Fund ID/gift reporting- Need best practice advice please!

Tina Cherena

This is a records/reporting/best practice question. I noticed that my organization creates new funds every year for the same scholarship and same gift. For example, John Smith pledged $100,000 over 5 years. The first year, he gives $20,000 and the data person in my organization recorded that as $20,000 to the John Smith Scholarship Fund 2012. The next year, John Smith's next $20,000 pledge payment comes in, and the data person creates a new fund called John Smith Scholarship Fund 2013. Furthermore, the names of the funds are not consistent. The next year's fund might be called JSmith2014, etc. etc. I believe it is best practice to NOT record our gifts this way, at the very least because if I wanted to quickly see how much money John Smith has donated to his fund, I could not look at one record and see all the gifts. If a user is unfamiliar with all the fund names, it is nearly impossible to get an accurate report. I've inquired about why the gifts are recorded this way in our records and the response was simply, "The reason we have it recorded several ways in Raisers is over the years we had Raisers Edge consultants look over the system. Each consultant suggested a different way of reporting. Once you get more familiar with each account you will know what funds you need to pull in order to do your queries." I'd like to be able to respond that industry best practices call for recording all gifts to the same fund as being captured in the same fund in RE. Can you please advise on best practices and any thoughts or suggestions?

JoAnn Strommen

Tina Cherena:
This is a records/reporting/best practice question. I noticed that my organization creates new funds every year for the same scholarship and same gift. For example, John Smith pledged $100,000 over 5 years. The first year, he gives $20,000 and the data person in my organization recorded that as $20,000 to the John Smith Scholarship Fund 2012. The next year, John Smith's next $20,000 pledge payment comes in, and the data person creates a new fund called John Smith Scholarship Fund 2013. Furthermore, the names of the funds are not consistent. The next year's fund might be called JSmith2014, etc. etc. I believe it is best practice to NOT record our gifts this way, at the very least because if I wanted to quickly see how much money John Smith has donated to his fund, I could not look at one record and see all the gifts. If a user is unfamiliar with all the fund names, it is nearly impossible to get an accurate report. I've inquired about why the gifts are recorded this way in our records and the response was simply, "The reason we have it recorded several ways in Raisers is over the years we had Raisers Edge consultants look over the system. Each consultant suggested a different way of reporting. Once you get more familiar with each account you will know what funds you need to pull in order to do your queries." I'd like to be able to respond that industry best practices call for recording all gifts to the same fund as being captured in the same fund in RE. Can you please advise on best practices and any thoughts or suggestions?

Based on limited knowledge of what you want to report, my inclination would be to have one fund or if money is going to the same GL account as other donors one fund with John Smith Scholarship as appeal. 

To quickly see what John Smith has donated to his fund you should be able to do this

1. 
   
   looking at gift tab on his record or
   
   
2. 
   
   with Reports>Financial Reports >gift detail and summary report or
   
   
3. 
   
   with Reports > Financial Reports > Constituent Giving History
   
   

You can always filter by gift date to report on gifts for the year - it doesn't need a separate fund, to me. 

This sound similar to some of our endowment donors who give either cash gifts or have pledged and make annual payments.  As all our endowment is one fund/GL account, we use one fund and then for those specific donors have an appeal in their name that donations are credited to. 

Creating a fund for every year's gift for even a small # of donors is going to create quite a lengthy list of inactive funds.  To me that's gets messy. 

That's my opinion....