money from regular fund for advertising.

We have no money in the budget for advertising. A donor gave money for advertising. At a meetng (called by the President lest than 24 hours in advance) the 3 board members present out of 5 agreed to use money from the general account (I think, not sure if to be from savings or from general account since I wasn't there due to not knowing about the meeting until after it was over and I also was at work.) The President wrote the minutes since I (the Secretary was not present) The minutes just say the Condo will make up the difference.
What do you think of using money not in the budget for advertising? This will definitely need to be explained at our next annual meeting.

Donna,
Thanks for the quick response. We are just advertising the Condominium as a great place to live.
One ad will be in a paper targeting older people. It will be part of a page and not line item to my knowledge. The other will go in a package mailed with many small flyers ours being one of many. This cost 4 cents per flyer.
As we are non profit, we will not make any profit from these ads.

Donna,
your reply is exactly what some of our owners have been saying. We did have a lot of units for sale about 6 or 7 out of 43. No we are not under the Developers watch we have had a turnover from him. This Association was started in 1981.
Our goal in advertising is to let people know we are here. Many people have no idea we exist and if they do know we exist, they think it is assited living since it is adjacent to a care center. But spending so much money on adverting, I would have tried to put the brakes on if I had been at the meeting. I especially don't like using money from the General Fund for advertising.
Personally I think an ad in the Yellow Pages would let people know we are here. We do not have one at this time. At least I couldn't find it in the Yellow Pages.