Standards of Affiliation

Annual membership dues are agreed upon by the members of your PTA or PTSA and should be documented on your Local Unit Organizational Structure Form, which is stored in your unit’s Givebacks account. The dues amount includes National PTA dues of $3.25/member and Virginia PTA dues of $1.50/member. Your PTA or PTSA is responsible for paying (remitting) these amounts monthly to the Virginia PTA, which in turn sends National PTA its portion of the dues. Failure to submit membership lists and state dues will result in your unit being closed and its tax-exempt status revoked.

All membership lists and national/state dues should be submitted to Virginia PTA electronically via the free Givebacks account provided by Virginia PTA. (Read more about Givebacks, request Givebacks access from Virginia PTA, or watch this video about selling memberships on your Givebacks online storefront.)

If you are selling all your memberships through your online store in Givebacks, then your membership list is already submitted! You just need to ensure you remit your dues payment every month.

If you are not selling all your memberships through Givebacks, you must report any memberships sold via cash, check, or another electronic platform by:

• Manually entering each membership sale into Givebacks. (Read these instructions, or watch this video.)
• Importing a membership-list spreadsheet (.csv file) into Givebacks. (Read these instructions, or watch this video.)

To remit dues electronically via Givebacks, your President or Treasurer simply needs to go to Memberships > Remit State Dues on your unit’s Givebacks page. (Read these instructions, or watch this video.) Then click the Send ACH Payment button and enter your bank’s ACH information (from the bottom of a PTA check)—just the same way you would for an online bill payment. If you run into trouble, schedule a one-on-one work session with Givebacks staff to walk through the online dues payment process. Note: Your PTA does not need to have the Stripe feature enabled in your Givebacks account to remit dues payments to Virginia PTA. Stripe is a backend system for processing credit card purchases that is used by many platforms. Enabling the Stripe feature in your Givebacks account allows your PTA to sell memberships (and other items such as spirit wear) in your online Givebacks store.

• Log into Givebacks to Remit Your State Dues

Membership Dues Resources

• Membership Resources 
• Video: Selling PTA Memberships in Your Givebacks Store
• Video: How To Pay (Remit) State PTA Dues Electronically
• Video: Adding Cash/Check-Paid Members to Givebacks
• Video: Importing Memberships in Bulk

Advance Membership Sales

Many PTAs start their membership campaigns in the spring during open house events for rising elementary, middle, and high school students. From March 1 to June 30, your PTA can sell memberships for both the current fiscal year and the coming fiscal year. (If you don’t see this option in your Givebacks account, contact Givebacks and ask them to enable this feature for your PTA.) In your Treasurer Reports, record membership sales for the coming fiscal year and the current year on separate line items. Current-year membership sales should still be remitted to Virginia PTA monthly, and no later than June 30. Advance membership sales should be remitted to Virginia PTA when the new fiscal year starts on July 1.

Paying by Paper Check

Electronic dues payment removes the hassle of mailing paper checks, reduces the risk of math errors, and provides secure and rapid processing that facilitates a clean month-end reconciliation. We very much prefer that you use this payment method. However, if for some reason you are unable to submit your dues electronically via Givebacks, you may mail a check using a paper Dues Remittance Form. Please allow at least 1 week for processing.

Refunds for Overpaying State Dues

If your unit overpays its membership dues, you can make a request for a refund. Such requests will be honored if made in writing within sixty (60) days of payment prior to the close of the membership year. Thereafter, refunds will be granted at the discretion of the state president and vice president of membership, and they may be limited to the state portion of the overpayment. Please complete the Dues Overpayment Request Form to start your request.

National PTA Dues Increase

At the start of the 2025–2026 school year, National PTA’s membership dues increased from $2.25 to $3.25/member, as approved in July 2024. This was the first National PTA membership dues increase in 13 years, and it was intended to help meet the costs of inflation, expand access to grants, and ensure PTA continues to provide nationally recognized family engagement resources and event toolkits for your members and school communities. Virginia PTA last raised dues in 2015 by 50 cents to $1.50, and we have no plans to raise state membership dues. Virginia PTA is committed to keeping dues as low as possible while still providing the services you rely on, including robust nonprofit leadership guidance, training, personalized support, volunteer and student recognition programs, and strong state advocacy.

By federal law, your PTA must submit a nonprofit tax filing—the Form 990-N, Form 990-EZ, or Form 990—to the IRS every year.  If your PTA fails to file taxes for three (3) years in a row, you risk losing your federal tax-exempt status and may need to pay IRS fees to have it reinstated.

