[kchaines@gmail.com]

I have a client that is looking to implement the FE and RE integration. They want to be able to track event revenue such as sponsorships, ticket sales, raffle sales, auction purchases, etc.

My thought was to use different Gift Subtypes in RE, and map them to different projects on the Fund Distribution of Funds.

However, with many of my other clients who used Blackbaud for their FE implementation, BB appears to recommend seperate Funds in RE for those projects.

This is not ideal, in my view, because my client already has an organizational definition for what a Fund in RE is: What the donor gave to.

So, their fund structure would look something like this:

-----------------------------------------------------------
Art Museum Endowment
Art Museum Exhibit A
Art Museum Exhibit B
Art Museum Unrestricted

Using what I have seen with other clients who have established the RE>FE integration they would have additional Funds of

-----------------------------------------------------------
2007 Wine Gala
2007 Golf Tournament


I'm not a big fan of this, in principle since this pretty much throws the Fund definition out the window.

My preference would be to have a Gift Subtype of "2007 Wine Gala: Sponsorship" and map it to the correct project in RE, keeping the Fund "Art Museum Endowment" (what the wine gala was supporting).

Can someone please offer any feedback on this concept?

With Thanks,

Kyle
Kyle Haines Consulting
Kyle Haines Consulting

[Melissa Siobhan]

I am not integrated with FE so my advice may not work but my first opinion is that 2007 Wine Gala and 2007 Golf Tournament are appeals - not funds.

I doubt that the appeal is involved in the FE integration because frankly it does not need to be. All FE needs to know is what can the money be used for. Reports from RE can report on how did the money come in.

[nisaac]

I think this is a very individualized issue. Our understanding here is that the fund in RE belongs to Finance. It directly links with the Project ID in FE.

The appeal is our ask; however, there are many times we have an appeal and a fund that are named similarly. In our world, there are a few reasons for this:
- A breakdown is needed on one of our financial statements
- Expenses must be shown paid from a certain project id
- our budget is broken down in this way so we can budget per major events/projects

The appeal does get posted over to FE. We've found that we needed a real open line of communication with our financial department so that what we enter in RE makes sense in RE and in FE.

We track event revenue such as tickets, auction, etc in RE using Gift subtypes.

Basically, many of our appeals are linked to basic funds such as restricted, unrestricted, etc. Then we have many other funds that are broken out such as wine tasting, anniversary gala, etc. (not by year - one fund for all years)

I hope this helps.

[kchaines@gmail.com]

Nora,

Thanks for your reply. It was most helpful.

Not being an accountant, nor an expert in FE (my expertise is in FE), I think that I may never fully understand why Fund creation for Events is necessary.

Here is one of my questions: If someone attends an event, but designates the gift somewhere, which Fund do you choose in RE? So, if the Event is for unrestricted support, but someone designates the gift to a restricted fund, does this only get tracked on the FE side?

Please, anyone who has confronted this issue feel free to add their thoughts...

[nisaac]

I'd like to answer this question in terms of an mailing appeal. Speaking in terms of an event can be confusing. If the money is payment for a ticket - it needs to go to the fund that pays for the ticket/expenses.

So, if we talk about someone who mails in a gift for an appeal that is unrestricted, but wishes his donation to go to a restricted fund, we mark the appeal for the unrestricted appeal and the fund for the restricted fund. That way if we report in RE on appeals, the gift will show up. If we report in FE on the funds/project id, the gift will appear in the proper place in the financial reports. I hope that makes sense.

[Melissa Siobhan]

I feel differently.

The way I do it is, if someone pays for a ticket and the event is supporting the Pediatrics department of the Hospital then the Fund would be Pediatrics - not X event.

The donor bill of rights says that the donor should rest assured that you will use the money as they ask and the best way to record donor intended use is by Fund.

Yes, there are expenses associated with that event and they need to come from somewhere and, honestly, what is the difference between taking them back out of Pediatrics (knowing that the event is a pediatrics event) or taking it out of unrestricted dollars. As long as everyone is honoring the budget and the event does not create a surplus in the pediatrics budget then you should be fine.

I can see some places where they use different funds for the deductible portion and non-deductible portion of tickets (especially if you follow CASE) gift counting standards. I would leave that accounting up to finance and still record the entire gift in the Pediatrics fund (with the appropriate receipt amount) and let finance record what to count as a gift and what to count as other income.

[kchaines@gmail.com]

I really appreciate the ongoing discussion on this. I'm getting some really good feedback.

However, the question of how to best track the different components of income for an event, using the RE to FE integration still remains.

I guess my question is a technical one now.

Has anyone used Gift Subtypes to effectively track Event income? So without a designated Fund for an Event, has anyone used Gift Subtypes exclusively to track Event income?

Thanks,

Kyle

[Tom]

You can tie appeals and events in RE to Transaction codes in FE, the expenses can then be tagged for either an appeal or an event tied to a particular fund and a P&L then can be created. Only challenge w/ the current version of FE is that you cannot budget at the T code object.

[michaelle]

We use funds and projects to track not so much events but gift giving by constituent codes. We have all our funds set up as a six digit project code with the 6 digit account code (ex. 12345601-4201)the project being 123456, the 01-4201 means that it was given by an alumnus. This also means that we must set up multiple funds for one project so that we can track what each gift was given by and having our Development systems associate watch very carefuly where gifts are put seeing how we have multiple unrestricted gifts funds. Maybe you can set up an account in FE that you would only put a gift given during an event in.

[SandyWilder]

Kyle,
Generally speaking, Fund records in RE are designed to track how money will be spent; Appeals are for tracking how it was raised.
I don't know if you're still working on this, but just for future reference, this is the exact reason for Transaction Codes in FE. During the integration from the RE side, you can have gifts coming from RE tagged with a T-Code that equals the Appeal(&/or Event). On the FE side, expenses can be marked with a T-Code that makes them viewable on the associtaed RE Record. It takes the integration to the next level, allowing the Business office to see development info and the Dev. people to see accounting info. If you use hte Gift subtype, you're ultimately creating a huge, eventually useless but permanent table. Clearly, the T-Code will give your client the detail they need without cluttering up both databases indefinitely.
Hope that helps!