[rbullock]

We are trying to develope a policy dealing with when to create funds in RE. In the past funds where created for our basic ledger accounts. Accountas where also created if someone asked that memorial gifts be sent to the John Doe Memorial Cancer Fund. Prior staff would create a fund with this label. As a results over time the Fund list became unmanageable-somefunds would have 100 donors but might only have $1,000 in it while others funds would have $100,000 but only one gift posted to it.

We would like to put in place a policy that would define when funds are created, thresholds for amount, life of the fund etc.

Does anyone have such a beast that they would be willing to share. It would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Rob

BRCH Foundation, Inc.
Boca Raton, FL

[SandyWilder]

Rob,
The Fund record in RE is designed to track how the money will be spent and should be linked to the Project record in FE (if you have PG &E module). Examples of these would include endowments, scholarships, building funds, etc. As a general rule, these decisions are made on the development side of the house as opposed to the accounting side.If you have PG & E in FE, the system can aoutomatically create Projects in FE for new Funds created since the last posting.
Hope that helps!

[Melissa Siobhan]

Any time you accept a restricted gift it needs a corresponding fund to accurately record that restriction. I believe that this is true regardless of the number of donors or amount of the gift. The only exception might be if you actually tell donors that they can not restrict their gift unless it meets certain criteria (amount?) but rarely do non-profits do this. If you accepted the restriction - you need to record it.

It should, as Sandy suggested, match to a cost center/GL code in your finance system so I would get the list of possible cost centers/GL codes from your finance office and start there. Also remember that you are not limited to one fund to one cost center. Let's say you have a cost center for patient education. One donor gives money for books for patient education and another pays for videos. You can create two funds (so you can clearly record the specific restriction) and link both in the GL system to the patient education cost center.

Assuming that the donor is simply covering budgeted expenses the patient education department uses the money whether or not you get restricted funds for it so there is no need to even notify the PE dept. If, however the donor is paying for something not budgeted (and you accepted the terms of the gift) someone will need to notify PE when they have additional money to spend.