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Would anyone be willing to share an example of their process summary?
Hi, we are a family foundation in CT and I am in the process of working on our grant application in the GLM. We do not accept unsolicited proposals. However, any example of a process summary would be useful; just to get me started :) TIA!
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Program Scholarships
We have a new scholarship opening that is funded by several smaller scholarships. Students will apply to the one "master" scholarship and the financial awards will come from the individual funds. Wondering if anyone has had this situation and figured out how to simplify/streamline the award process in SLM and CSuite. Thank…
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Congrats to the December Top 10!
Congratulations to @MikePuccio, @DorenaGeary, @AmyDell, @MeganPierce, @HeatherFraser, @MatthewJohnson, @LauraCochran, @SusieLotreck, @DebbieStanton, and @JennieGeisheimer for being on the December's Top 10 Compass Leaderboard! 🏆️🏆️🏆️ As a thank you for your contributions to our Compass community this past month, you will…
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Marketing Scholarships to Non-traditional Students
Our foundation needs help reaching continuing college and nontraditional students to notify them of scholarship and educational loan opportunities available through our foundation. How are other community foundations marketing to prospective scholarship applicants who are not in high school?
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How do other Canadian foundations produce a receipt report for their audit and T3010?
Hi, I am trying figure out how to get a report that has our receipt numbers on for our auditors. There are so many fields to pull for a custom report and I have been unable to produce one. We also switched from RE to CS mid-fiscal year.
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Negative Spendable Balance after posting grants and scholarships
Hi everyone, Our foundation has recently discovered that we are having some grants and scholarships post thru the system without flagging us that the spendable balance will go negative. It is not consistent and we have tried various scenarios to reproduce the problem. We've reached out to support and it has been escalated…
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Eligible Organizations for Scholarships
Good Morning, Has anyone had experience issuing a post secondary scholarship to a school that was deemed not an "eligible educational institution" (see below definition from the IRS). We recently came across a scenario where a trade specific school (i.e. Welding, Electrical) said that they cannot accept funds from a…
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managing the number of applications per quarter
I am a new grants administrator for a small community foundation. The foundation currently accepts applications quarterly, but the number of applications received varies a lot and some quarters, the Grants Committee (3 board members and the foundation ED) complains that there are too many to review. They would like 15 - 20…
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As a CF, how do you determine who is eligible to receive your annual unrestricted grant dollars?
Our unrestricted Community Endowment has received its first large estate gift. To this point the grant distribution from the Community Endowment has been very small. We would like to learn more about the process to determine grant recipient(s). Does the community foundation have specific areas of interest when granting…
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Community Suite Consultant 'Guru'
Hello everyone, 😀 I want to introduce myself and let you know that I am providing community foundations and non-profits with Community Suite consulting. I worked at Foundant from 2016 to 2023 and implemented over 125 clients during my time at the company. My implementation experience ranges from start-up foundations to…
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Donor Handbook
Does anyone have a Donor Handbook or collected materials you could share? This would be specifically for stewardship of new fundholders - something you may provide them that explains fund administration services, policies, fund statement examples, how to fundraise for their fund, an outline/timeline of how/when funds reach…
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Auditor Access
We are starting our audit soon and this is the first year we are fully in Csuite for our audit. I am wondering if any of the other foundations have allowed their auditors access as read only during the audit to look at and verify the information that they are looking for? And if so, what access and permissions were given?…
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Single Third Party Invested Funds
I was wondering if anyone had a policy/handbook available that they use for investment managers who have clients that want have the investment manager continue to invest the funds, but the account becomes a charitable fund with the foundation? I know that there are foundations that have gone down this route successfully…
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Scholarship Deferals
Good Morning, We were recently contacted by a scholarship recipient that her scholarship she was awarded was going to be returned to use from the college unless we provide them a letter stating that the scholarship could be deferred to next school year. This is because of the aid awarded to her by the financial…
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Job Opportunity: Financial Administrator
We are a new Foundant client just starting implementation. We are located in Ontario Canada and are seeking a part time financial/accounting person. We estimate that the role will require about 10 hours per week and would be virtual as our operations after covid have moved on line. Please reply to ; John Mayes, Treasurer,…
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Looking for a Fund Accountant who's familiar with CSuite
Our Foundation is relatively small but we are looking to clean up our internal books before making much further growth. Long story short, our foundation went through a director transition and some things were not recorded as they should have been. In the meantime, I am gradually learning the world of fund accounting but am…
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Audit
Hello - This is our 1st audit using Foundant which is much different from our previous systems - Sage Accounting, Excel & Income Manager. I find that some of the suggested journal entries are either redundant as CSuite already handles them through their modules, or they can not be entered as a "journal entry". Is there…
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Positive Pay file for Bank of America
Does anyone use Bank of America Positive Pay and how do you pull the information from CSuite to upload?