Per the Uniform Bylaws, which is a legally binding document, your PTA must also provide a copy of your tax filing (or confirmation that it was accepted, in the case of the Form 990-N) to the Virginia PTA by August 1. Note that your outgoing Treasurer or President can submit a tax filing to the IRS anytime after your fiscal year ends on June 30. The Virginia PTA’s August 1 deadline for tax filings is earlier than the IRS’s deadline to ensure that an officer responsible for the fiscal year that just ended (e.g., the outgoing Treasurer or President) can conclude their term by preparing and signing off on the tax filing for the period they oversaw. It is also important that the Virginia PTA receives your filings earlier so that we can prepare the group tax exemption for all the state’s PTAs before the IRS’s hard deadline.

You do not need to hire an accountant to prepare these tax filings. In fact, in most cases (including Form 990-EZ submissions), the best thing to do is to submit the filing by yourself and save on hefty fees. We understand that more complicated filings may require the services of an accountant, and in those circumstances, you can request an extension on the August 1 deadline, as described below. Read further for instructions pertaining to each version of the Form 990.

Form 990-N (gross receipts of $50,000 or less)

According to IRS rules, if your PTA has averaged gross receipts (income from all sources) of $50,000 or less over the last three years, then you can file the IRS Form 990-N (e-postcard) on the IRS website, which takes about 5 to 10 minutes to complete and does not require any special accounting knowledge. You should file the Form 990-N prior to completing your Financial Review.

To file the Form 990-N, you will need to create a personal login on the IRS website that is tied to a specific individual. Your login should be attached to your personal email account, and not an organizational email account, so if you are taking over for another officer, you should create a new account.

After you have logged in with your personal account, navigate to the 990-N filing page and enter your PTA’s employer identification number (EIN) number to file. Be sure that you are correctly inputting your official PTA name. Typically, this would mean that line 1 of the Form 990-N would read: Virginia Congress of Parents and Teachers. Line 2 (“DBA – doing business as”) would be your PTA’s name.

You need to provide verification to the Virginia PTA that your submission was accepted by the IRS. On the IRS’s Manage Form 990-N Submission page, you will see the Form 990-N you just submitted. Immediately after filing, the status will be Pending. After about 10 minutes, refresh the page (F5 key for Windows, Command-R for Mac), A GET UPDATED STATUS button will be visible. Click on the button, and the status should change from Pending to Accepted. If your 990-N filing is rejected, you may have an issue with your EIN; please contact your Council PTA and Virginia PTA immediately.

Print out a copy of this confirmation page and upload the PDF to Givebacks. Please make sure that the PDF reflects the correct filing year and says Accepted.

• File IRS Form 990-N
• Form 990-N User Guide
• Log into Givebacks to Upload Your Form 990-N Confirmation Page

Form 990-EZ or Form 990

If your PTA’s gross receipts are $50,001 or more, but less than $200,000, your PTA may file a Form 990-EZ. If your PTA’s gross receipts are $200,000 or more, your PTA must file a Form 990. While the Form 990-EZ and Form 990 are more complex than the Form 990-N, you do not necessarily need to hire an accountant. Note that the IRS keeps a list of online filing providers, and accounting software like MoneyMinder can prepare and file Form 990-EZs for an added fee. When submitting your tax filing to the Virginia PTA on Givebacks, submit a PDF of the full Form 990-EZ or Form 990 you filed with the IRS.

If you are filing the Form 990-EZ or Form 990, you may request an extension from the Virginia PTA by submitting a request prior to August 1. (The hard IRS deadline, which the Virginia PTA has no say over, is November 15.) A deadline extension will give you more time to hire an accountant or complete the filing on your own.

The purpose of the Annual Financial Review is to ensure that PTAs are following proper financial procedures, practicing financial responsibility, and maintaining transparency with their general membership. The Financial Review is not meant to be a test that you can “fail” or that will lead to punishment. It is aimed at identifying areas where financial practices can be improved so that your PTA can serve your members and communities in the best possible way.

Can I pay a CPA to do our Financial Review? According to the Virginia Board of Accountancy, certified public accountants are no longer permitted to conduct a PTA/PTSA Financial Review in their capacity as CPAs (they can still help out in a volunteer capacity as a member of the three-person Financial Review Committee, as described below). This is because our review process does not follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). We do not require following such audit procedures because it would make the review process even more complicated for PTA volunteers to complete. The Financial Review is meant to be a member-driven process where PTA members (leaders or ordinary members) vet how the organization has been managed over the past year. It is not supposed to be stressful (unlike an actual audit), and if you acted in good faith but happened to make errors, it should not be a big deal—the process is supposed to give you feedback on best practices so that you can improve.

