[Peter]

I am working with some perople in finance about the use and integration with RE. My question revolves around the need of Finance to udnerstand what type of person(constituency) gave the gift. This is for 990s and other tax forms. This is the first RE-FE integration I have worked with and am confused as to how I can use appeal, fund and gift subtype to answer all of the questions that finance wants without creating a royal headache for Raiser's Edge users. Please help

[Matthew]

how do you currently use subtype? we use subtype to answer the constituency question: Trustee, Trustee Foundation, Foundation, Invidiual, etc... this code is completely independent of constituent code, as, for example, a Trustee (ccode) can have a "Special Event" subtyped gift because Finance groups SE revenue as a separate category in this way. Hope that's cleaer..and not more confusing.

[nisaac]

Hi Peter,

We've been integrated - FE/RE - for a couple of years. I'm not sure I understand your question. When we have to report on gifts by constituency, I produce reports from RE. Our integration is set up like this:

In RE, we have campaigns, appeals and funds. Every gift we receive has an appeal assigned. Each appeal has a default fund and a default campaign. The fund in RE links to the project in FE. Every fund in RE has GL distributions set up for each kind of gift. Sorry, for getting basic there, but I thought it might be a good place to start.

I'd love to help if I can. Let me know if you think I can.

Nora

[Peter]

Matt: I mean there already is a constituency code. Currently we are using that to get around the source aspect of the gift, but then we end up with gift-foundation, gift-board, pay cash-board, gift-in-kind-board, pay cash gift in kind board, but then the gift subtypes are numbering in the 30s and 40s and makes that seem more intense then I would like. true its better then special event-board special event- foundation in a fund type but any other thoughts about that?

[Peter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nisaac

Hi Peter,

We've been integrated - FE/RE - for a couple of years. I'm not sure I understand your question. When we have to report on gifts by constituency, I produce reports from RE. Our integration is set up like this:

In RE, we have campaigns, appeals and funds. Every gift we receive has an appeal assigned. Each appeal has a default fund and a default campaign. The fund in RE links to the project in FE. Every fund in RE has GL distributions set up for each kind of gift. Sorry, for getting basic there, but I thought it might be a good place to start.

I'd love to help if I can. Let me know if you think I can.

Nora

what about for 990s? does finance go to development or RE to get that information? or do you have things in your fund or gift-subtype or appeal that show the constituency?

[nisaac]

Our accountants do the 990 for us. I am asked to pull some reports from RE. Our finance and development departments really work well together. I do reporting for FE and RE so usually we can get the reports we need from one system or the other.

Are you doing the 990 directly through FE?

[Peter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nisaac

Our accountants do the 990 for us. I am asked to pull some reports from RE. Our finance and development departments really work well together. I do reporting for FE and RE so usually we can get the reports we need from one system or the other.

Are you doing the 990 directly through FE?

The finance director would prefer to pull all IRS related information from his database and therefor would like all source information inside the GL my familiarity is with RE and not with FE and definitely not with accounting so I am unsure how far I can cry on this and when I just need to say sure we'll do all these extra steps...

on a side note whats involved with integrating grants with FE and RE? we haven't done that before though we have the grants module of FE

[nisaac]

Just a thought on something you can use to pass info from RE to Fe. - when you configure the General Ledger settings in RE, you can add the reference field to the journal reference. You could use that reference field to denote the type of gift. You have to make sure it isn't truncated so you may want to use codes. Just an idea.

As for grants, we have the module but have not really used it in FE. We have just started to use the Prospect module in RE. I imagine they would link through by funds.

BTW, I have RE 7.81; however, I haven't been able to check out many new features. I do understand there are some changes pertaining to integration. They may help with your issues.

[Ali]

We have multiple RE funds mapped to a single FE project to separate the giving types. Each fund has a different revenue account.

For example, FE project 101 maps to the following RE funds:
101-Ind
101-Corp
101-Chap
101-Found

Ind = individual giving
Corp = corporate giving
Chap = chapter giving
Found = Foundation giving

We don't use any gift subtypes. And appeal is used as our, well, appeal. The price you pay is that the 1:1 project to fund ratio that Blackbaud seems stuck to is blown, we have a large number of funds, and the initial setup took soooo long. But data entry is simple nbw. We just do fund, appeal, and the basic gift information.

As the finance manager at my org, I agree with your director. I prefer all the financial information to come out of the accounting package. It can be done, you'll just have to come up with the right way for your organization. And remember, RE is really a subledger to the GL, just like AP and AR. All financial information (read financial, not donor-related) should be sent to and reported on from the central accounting system. (I said that once before and got flamed for it. I really hope that doesn't happen here.... )

To integrate with grants... You create a grant record in FE and on the Projects tab assign a project number that's associated with the grant. By using the project integration you don't have to really do anything after you assign it. The activity just shows on the grant's Activity tab. We don't use projects for our grants, we use transaction codes but that's a different thing and if you want to go there we can...

[Peter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ali

We have multiple RE funds mapped to a single FE project to separate the giving types. Each fund has a different revenue account.

For example, FE project 101 maps to the following RE funds:
101-Ind
101-Corp
101-Chap
101-Found

Ind = individual giving
Corp = corporate giving
Chap = chapter giving
Found = Foundation giving

We don't use any gift subtypes. And appeal is used as our, well, appeal. The price you pay is that the 1:1 project to fund ratio that Blackbaud seems stuck to is blown, we have a large number of funds, and the initial setup took soooo long. But data entry is simple nbw. We just do fund, appeal, and the basic gift information.

As the finance manager at my org, I agree with your director. I prefer all the financial information to come out of the accounting package. It can be done, you'll just have to come up with the right way for your organization. And remember, RE is really a subledger to the GL, just like AP and AR. All financial information (read financial, not donor-related) should be sent to and reported on from the central accounting system. (I said that once before and got flamed for it. I really hope that doesn't happen here.... )

To integrate with grants... You create a grant record in FE and on the Projects tab assign a project number that's associated with the grant. By using the project integration you don't have to really do anything after you assign it. The activity just shows on the grant's Activity tab. We don't use projects for our grants, we use transaction codes but that's a different thing and if you want to go there we can...

I have no plan on flaming, I just wanted more information on how other organizations do that. What do you do with gifts in kind? do you have that as a project fund or just as the gift type?

Thanks for your input!

[Peter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nisaac

Just a thought on something you can use to pass info from RE to Fe. - when you configure the General Ledger settings in RE, you can add the reference field to the journal reference. You could use that reference field to denote the type of gift. You have to make sure it isn't truncated so you may want to use codes. Just an idea.

As for grants, we have the module but have not really used it in FE. We have just started to use the Prospect module in RE. I imagine they would link through by funds.

BTW, I have RE 7.81; however, I haven't been able to check out many new features. I do understand there are some changes pertaining to integration. They may help with your issues.

hmmm integrating something besides fund and gift subtype would be great Maybe I can talk to him bout that but I think it needs to be somewhat automated

[Ali]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter

I have no plan on flaming, I just wanted more information on how other organizations do that. What do you do with gifts in kind? do you have that as a project fund or just as the gift type?

Thanks for your input!

In-kind gifts get the gift type and they go to a specific fund. We get two types of in-kind donations -- raffle prizes for our luncheon and books for our libraries. The luncheon and libraries have their own project codes. We also have a project for general/unspecified donation, so if we were to ever get an in-kind gift that wasn't for the luncheon or libraries, it would go there. Hasn't happened yet though.