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What is the best way to enter stock donations if you do not sell the stock?
We received several shares of different stock from a donor and our investment manager decided not to sell some of the stock. If I enter the information in public securities, I have to then "sell" the stock in CSuite. Should I only enter what was sold and then enter the other portion as "other payment?" This is the first…
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What you wish funders knew OR what is the worst question you've had to answer
I'm working with the Foundant Team to create a webinar for grantmakers to share with them the things that we as grant professionals wish they knew. Please share the worst question you've had to answer on a grant application. What do you wish you could tell them? No need to identify the funder. I promise to keep everything…
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Restrictions/policies when permitting non-endowed or flow through funds?
We have a policy that an Endowed Fund must be started before we permit a non-endowed or flow-through fund to be established. We are revisiting this, however. I am curious as to whether other Foundations permit non-endowed/flow through funds to be established on their own, and if so, are there policies or terms of reference…
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What is the best way to reconnect with a previous funder?
Recently, I accepted a position as a grant proposal writer for The Children's Organ Transplant Association (COTA) www.cota.org. They do fundraising campaigns, obtain donations from individuals, and seek grants from foundations; that is now my job! I already sent many LOIs out to new potential grantors and have sent…
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Congratulations to the November Top 10!
Congrats to @JuanaBaribeau, @AnnSiciliano, @JulieLaLuzerne, @SaraRaabMcInerny, @AnastaciaLamb, @LoriVorpahl, @ElizabethZappa, @PatrickLaorden, @JimMartin, and @KatieRatkowski for being on the November's Top 10 Compass Leaderboard! 🏆️🏆️🏆️ As a thank you for your contributions to our Compass community this past month, you…
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Waivers for photos and videos uploaded to a follow up form?
We have a community grant program that has a primary focus of youth development and education. In follow up reports, we ask for a short story about how the grant dollars impacted those served by the grantee, as well as an area to upload photos and videos. Obviously, most of these photos and videos are normally of the…
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#TuesdayTip: Easy Access to Support Hub!
Have you ever run into an issue and went to search if other's are facing a similar experience here on Compass? If the answer is yes, you most likely went to the search bar on the main screen and typed in the root of your issue: perhaps searching "ACH payments" or "Donation Portal." While it is great to see what others have…
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Unrestricted/Project Match Process
This is our process for the new match announced recently that we're not allowed to "name" yet!
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Unused Capacity Grant Funds
Are there other funders out there that always end up with unused Capacity Grant funds? It's an easy $5,000 with a simple request process. Thoughts on why our nonprofits do not want to take advantage of capacity-building dollars? 🤔
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Scholarship Review Process
We have a difficult time recruiting volunteers to sit on the scholarship review committee. At this time, all reviewers score all of the applications (300+). How does anyone split the applications up so each reviewer isn't required to score/read all 300+ applications?
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Do any of our peer community foundations grant scholarships internationally? If so...
What should we be aware of when establishing a scholarship for international students/universities? Note: This would be an employer scholarship for dependents of international employees. What IRS guidelines are you using to govern your work? Are there particular nuances with the application, selection, or grant process for…
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Unrestricted/Project Match Process
This is our process for the new match announced recently that we're not allowed to "name" yet!
