Tracking Endowment Funds

Sarah Fitzgerald

Hello,

Does anyone have any tips on tracking and reporting on Endowment Funds in Raiser's Edge? I know in my previous organization we would set up a constituent record for each endowment fund, and they would somehow update to reflect on the fund balances for reporting to donors, but I can't remember the particulars. We would like to start a process for doing something like this at my current organization so I thought I'd reach out to see how others are doing this.

Faith Murray

@Sarah Fitzgerald
I've known of orgs that created a constituent record for their endowments, and then linked their donors to that through relationships. That's one good way to do it.

I personally find it easier at our org to create an Endowment Contact attribute on the donors' records, with the endowment name in an attribute table. I consider it much easier for pulling mailing lists specific to the endowment.

Whichever way you choose, the Endowment record will not automatically update itself. Someone will have to enter a new total amount each year. If you make the endowment its own record, that information can live in an attribute or other place on the record. Otherwise, you can keep the information separately. Either way, I don't know of a clean way to pull a list of <all people related to Endowment> while also merging info from the Endowment record into the letter, so at some point you may have to manually merge the fund totals in or use a conditional merge statement in your letter.

Cassie Chilcutt

@Sarah Fitzgerald we create a specific fund # for each endowed scholarship, then link the donor to the fund # via a relationship. As far as balances, I have to rely on our Fiscal Affairs team to get that info…I know Blackbaud offers award management software that will do al that for you, it's our goal eventually.