community. Anyone can find used clothing or household goods at a very reasonable cost, and for some, the low cost items are more than just a good find – they are a necessity.

The good old days. At its inception and for several decades, the PTA Thrift Shop relied on a model of parent and student volunteers, as well as a paid staff for operations to provide regular financial support to CHCCS schools through their PTAs.  The volunteer labor helped to develop a strong community appreciation and encouraged a culture of generous donations, hard work, and loyalty that helped a sustain the PTA Thrift Shop successfully for years.

A shift in mission. After successfully collaborating with the PTAs on a capital campaign in 2011 to build a new thrift shop building in Carrboro, things began to change. During this transition, the volunteer connection ended and funding to PTAs dramatically declined.  In 2014, the PTA Thrift Shop Board of Directors developed a new mission of supporting youth in the community and changed the PTA Thrift Shop bylaws to remove PTAs from a governance role. As part of the new mission, the decision was made for the PTA Thrift Shop to build a second new building called “YouthWorx” to house youth oriented non-profits. According to Barbara Jessie-Black, Executive Director, the purpose of this change was to develop a “more sustainable organization” by adding another revenue stream from rents paid by the non-profit organizations for YouthWorx office space.

It’s four years later, and as best the community can tell, financial sustainability for the PTA Thrift Shop has not yet been achieved. It’s clear that the steady funding for the schools has dried up. It’s apparent that paying off debt for the new buildings has greatly reduced the funding available for the schools and students that PTAs depended on for many decades.

Where do PTA Thrift Shop profits go? The great majority of the revenues has been and will be channeled into paying the 20 year mortgage on the Carrboro buildings on Main Street – the new YouthWorx building and the Carrboro PTA Thrift Store building next door. See chart prepared by reporter Tammy Grubb at the Herald Sun showing the decline in the support for the schools.  Since 2011, less than 2% of PTA Thrift Shop revenues went to support Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools. In 2016/2017, a modest $9K of $1.7 million in PTA Thrift Shop revenues was directed toward special purpose PTAs grants chosen by the PTA Thrift Shop staff. Many of the grants were not fully funded nor were the grants paid until the following school year, making some funding irrelevant for the intended purpose.

Given the financial trajectory, it is unlikely that the students, teachers, staff and PTAs will ever regain the former levels of support, which was as high as $300,000 per year at one point. To understand the extent of the loss of the financial support, one can look at Chatham PTA Thrift Shop. In 2016, the Chatham PTA Thrift shop gave over $600,000 to Chatham County PTAs from $1.7 million in annual revenue. The PTA Thrift Shop’s change in mission means millions of dollars in support lost for CHCCS students and teachers.

What’s the likely outcome?  After two years of discussion with the PTA Thrift Shop with limited progress, PTA parent leaders came to the realization that funding the students and teachers of the CHCCS schools was no longer a priority of the PTA Thrift Shop.

Therefore in June 1018, the PTA Council made a formal request asking that the PTA Thrift Stop stop using “PTA” in its name in the interest of donor and community transparency. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools PTA Council gave the PTA Thrift Shop’s Board of Directors until July 15 to remove the word “PTA” from its name, website and materials.

As written in the Herald Sun June article, “the CHCCS PTA Council did not take its decision lightly, former Council President Lisa Kaylie said, but the community needs to know where the money from its donated clothing, furniture, books and CDs is going. If less is going to the PTAs, they need to ensure their schools, students and teachers, who frequently use their own money to meet classroom needs, are adequately funded”.

At the end of June, the PTA Thrift Shop Board of Directors responded that they would enter a “due diligence period” to possibly consider mission, vision, name, and/or more with community stakeholders at some point in the fall, but stated no clear time frame or action plan. See more details in this Chapelboro/WCHL article. To date, nothing has been communicated by the PTA Thrift Shop Board of Directors.

What can you do to help the PTAs better support CHCCS students and schools? You can:

A full story of the history of the mission shift is recounted here in this June Herald Sun story.  Chapel Hill-Carrboro PTA tells thrift shop to stop using ‘PTA’ name