Edit Inactive Fund or Create New Fund

Whitney Shelton

We received a gift for a scholarship fund that has been inactive for quite some time. The last gift was in 2007, and only three are associated with the current Fund in BB.
I went to edit the fund name because it was poorly named, but I thought maybe it should stay as is and remain inactive to keep everything needed.
Would you create a new fund or edit the old one?

Beth Gallagher

@Whitney Shelton After inheriting a DB where someone chose to create new funds that were VERY similar to old funds (just editing the actual name not any of the Finance values), I vote edit the old one. I created attributes to keep track of previous fund names should that have ever been a question and the date the name was changed.

JoAnn Strommen

@Whitney Shelton We tend to reactivate fund. Partly because we don't need more funds. ?

We note the change in name and date that it was reactivated on the fund record.

Karen Diener

@Whitney Shelton I agree with the replies from Beth and Joann. The only other thing that might be important is communicating with your finance / accounting team to make sure that reactivating and renaming the field will not disrupt any processes. If you reactivate it AND rename it, it might appear as a new Fund and cause some confusion on their end.

Alex Wong

@Whitney Shelton
If the fund is for exactly the same thing, I would reuse old fund. If you are integrated with FE (even if not, you are using some finance system), you need to tell finance (if the old fund were ever inactivated). They need to reactivate any “code” (FE will likely be project) that may have been inactivated. However, you will not need to change GL distribution on the fund.

This way, in the future, if you want report on fund that got new money after a “while”, you can.

Dariel Dixon

@Whitney Shelton Creating a new fund creates WAYYYYY more problems than it solves. Use the older inactive one. Renaming the old fund might also create a bunch of headaches. It might be better served to just leave it be.

Whitney Shelton

Thank you all so much for your responses and advice! I ended up reactivating the fund and noting the name edit in the notes. I also let our accounting team know. The name edit was simple for example changing the Scott Scholarship to the William “Bill” Scott Scholarship *not real donors just for example purposes