Duties of a nonprofit treasurer: the full job explained

Last updated 2026-07-25

what does a treasurer do?

A treasurer is the person legally and practically responsible for an organization's money. That covers four jobs stacked together: recording every transaction, protecting the cash and the records, reporting the numbers to the board and members, and filing whatever the IRS and the state require. In a small nonprofit, one volunteer usually does all four jobs alone, which is a lot for someone doing this on top of a full time job. In a bigger nonprofit, the treasurer might chair a finance committee and delegate the bookkeeping to a bookkeeper or accountant, while still signing off on the numbers and answering to the board. The IRS doesn't hand out a job description for "treasurer." That's set by your organization's bylaws and, for tax-exempt groups, shaped by what the IRS requires an exempt organization to track and disclose on its annual return ^[1]. If your bylaws are silent or vague, that's a real gap worth fixing at the next board meeting, because "the treasurer handles money stuff" is not a job description, it's a liability waiting to happen. Here's the honest short version: if you can't answer "how much cash do we have right now, and can you prove it," you're not doing the job yet. Everything else builds on that one number.

what is a treasurer, exactly, in a small nonprofit or booster club?

A treasurer is an officer of the organization, usually elected or appointed under the bylaws, who holds custody of the funds and is accountable for the accounting records. That's the plain definition, and it applies whether you're running a PTO with a $12,000 annual budget or a state-level nonprofit with paid staff. What makes booster clubs and PTOs different from a typical small nonprofit is turnover. Most volunteer treasurers serve one to three years, then hand the books to a stranger who may have never seen a bank reconciliation. That turnover is exactly why the job needs to be written down, not passed along by memory and a shoebox of receipts. Legally, many state nonprofit corporation statutes require a designated financial officer, though the exact title and duties vary by state; some states use "treasurer," others just require "a person responsible for accounts." Confirm the specific language with your state's nonprofit corporation statute or your state charity office, since this varies and changes. A useful mental model: the treasurer is the one person whose job is to notice if something looks wrong before anyone else does. Not because they're the smartest person in the room, but because they're the only one looking at all the numbers at once.

what do treasurers do day to day, month to month, and year to year?

Weekly/as-needed	Deposit funds, log expenses, collect receipts	Whoever collected the cash
Monthly	Bank reconciliation, board financial report	Board president, bank statement
Quarterly	Budget-to-actual check-in	Full board
Annually	990/990-N filing, state renewals, audit or review	Auditor/CPA if required, state charity office	Miss the annual layer three years running and you don't just have messy books, you can lose your tax-exempt status automatically. More on that below.

Break the job into three time horizons and it stops feeling overwhelming. Day to day (as transactions happen): deposit checks and cash promptly, log every expense with a receipt, never let cash sit in someone's car or a junk drawer overnight, and get two sets of eyes on anything over your organization's threshold (many booster clubs use $100 to $250 as a "needs a second signer" line, though there's no single legal standard for this; set your own in the bylaws or financial policy). Monthly: reconcile the bank statement against your ledger, line by line, down to the penny. Report a simple summary to the board (cash in, cash out, ending balance, anything unusual). Pay any bills or reimbursements that came in. Annual: build next year's budget with the board, close out the books for the fiscal year, and handle the big filings. This is where Form 990, 990-N, or 990-EZ enters the picture, along with any state charitable solicitation renewal and raffle license renewal if your group runs raffles. A rough table of what lands where: | Frequency | Task | Who else is involved |

what is Form 990, and does our club actually have to file one?

Form 990 is the annual information return that most tax-exempt organizations file with the IRS. It's not a tax bill in most cases (exempt orgs generally don't owe income tax on mission-related revenue), it's a disclosure document: revenue, expenses, assets, governance practices, and compensation, all reported to the public and the IRS ^[1]. Which version you file depends on your gross receipts and assets. The IRS breaks it down like this: organizations with gross receipts normally $50,000 or less can file the electronic postcard, Form 990-N ^[2]. Organizations with gross receipts under $200,000 and total assets under $500,000 can generally file the shorter Form 990-EZ instead of the full Form 990 ^[3]. Larger organizations file the full Form 990. Here's the sentence every new booster treasurer needs tattooed somewhere: the instructions for Form 990 state that an organization exempt under section 501(a) "must file Form 990... unless it is excepted from filing," and the exceptions are narrow and specifically listed ^[1]. There is no small-club exemption from filing something. A tiny PTO with $3,000 in the bank still files the 990-N. If your group has never filed anything and you're not sure what you are, start by checking the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search tool to see if you're even listed, and if your exempt status shows as revoked ^[4]. That single search saves hours of guessing. For deeper reference on the whole 990 family, see our guides on form 990, 990n, and 990-EZ vs full 990 filing thresholds.

what is the 990-N, and how is it different from the full 990?

