FundSvcs Community

We're about to launch a research funding campaign at BU, and expect trustees to contribute to a current-use fund that will "match" gifts for PhD fellowships. This matching will effectively lower the gift minimum required of donors: for example, if a fellowship requires $2M and a donor commits to $1.5M, the remaining amount of $500k will be supplemented by this trustee fund.

I've been asked to transfer matching funds from the trustee fund to each PhD fellowship fund established in our advancement database. Instead, I am suggesting that our finance team process these transfers based on a detailed report we provide, specifying the gift or pledge amounts to be matched, along with all necessary supporting data.

Does this approach make sense? This approach was used at a previous institution with a similar matching program. The key difference here is that, in this case, the matching funds would be designated by school or college according to the donor's intent. In my prior experience, all matching funds were allocated to endowments with identical restrictions, rather than being designated by academic unit.  I am not sure if that makes the process more complex for the finance team.  

Thanks, John. That makes sense. I was viewing this more as donors intending their gifts for the current use fund, which is used to match gifts to endowed funds, rather than giving directly to specific restricted endowed funds. If that is the case, since donors aren't restricting their gifts by school or college, could the movement of funds be tied to how we ultimately spend them-which typically wouldn't be tracked in the Advancement CRM?

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Kerri Saucier
Boston University
ksaucier@bu.edu
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Thanks John. I appreciate the quick and thoughtful response. Hope to see you in Reno!