Endowment Funds as Grants instead of Projects

Donna Basler

Has anyone set up their endowments as grants instead of projects? Our endowments fund some of our projects, so we can't really set them up as projects. I'm wondering if it works to set them up like grants instead.

Patricia Nowak

@Donna Basler
We have our endowments set up as projects as well as the associated current use project. If you would be interested in discussing please message me.

Donna Basler

@Patricia Nowak
Hi Patricia, Thanks for replying. What do you mean when you say “along with the associated current use project”? Can you attach another project to your endowment projects? We are just getting started with FE NXT, so this is all new to me.

Patricia Nowak

@Donna Basler
Within our FE NXT system we have approx 8,500 projects. Some are used to account for operations while a vast majority are set up for our partners at Oregon State University to use to support scholarships and other programmatic uses for the university. For those projects that are endowed we have two projects set up 1) 4100-855550 is a current-use account that only holds those assets that are available to the University to spend 2) 6220-855550 is the endowment account that only holds the investment assets of the endowment that supports the paired current-use account. By having these two separate projects it makes it easy to know quicky how much funds are available for expenditures versus how much are the endowment investment asset. Within our system the 4100-XXXXXX project ID identifies a current use project that supports the university, while the 6220-XXXXXX project ID identifies the endowment project that holds the investment asset balance. The six digit project number after the dash is the same to identify that the funds are associated with each other. This is just a bare bones explanation, our system is fairly complex as we also have project categories for operations, gift annuities, trusts and others. If you are interested in having a zoom or teams meeting please reach out, my direct email is patti.nowak@oregonstate.edu

Donna Basler

@Patricia Nowak
Hi Patti,

Thanks for explaining the way you have your endowments set up. It seems like that is the way most people have set them up. Our problem is that we need to use the endowments and projects in the same transactions. Since you can’t use two projects in the same transaction, we can’t set up our endowments as projects, which is why we’re thinking about setting them up as quasi-grants. I think that will work, but I was looking to see if anyone else has done that, to get their feedback. Thanks again!

Laura Vaughan

@Donna Basler

Maybe take a look at transaction codes too. Neither grants nor transaction codes seem ideal, but I suppose it depends on what you need the data for.

Nate Hug

@Donna Basler Hey Donna! Forgive me if I'm miss understanding (I just skimmed the conversation), but go to a manual journal entry and try clicking on the symbol in the column that says “split” - I'd be curious if that would be of some assistance to you.