I think you need to start at the beginning, Dena. You need to reduce the frequency of receiving gifts with insufficient information.
Most gifts do not happen by magic. A gift officer typically cultivates a gift for a specific purpose. They are responsible for documenting those conversations, collecting the necessary information IN ADVANCE, and initiating new fund request protocols as needed.
Gift officers must be held accountable for these steps. A weekly report to senior leadership indicating what gifts are being held in suspense and for how long - and who is assigned to the donor - should be created. Senior management should use this information in the gift officer's evaluation process.
But you also have a fiscal responsibility to deposit checks immediately-that should never stop. Therefore, you can put these gifts in a holding account-but only for five or so business days-and not issue a receipt until the gift is moved.
At Duke and NC State-as with the majority of my clients-posting to the GL does occur daily (it makes reconciling much easier). On the other hand, following the accountability protocols we implemented, we had very few unknown gifts.
For those "random" $20 (or whatever) gifts that come in with no backup, you should always look at the donors giving record and open pledges first. You may want to implement an institutional policy that requires these small-dollar/no-information gifts to go directly to the annual fund.
John
John H. Taylor, PrincipalJohn H. Taylor Consulting, LLC
2604 Sevier Street
Durham, NC 27705
919.816.5903 (cell/text)
Serving the Advancement Community Since 1987
Original Message:
Sent: 8/15/2024 4:07:00 PM
From: Dena Toth
Subject: Gifts with insufficient information-best practice
Hi All,
I am hoping to get feedback on how others handle donations that come in with insufficient information (fund, donor, appeal, etc)? We are trying to create a procedure around such gifts. We have an "undesignated" fund to temporarily allocate these gifts to but this creates extra work through gift adjustments and this also causes extra work with receipting as we do not want donors to receive a receipt stating their gift went to an "undesignated fund". We post daily to our GL so would love to know if others post daily as well and what their process is for gifts with insufficient information.
Thanks!
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Dena Toth
Medical University of South Carolina Foundation
tothd@musc.edu
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