Do you have donor directed funds, if so how do you track/manage designations from DDF to other funds?

I think this is a strictly finance/business office decision @JoAnn Strommen. I don't know if I agree with @Alex Wong that a special TBD fund should be used. The donor created these funds for a purpose that is seemingly working as designed. I'm not a big fan of changing these gifts on the fly, as it doesn't tell the true story of the gift. We should be working to retain as much gift integrity as possible, and sometimes that means that we don't have the ability to report in the same way.

You've entered the gift to the DDF in RE, and for all intents and purposes, the gift left the donor's account and went to that account at your institution. What happens after that is an internal process but doesn't change the initial spirit of the gift that was made. In these cases, I think manual reporting is necessary to account for those funds. Especially since it sounds like this DDF will consistently be getting changes/adjustments every time a new need/project is identified.

That said, the ideal way would be as a soft credit, but that can only happen if the gift can be adjusted/amended. This is a great example of why gift notation is so important.

@Alex Wong You're right there, I misspoke. When I mention soft credits, I'm thinking of a manual process, and not an actual soft credit. So not creating a constituent, but more along the lines of having some gift notes that basically break down everytime the initial gift is distributed to another internal fund. Something that everyone can see and follow.

The issue is that for reporting purposes, you should only be counting the initial gift. However, I feel that the best way to report on this would be some manual process, which I stated earlier.

my org did not care about if a donor initially gave to a "DDF" and make later decision on what project/program to support, they care about what project and program they supported, and how that is correctly reflect in CRM and financially system for proper reporting of fund spending, but if origianlly is DDF is important, this is what I would do, maybe helpful maybe not for you JoAnn:

• Fund record specific for DDF (which I would only have ONE fund, instead of having one per donor DDF, but if you must have multiple, one for each donor DDF, use some grouping like Fund type or category or custom field for easy reporting)
• the gift(s) record from donor who gave to DDF would get a gift "tag" (depending on your existing field usage already, it can be a marketing source code, gift code, or gift custom field). I would use a gift custom field, of type currency to indiate "Donor Directed Fund Amount".
• as donor indicate what project/program they want to support from the DDF, adjust the gift from DDF fund to the actual fund, so you will always know how much a certain fund has raised, and easily able to report on who supported what fund/project/program.
• since original amount given into a DDF never changes, the attribute/custom field simply stays and never change and is very much reportable.

just my 2cents.

I definitely hear you about the adjustment on stock gift b/c of the "sales" posted situation, I am hoping one day Blackbaud will realize this issue and fix it (maybe the newest feature Anthony Gello is working on (bringing adjustment to webview) will open that up.