Best way to code funds for national w/ various sites & programs

Kyla Cortez · March 27

Hi all, we are in the middle of migrating to RENXT, and we are finalizing our funding structure. We are struggling a bit to come up with the best way to structure our funds in a way that considers our various sites and programs.

We are currently thinking of coding the funds as: SITEPROGRAM, NATIONALUNRESTRICTED, GALA, BOARD OF TRUSTEES. Was wondering what folks in similar orgs do and if we're on the right track.

Joe Moretti · March 27

@Kyla Cortez Since I don't know your organization, I cannot speak completely on this, but I would say to not have a fund that is Board of Trustees, since Board of Trustees should be a constituent code. I think you need to speak to finance to see exactly what money is actually going to and then from there choose the funds such as Unrestricted, Gala, but then I do not know your organization, but speaking to Accounting/Finance would be the first step. Also when it comes to financial reporting , what exactly will you need to report on. Again I do not think Board of Trustees should be a fund.

JoAnn Strommen · March 27

@Kyla Cortez As @Joe Moretti said, it's hard to say for sure not knowing your org.

When you say “coding” are you meaning fund names, fund category, fund type? I can see those as options for fund category or fund type which you can query on for reports. I don't see those as funds.

Kyla Cortez · March 27

@Joe Moretti thank you! I agree that we shouldn't have a Board of Trustees fund, but my supervisor wants it - I'll see if I can push back. Our Finance team is restructuring many items in their system, making this a bit harder.

Kyla Cortez · March 27

@JoAnn Strommen yup, fund names. We use the funds, for example, to support Detroit's Library Program or Detroit's Computer Program (SITE PROGRAM). We also have a gala, so would have a fund for GALA. To my understanding, Funds track what a gift is for and I feel we're thinking of it correctly, but it's a bit complicated because of our Finance team's restructuring.

Joe Moretti · March 27

@Kyla Cortez I would say push back because this will be an issue down the road and more than likely your supervisor will be gone like many and you are left with this mess. Board of Trustee giving can easily be tracked and reported on by the constituency code of Board of Trustee, so I do not see what the reasoning behind your supervisor is, but I can bet it is not a good one after working in this business a long time.

Alex Wong · March 28

@Kyla Cortez
RE NXT is a versatile and flexible to be used by many types of organization, so while there are “best practices”, there is never a definitive guide to how to “code” in RE NXT.

However, Fund is an exception. If your org also use FE NXT, then Fund has specific function to how gift is “posted” to the financial system, which is reason why so many others already commented that you should talk to your finance team.

Fund is for recording how the donated money going to be used. (where as Appeal “is generally” recording “why” and “how” the donation is solicited/came in). So “Fund” that say “Board of Trustee” makes no sense UNLESS the donation is to be used to “build” or “maintain” a board of trustee. Directly just “push back” is not going to work well with a supervisor unless s/he trust you enough. You need to have a good discussion with your supervisor as to why s/he thinks Board of Trustee is needed and “what does it mean”. Is it to record gift gave by Board of Trustee? or Is it to record gift solicited by Board of Trustee? all reason of recording ultimately means reporting. So once you know you can offer better recording/reporting option.

Kelly CampionSocol · March 28

@Kyla Cortez I am assuming the request for a Board Fund is to be able to know how much your board has contributed. We have a Board goal in our budget, but we do not have a fund for Board giving. You will have the ability to run reports based on the constituency code of Board (assuming you will be coding them in some fashion), additionally you can run reports using a query or list of Board members, so only those constituents appear in the report. If there are specific funds that do not get credited towards Board giving, e.g. Gala giving, you can simply exclude those when you set up your report criteria.

We have structured our giving hierarchy as follows: Campaign=fiscal year and overall bucket, e.g. events, endowment, annual imagine ANN23, ANN24, ANN25, SE23, SE24etc…

Fund=the category associated with our budget lines in Finance=Gala, Unrestricted, Thanksgiving, etc…

Appeal=the purpose of the gift/how we received=donation, ticket, sponsor,

An unrestricted gift might look like this - ANN25/Unrestricted/Donation, a gift to our Gala might look like this SE25/NY Gala/Sponsor

Hope this helps

Jason Weaver · March 28

@Kyla Cortez In most cases, we use funds for this purpose, although we only have two major locations (Abilene and San Angelo). So…for example, our two funds would be XYZAB and XYZSA. I could also see this being handled with appeals and/or packages (packages are a versatile and often overlooked coding option).

Alex Wong · March 29

@Kyla Cortez
Forgot to answer you on the “location” part of the post:

if you only need to record/report site and programs in RE NXT, you can use Campaign as Site and Fund as Program.

So coming back to are you using FE NXT, and is it integrated with RE NXT for posting?

Gift Type, Gift Subtype, Fund, and Appeal drives GL distributions into FE NXT, so you need to consider that if the answer to FE NXT above is a “yes” AND if your org/finance record “site” in FE NXT? (potentially in one of the account number segment)

if yes, then Campaign for site won't work as Campaign doesn't drive GL Distribution. You may need to either:

1- include in separate funds (meaning if you have a “Unrestricted” fund, you will need a “National Unrestricted”, “New York Unrestricted” etc. for reporting, you can group the “site” together using Fund category (or type), and group “program” together using Fund Type (or category depending on what put “site” under.

2- one fund for each program, but use Subtype to drive GL distribution to FE's “site” account segment.

Both have pro and cons, depends on the details of your reproting need.

Best way to code funds for national w/ various sites & programs

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