[Jennie]

I have read some of the other topics on integration, but needed some additional help and advice. We have been on FE since April 2007; we currently are implementing RE and working on integration issues. Here is our dilemna:

In FE, we have a project that is for an endowed scholarship. We currently book gifts to increase the endowment and gifts to be used for an annual scholarship in the same project. For example, we have the "John Doe Endowed Scholarship" Project. Donor John Doe want to make a gift of $5,500. He wants $5,000 to go into the endowment, but he wants $500 of his gift to stay in cash to pay for a scholarship this year. We put the entire $5,500 in the 1 project in FE: $5,000 is booked to permanently restriced contribution revenue and $500 is booked to unrestricted contribution revenue to be paid out this academic year. Our question: How do we enter this gift into RE? I am thinking we will need 2 funds in RE that will be mapped to the 1 project in FE. 1 fund in RE will be for the John Doe Endowedment and 1 fund will be for the John Doe Endowed Scholarship Annual Gift. That way the general ledger coding can be mapped appropriately...

Has anyone else encountered this issue? If so, how did you handle for integration? Our Blackbaud consultants all along have "bragged" about the 1 to 1 relationship of RE funds to FE projects. However, I don't see how that is going to be possible...

Thanks in advance for your input!
Jennie Wade
Oklahoma State University Foundation

[Doug Creek]

In our FE, we create 3 projects for every endowment: a 6, 7, and an 8 (to make it easier to talk about).

The 6 is the spendable portion. We move money (I believe) every quarter based on a "spending distribution" into the 6. This is what the department/person has to spend for that period of time (or to let it lie and wait to spend, etc).

The 8 is the endowment. This is the "untouchable" money.

The 7 holds the investment income/misc things that aren't really a part of the endowment, but aren't really spendable either (sorry, I'm our RE person, I just know how this works because I had to build fund/endowment reports between the two systems. For the reports, we combine up the 7 and the 8).

In RE, we create the 8, and create the 6 if and only if a gift is given directly to the spendable amount. So in our case, $5,000 would have been booked to the 8 (in both RE and FE), and $500 would have been booked to the 6 (in both RE and FE).

This is our solution to that particular problem. It creates hell trying to get certain reports (like a donor endowment report), but...

Hope that helps at least a little bit!

Doug

[SandyWilder]

Jennie,
Another option would be to use the Gift Subtype field in RE to denote Restricted, Temp Rest. etc. That would allow you to maitain the 1 to 1, but still capture the detail you're looking for. Each subtype can be mapped to a different GL Account number.
Hope that helps!
Sandy Wilder
President
Leading Edge Software Solutions
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