The 990-N, sometimes called the e-Postcard, is the simplest version of the annual filing. It's for organizations whose gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less ^[2]. You file it entirely online, it takes maybe ten minutes once you have your EIN and basic info handy, and there's no paper form and no fee to file it. The 990-N asks for eight things, according to the IRS: your legal name, any other names used, mailing address, website (if you have one), your EIN, the name and address of a principal officer, your tax year, and confirmation your gross receipts are $50,000 or less ^[2]. That's it. No financial statements, no expense breakdown. Compare that to Form 990-EZ, which requires actual line-item revenue and expense reporting, a balance sheet, and program service descriptions, or the full Form 990, which runs many pages and asks about governance policies, conflicts of interest, and executive compensation. One trap: "normally $50,000 or less" is a three-year average under IRS guidance, not a single-year cliff. A booster club that had a huge one-time fundraiser (say $70,000 from a gala) doesn't automatically get bumped to 990-EZ if their three-year average still lands under the threshold. When you're near the line, this is worth confirming with the IRS or a qualified preparer rather than guessing. See our full walkthroughs on ^[990](/articles/treasurer-basics/990), form 990-n, and irs form 990 for step-by-step filing help.

what happens if the treasurer misses the Form 990 filing deadline?

One missed year usually isn't fatal, but the IRS has a hard three-strikes rule that new treasurers need to know cold. Under Internal Revenue Code section 6033(j), the IRS revokes the tax-exempt status of any organization that fails to file a required annual return or notice for three consecutive years, effective as of the filing due date for the third year ^[5]. Three years, not three filings missed on purpose, just three years in a row where nothing gets submitted. That includes the 990-N postcard. A tiny booster club that forgets the postcard for three straight years loses its exemption automatically, no warning letter required beyond what the IRS already sends. Once revoked, the organization shows up on the IRS's Auto-Revocation List ^[4], any donations made after the revocation date technically aren't tax-deductible as charitable contributions, and the org may owe corporate income tax on revenue going forward until status is reinstated. Getting reinstated means filing Form 1023 or 1023-EZ again (yes, the exemption application, again) along with the missing 990s and, depending on how long it's been, possibly paying a user fee and requesting retroactive reinstatement under the procedures the IRS lays out in Revenue Procedure 2014-11 ^[6]. It's fixable. It's just a real project, often weeks of back-and-forth, not an afternoon task. The fix that actually works: put the filing deadline on a shared calendar with two reminders, not one person's memory. The deadline is the 15th day of the 5th month after your fiscal year ends ^[3], so a July-through-June fiscal year files by November 15.

what does a club treasurer do that's different from a corporate nonprofit treasurer?

A club treasurer, meaning a booster club, PTO, PTA, or youth sports league, does the same core job as any nonprofit treasurer but usually without a bookkeeper, without an accountant on staff, and often without a written policy manual at all. The differences that matter most in practice: Cash handling is heavier. Club treasurers deal with concession stand cash, raffle ticket cash, car wash cash, all of it collected by volunteers who aren't trained in cash controls. That's where a two-person count and a simple deposit log matter more than any fancy accounting software. Turnover is faster. Corporate nonprofit treasurers might serve for years. Club treasurers often serve one season or one school year, then vanish along with their kid graduating. That makes the handoff document (bank access, passwords, filing history, the last three years of 990s) genuinely more important than the bookkeeping method you choose. State raffle rules apply more often. Boosters and PTOs run raffles, 50/50s, and bingo nights far more than typical nonprofits, and most states require a specific charitable gaming or raffle license before you sell a single ticket. That license is separate from your federal tax exemption and separate from any state charitable solicitation registration. Confirm the specific license, fee, and application window with your state's attorney general or gaming/charity office, since rules vary widely and change often. Smaller dollar amounts, same legal exposure. A $9,000 budget club still has to file something with the IRS every year, still has fiduciary duty rules that apply to its board, and still risks auto-revocation. Size doesn't buy an exemption from the rules, it just makes the mistakes easier to hide until they aren't.

what records does a treasurer have to keep, and for how long?

