Restricted Funds in Raiser's Edge

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Charissa Hurt
Charissa Hurt
Sixth Anniversary First Comment
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hello Everyone -


We're trying to brainstorm some best practices on how to track restricted funds in RE at my work. We're wanting to create a system where we're better able to report to donors on the impact of their gift. What would be the best way to track the following:

- a fund manager (the person to go to if you have any questions about the donation)

- whether the fund is restricted or unrestricted

- a reminder for when to follow up with the gift recipients for a report to send to the donor


Thanks!
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  • Crystal Bruce
    Crystal Bruce admin
    Ancient Membership 5,000 Likes 2500 Comments Photogenic
    Discussion moved to Raiser's Edge Community. Thanks!
  • Aaron Rothberg
    Aaron Rothberg
    Eighth Anniversary 500 Likes 100 Comments Name Dropper
    Hi Charissa-

    Here's one possibility. If you only need one restricted fund, you might create a fund called precisely that, Restricted. We run an Annual Campaign where we have money going into our Annual Fund and our Restricted Fund. If you plan to create many restricted funds, I'd find a naming convention that works for you and use either Fund Category or even better, Fund Type to indicate the fund is restricted. The Fund Manager could have a Individual Relationship to that fund, but one word of caution. If you plan to set up many many funds (I used to manage 640 funds at my last place of work) you cannot use Import or any other Raiser's Edge tool to create any relationships on Funds en masse. You would need something like ImportOmatic to do that. Lastly, for the reminders, you could create an Action with a future date to remind you, but again with Raiser's Edge limited functionality in Funds, you can't add Actions to Funds. If you create a Fund Relationship to a full constituent record instead of a non-constituent record, you could put a future Action on that Fund Manager's constituent record.
  • Charissa Hurt
    Charissa Hurt
    Sixth Anniversary First Comment
    Thanks, Aaron! Unfortunately we're looking at multiple restricted funds, but that is good to know about the limited ability within funds and the fund relationships.


    Charissa.
  • Christine Cooke 2
    Christine Cooke 2
    Ancient Membership 1000 Comments 500 Likes Name Dropper
    One thing I have seen orgs do is to create an org record for each restricted or endowed fund and then link the folks, through relationship, so that you know who you need to send the info to every year.
  • Tom Klimchak
    Tom Klimchak
    Tenth Anniversary 500 Likes 100 Comments Name Dropper
    We have over 3,500 funds here... Here's how we would handle those things:

    Fund Manager: Yep, definitely with a relationship between the Fund and the Constituent who "manages" the fund.  You have different relationship types with different people.  The relationship is not as robust as the relationship between two individuals or organizations, but it works in a pinch.  Another alternative: you can set up a fund attribute that maybe has the constituent ID of the manager in it or connects to it through a lookup, but that's kind of a wonky solution.

    Restricted or Unrestricted:  Well, we have a little checkbox that says "Fund is restricted" but maybe that's not..standard?  We use that.  But, yes, we also use Fund Category and Fund Type to further categorize the funds.  If we need even MORE categories (and we usually do) we create attributes.  One word of caution: NXT does not yet support Fund Attributes, so use Fund Category and Fund Type for your most important reporting categories.

    Reminder: I would agree that setting up an action is probably a pretty good idea.  Another method might be to use the Start Date field or, yes, an attribute, to keep a "Report Month" or some other sort of date on record.  Then you could run a query each month to find all the funds that need reports to be sent.  In that case you're probably better off making Report Month a text field (October, November, December) instead of an actual date field.  Easier to query on....


    Good luck!
  • Charissa Hurt
    Charissa Hurt
    Sixth Anniversary First Comment
    Thank you for this, Tom!
  • Karen Delashaw
    Karen Delashaw
    Tenth Anniversary Photogenic First Comment
    Is this a fund that will be receiving contributions into it?  If so, we have donors that may want to restrict what their gift is for within a fund. We identify them with a "Restriction" gift attribute on a donor's gift record. 
  • Adam Middleton
    Adam Middleton
    Fifth Anniversary Photogenic First Comment Facilitator Level 1
    Hi Charissa,


    We use a system very similar to the one Tom describes: heavy use of Fund Attributes.


    We have around 200 active funds for which we receive donations, and a similar amount of historic ones with endowments which still disburse prizes, travel grants, scholarships and the like.


    We've renamed a couple of fields on the Fund front screen to "Capital" (with "Expendable" and "Endowed" options) and "Disbursement" (with "Restricted" and "Unrestricted" options).


    A sample of our fund attributes includes:
    Fund allocation manager (the administrator or academic who decides what it is spent on)
    Budget holder (typically the academic in charge of the department)
    Stewardship manager (normally a member of the development team or the budget holder)


    N.B. for the above attributes our office structure allows us to use role names rather than individuals so we don't have to change them - Development Director, Dean, Senior Tutor, etc.


    Disbursement cycle (monthly/termly/annually/ad hoc)
    Award decision month (when the beneficiaries are determined for a prize or scholarship)
    Eligibility criteria (undergraduate/graduate, subjects, nationalities)


    This allows us to define a fund with three attributes which supports "graduate economists from Canada", and makes querying for funds which may be applied to specific needs very easy)


    Donor report due month
    Campaign groups (various categories that allow us to report on all similar funds that are student support, buildings, library, etc)



    We also create fund relationships, but typically these are single major donors/founders of named funds, trustees/executors, and occasionally beneficiaries.


    All these options allow our Stewardship officer and Gift Registry officer to monitor and advise correct expenditure and application of the funds, report to donors, and guide colleagues in other departments which funds might be appropriate for their needs. There's nothing we dislike more than a philanthropic gift which isn't being spent correctly!
  • Charissa Hurt
    Charissa Hurt
    Sixth Anniversary First Comment
    This is great, thank you!

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