changing all gifts made to a restricted to an endowed fund for same purpose

Lois Fleming

We have a group of alumni who established a restricted fund several years ago. The restricted fund is called “The Boys of the 60s”. The money raised is used for men's athletics at the University. They have funded several worthwhile ventures. Now, they want to use what funds are remaining, which is substantial, to establish an endowed fund by the same name and for the same purposes.

The quandry now is how to handle this situation. The donors gave to the restricted fund. Do I just go in and change all those gifts to the endowed fund and somehow note this person's gift will be in an endowed fund. As new gifts come in they will be recorded as “The Boys of the 60s Endowed Fund" easy peasy. But we can't change all gifts to the endowed since a substantial amount was used as a restricted gift.

Alex Wong

@Lois Fleming
there are many ways to handle which really depends on how you plan to report and account for the money.

The really “troublesome” but likely “most rightful” way to deal with this is to account for how much of the money has been used in the old fund, and just report on the gift with the fund and select to the exact amount of gift that has been used and leave those alone, then the remaining will be change to the new fund. ("change" the fund or “adjustment" will depend on if you have the RE gift posted).

The “easy” route is to “leave it”. So all gifts remained at the old fund, and in the financial system (FE or otherwise), make journal entry to reclass specific amount going to endowment fund to the new fund (in FE likely will be new project record, really depends on the way you do financials).

Joe Moretti

@Lois Fleming I say go with ALex's 2nd option, since this is more of an accouting thing than a Raiser's Edge Database. Let Finance handle that one since it pertains to them. Raiser's Edge is not an accouting database, so how the money was spent falls into accounting.

Christine Robertson

@Joe Moretti Agreed. I don't think there's a value in trying to parse out which specific donations of the total go towards the endowment and which do not. I don't see how it benefits donor relations unless a donor has specified that their gift ought to fund the endowment and nothing else. Unless you're tracking specific donor intent, I would think this is an accounting thing. BUT - I would 100% check with your leadership (finance, development, etc.) and see what they think. They may have internal reasons to proceed in a specific direction.

JoAnn Strommen

@Lois Fleming Letting accounting handle past gifts was my suggestion as well. You deal with future gifts. We have had similar changes to funds and accounting has done bookkeeping side unless it was only a couple of gifts.

Kelly Hogan

@Lois Fleming Make sure you document whatever you decide so you can explain it later (even if just to yourself!). ?

Kelly Hogan

@JoAnn Strommen This is how we usually handle a situation like this.

Dariel Dixon

@Lois Fleming Let me get on my soapbox for a second. Like it's been stated before by @Christine Robertson, @JoAnn Strommen, and @Joe Moretti, this is an accounting issue, not a fundraising issue. RE is a fundraising database, not a general ledger. I understand that there can be some pressure to make a change to these gifts, but that is what where those gifts were supposed to be at the time. It's more appropriate to create the new endowed fund and not move those gifts at all. And honestly, I think the real question is if they are just going to establish the endowment with the money from this old fund, or if they plan on continuing to support and contribute to the new endowment. If they aren't going to contribute anymore, you might not need to do anything at all…