At minimum, a treasurer keeps a check register or ledger, bank statements, deposit slips, receipts for every expense, board meeting minutes that approve major spending, and copies of every tax filing and state renewal. On retention periods, there's no single federal law that says "keep nonprofit financial records exactly 7 years," so treat any specific number as a rule of thumb, not gospel. The commonly cited practitioner guideline is to keep tax-related records at least 7 years since the IRS can audit prior years under certain conditions, and to keep permanent records (articles of incorporation, IRS determination letter, bylaws) forever. Confirm any specific retention requirement with your state charity office or a qualified advisor, since some states set their own minimums for nonprofit financial records. What actually gets a treasurer in trouble isn't usually the retention period, it's gaps. A missing receipt here, an unreconciled month there, a reimbursement paid to a board member's spouse with no backup. None of that is fraud by itself. All of it looks bad in an audit or when a new treasurer takes over and can't explain a discrepancy. The practical minimum for a volunteer-run group: keep the current year plus the past three years easily accessible, and box up (or scan) everything older than that rather than throwing it away.

what does a treasurer report to the board, and how often?

At every board meeting, at minimum: a summary of cash in and cash out since the last meeting, the current bank balance, and a comparison against the budget so the board can see if spending is on track. Some boards want more detail, some want less, but "trust me, it's fine" is not a financial report. Bring numbers, even rough ones, to every meeting where money gets discussed. At year-end, the treasurer typically presents an annual financial summary to the full membership (if your bylaws require an annual meeting, which many booster club and PTO bylaws do), plus whatever the board needs to approve next year's budget. Some organizations, particularly larger ones or those with government grants, are required to get an independent audit or financial review. Many states set a revenue threshold above which a nonprofit's charitable solicitation registration requires an audited financial statement or a review, and the specific dollar threshold varies by state; confirm the number with your state charity office before assuming your club is exempt from that requirement. A useful habit for small clubs: even without a formal audit requirement, ask a second board member or an outside volunteer to review the books once a year. It's not an audit, it's a sanity check, and it catches errors before they compound.

what internal controls should a treasurer set up from day one?

Internal controls sound like a big-nonprofit concept, but the small-version list is short and doable in a weekend. Separate duties where you can. The person who collects concession cash shouldn't be the only person who counts it and the only person who deposits it. Even with three volunteers total, split those steps. Require two signatures or two approvals above a set dollar amount. Pick a number that fits your budget size, write it in a one-page financial policy, and follow it every time, no exceptions for "it's just this once." Reconcile the bank account monthly against the ledger, not against memory. A five-minute reconciliation catches a $40 error before it becomes a $400 mystery six months later. Use a receipt or reimbursement form for every expense, even small ones. "I paid for it myself, just Venmo me back" without a receipt is exactly how books stop making sense. Limit who has debit card or bank login access, and change it immediately at every officer transition, not "whenever we get around to it." This is the kind of setup a lot of new treasurers end up building from scratch, which is part of why we built the $99 one-time State-Personalized Treasurer Kit: a starter policy, ledger template, and filing checklist matched to your state's raffle and charity rules, so you're not drafting a financial policy from a blank page during your first month on the job.

what does a treasurer hand off to the next treasurer?

A good handoff packet is the single highest-leverage thing a treasurer can leave behind, and most clubs skip it entirely. At minimum, hand off: the last three years of bank statements and reconciliations, copies of the last three years of 990/990-N filings and confirmation of current IRS exempt status via the Tax Exempt Organization Search tool ^[4], the state charitable registration renewal date and login if applicable, the raffle or gaming license renewal date if your group runs raffles, a list of every recurring bill and who it's paid to, and updated bank signer cards removing the outgoing treasurer. Also hand off the boring stuff nobody thinks to write down: the Venmo or Square login, the receipt book, the lockbox combination, and a plain-English note explaining anything unusual in the current year's books ("we're still waiting on a $600 reimbursement from the spring carnival vendor"). If you're the outgoing treasurer and you genuinely don't have three years of clean records to hand off, that's not a reason to panic or hide it. Tell the incoming treasurer and the board directly, and start the current year clean. A messy past year is fixable. A hidden messy past year is what turns into an actual problem.

Frequently asked questions

What does a treasurer do in a nonprofit organization?

A nonprofit treasurer tracks all money coming in and going out, keeps the accounting records straight, reports to the board regularly, and handles required tax and state filings like Form 990 or 990-N. In small nonprofits, one volunteer usually does all of it; larger ones split bookkeeping from oversight.

What does a treasurer do in a club, like a booster club or PTO?

A club treasurer handles the same core duties as any nonprofit treasurer (recordkeeping, reporting, filings) but usually deals with more cash handling from fundraisers, concessions, and raffles, and faces faster turnover between volunteers. That makes clear handoff documents and simple cash-count procedures especially important.

