Hi all,
Hoping you can offer me some advice (or at least, sympathy.). I have a dilemma and feel caught between the Fundraising team and Accounting department/ legal requirements for recording gifts. When we are awarded grants, particularly Donor Advised Fund grants, our Fundraising team sometimes jumps the gun on marking them awarded in our CRM. They use an informal email from the partner as evidence of award (an award letter is required for all grants) and they use the close date of the informal email. Upon reading the informal email, it will say something like "We are working with XYZ DAF to process the grant, you should expect to receive an award letter next week." For some of the team, specifically those who commonly deal in less-formal donation arrangements (Corporate Giving), they don't understand the distinction between a grant and a donation, or understand that they should expect a formal award letter from a grant (or DAF). Often they don't understand that they need to record the DAF as the donor of record, and use the Donor Advisor incorrectly as the donor of record.
On the other side, the Accounting team is supposed to review the grants and grant award documentation before marking the funds awarded. When they see the informal emails, they record the grant/ donation as "awarded". Most of the time this is fine, but sometimes that means they miss something that was in the award letter, like a restriction, or they record the funds in the wrong year. They trust the fundraiser and whatever the fundraiser puts down (award date/ award letter) and go based on whatever information is in the CRM. They create an internal invoice off of the CRM (which sometimes is wrong). When I've tried to say that they have to review the documentation more thoroughly and not assume the fundraiser is right, they just don't see that as their role. They've told me their auditors accept informal emails as proof of award (even when some of the information they record ends up being wrong).
It leaves me in the position of having to correct the fundraisers and get the correct award date/ award letter - but 1.) I ask myself "why bother?" if Accounting would accept it anyway, and 2.) I feel like I have less authority in this matter than someone who is in a more official capacity like the Accounting team. It's my role to support the fundraising team and help us fundraise more, not to make minor corrections to our financial records.
How do other organizations review grants? What's the grant compliance expectation? Who is responsible at your organization, for what?
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Leslie
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