Timeline and Submission

Your financial review should be completed and submitted to Virginia PTA via Givebacks by August 1. This ensures the outgoing officers report on the fiscal year they oversaw. Additionally, this allows the incoming Treasurer and Executive Board to transition into their new roles quickly and use the valuable summer months to budget and prepare for the coming year.

As an example, the Financial Review for the 2025–2026 school year should be completed by August 1, 2026, and uploaded to the 2026–2027 Compliance Panel in Givebacks.

Conducting your Financial Review

1. Appoint a committee: Sometime before the end of the fiscal year on June 30, your Executive Board should appoint a Financial Review Committee of three PTA/PTSA members who were not authorized signers on your unit’s bank account during the period under review. Alternatively, you can attend a Financial Review Exchange or partner with another school’s PTA/PTSA, swapping your financial records and filling out each other’s Financial Review Forms; in that case, the PTA members at the other school(s) will serve as your Financial Review Committee. Any newly elected incoming officers (including the incoming Treasurer) can serve on the Financial Review Committee, so long as they did not have check-signing authority when the financial activity being reviewed took place. (This means it is fine to transfer check-signing privileges to the incoming Treasurer immediately after an election, provided no further financial activity occurs that will be reviewed.) In fact, having incoming officers serve on the Financial Review Committee is encouraged so that the new officers learn about how the organization is being run!
2. Prepare materials: Immediately after the fiscal year ends on June 30, your outgoing (or continuing) Treasurer should prepare their records for review, making sure that they have all the items listed in Section B of the Financial Review Form. The outgoing Treasurer then completes Section A and may choose to complete Section D for the Review Committee to verify. After signing the form, the outgoing Treasurer presents it to the Financial Review Committee along with the required records (which may be physical or digital, so long as they are easily and fully accessible).
3. Conduct the Financial Review in July: The Financial Review Committee reviews the provided records and completes Sections B, C, D, and E of the form. They then present the form along with the required records to the incoming (or continuing) Treasurer and President.
4. Sign and upload the completed form to Givebacks: The incoming Treasurer and President complete Section F of the form, indicating that they have received the Financial Review. They then upload the completed three-page form to Givebacks by August 1, following the instructions on Virginia PTA’s Standards of Affiliation page at https://vapta.org/standards-affiliation#soa. Please note that your PTA/PTSA’s Organizational Structure Form, its proof of insurance coverage (typically, a one-page certificate or payment receipt), and the IRS confirmation page (Form 990-N) or full filing (Form 990-EZ or 990) for the just-ended fiscal year must also be uploaded to Givebacks by August 1, as described on the same webpage.
5. Share the Financial Review: The incoming Treasurer and President share the completed form with the incoming Executive Board, which uses it to guide them in preparing the Budget for the upcoming year. The completed Financial Review form should also be shared as an informational item at the first General Membership meeting of the new school year. If there are edits needed as a result of the Executive Board or General Membership’s review of the completed form, you should make those edits and resubmit your Financial Review Form in Givebacks.

It is highly encouraged that your PTA/PTSA attends a Financial Review Exchange, which are often hosted by a city or county’s Council PTA (go to https://vapta.org/vapta-councils for a list of Council PTAs). At a Financial Review Exchange (also called a Financial Review Swap), Council officers and other PTA/PTSA treasurers will be on hand to serve as your Financial Review Committee. If you attend an exchange, you won’t need to create your own committee or swap with a neighboring school. Participating in an exchange is also a great training opportunity, as it helps incoming Treasurers develop a strong understanding of organizational basics, while allowing experienced Treasurers to gain insights and tips from seeing how other PTAs structure their work.

If no business was conducted during the fiscal year, or if there are unusual circumstances preventing the completion of the Financial Review, please immediately contact your Council PTA and/or operations@vapta.org. If you are an incoming Treasurer and do not have a completed Financial Review or financial records for the previous fiscal year, you should document the lack of records and your efforts to obtain the records in Section A of the Financial Review Form. Then submit the form to Virginia PTA along with the signatures of the incoming Treasurer and President. If you are having issues with records not being turned over in a reasonable and timely fashion, you should immediately contact your Council PTA and/or operations@vapta.org for support.

If your Treasurer leaves office for any reason in the middle of the school year, then the Executive Board should use the same form to conduct an Interim Financial Review within three (3) weeks, and before the new Treasurer takes office. Indicate the date that the Treasurer left office on the “Fiscal year reviewed” line on the form.

• Financial Review Form (form for 2025–2026 review year, but using earlier versions of the Financial Review Form is acceptable)
• Log into Givebacks to Upload Your Signed Financial Review