What is Form 990?

Form 990 is the annual information return most tax-exempt organizations file with the IRS, reporting revenue, expenses, assets, and governance details. It's a public disclosure document, not usually a tax bill. Smaller organizations file simplified versions: Form 990-EZ or the 990-N e-Postcard, based on gross receipts and asset thresholds ^[3].

What is the 990-N and who has to file it?

Form 990-N, the e-Postcard, is for tax-exempt organizations with gross receipts normally $50,000 or less ^[2]. It's filed online in minutes and asks for basic identifying information, not financial detail. There's no fee, but missing it three years running triggers automatic loss of tax-exempt status.

What is a 990 tax form used for?

It's used by the IRS and the public to see how a tax-exempt organization raises and spends money, who runs it, and whether it's still operating consistent with its exempt purpose. Anyone can look up an organization's filed 990s, which makes it a transparency tool as much as a compliance requirement.

What happens if a club treasurer never files anything with the IRS?

After three consecutive years without any required 990-series filing, the IRS automatically revokes the organization's tax-exempt status under Internal Revenue Code section 6033(j) ^[6]. The org then appears on the IRS Auto-Revocation List, donations may no longer be tax-deductible, and reinstatement requires re-filing the exemption application plus the missed returns.

Does a small booster club with almost no money still have to file taxes?

Yes. Even a booster club with a few thousand dollars still files Form 990-N annually if it's under the $50,000 gross receipts threshold ^[2]. There's no small-club exception; the IRS instructions make clear that exempt organizations must file Form 990 unless specifically excepted ^[1].

How is a club treasurer different from a corporate nonprofit treasurer?

Club treasurers handle more informal cash (concessions, raffles, car washes), face much faster officer turnover, often lack a bookkeeper or accountant, and more frequently need a state raffle or gaming license on top of federal tax filings. The core fiduciary duties are the same either way.

What records should a treasurer keep and for how long?

Keep bank statements, receipts, reconciliations, board minutes approving spending, and copies of every tax filing. A common practitioner guideline is 7 years for tax-related records and permanent retention for founding documents like articles of incorporation, though exact requirements can vary by state, so confirm with your state charity office.

Does a treasurer need to be a CPA or accountant?

No. Most booster club, PTO, and youth sports treasurers are volunteers with no accounting background. The job is learnable with a simple ledger, monthly bank reconciliation, and a basic financial policy. Larger organizations sometimes hire a bookkeeper, but the treasurer role itself doesn't require a license.

What's the difference between Form 990, 990-EZ, and 990-N?

990-N (e-Postcard) is for organizations with gross receipts normally $50,000 or less. 990-EZ generally applies when gross receipts are under $200,000 and total assets are under $500,000 ^[3]. The full Form 990 applies above those thresholds, requiring detailed financial statements and governance disclosures.

How often does a treasurer need to report to the board?

At every board meeting where finances come up, at minimum a summary of cash in, cash out, and current balance against budget. Annual reporting to the full membership is common where bylaws require it, and some states require an audit or review above certain revenue thresholds.

What should a treasurer hand off to the next person?

Three years of bank statements and reconciliations, copies of recent 990/990-N filings, current IRS exempt status confirmation, state charity registration and raffle license renewal dates, all account logins, and a plain-English note on any unresolved items. Skipping this handoff is the single biggest cause of new-treasurer headaches.

Sources

1. IRS, Instructions for Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax: Exempt organizations must file Form 990 or an appropriate variant unless specifically excepted; Form 990 discloses revenue, expenses, assets, and governance
2. IRS, Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations (Form 990-N): Form 990-N eligibility (gross receipts normally $50,000 or less) and the eight required data items
3. IRS, Form 990 Series Which Forms Do Exempt Organizations File: 990-EZ eligibility thresholds (gross receipts under $200,000, assets under $500,000) and the filing deadline of the 15th day of the 5th month after fiscal year end
4. IRS, Tax Exempt Organization Search: Tool to confirm an organization's current exempt status and check the Auto-Revocation List
5. IRS, Automatic Revocation of Exemption: IRS automatically revokes tax-exempt status after three consecutive years of not filing required Form 990-series returns
6. 26 U.S.C. 6033(j), Failure to file: Statutory basis for automatic revocation after three consecutive years of failing to file a required annual return or notice
7. IRS, Revenue Procedure 2014-11: IRS procedures for organizations to apply for retroactive reinstatement of tax-exempt status after automatic revocation