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POLL: What time of year does your organization prepare its budget?
Are you on a calendar year budget and do your budget planning in the fall? Does your fiscal year end in May and you work through budgets early in the year? Vote in this anonymous poll, and share additional details on your processes below!
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software to help with board meetings (agenda, attachments, meeting minutes, etc)
Hi friends! I'd like to hear from anyone using software to help with board meetings. I'm starting to ponder the value of having software like OnBoard, Diligent, etc., that will help produce agendas, manage attachments, help automate the process of taking minutes, follow-up, etc. I'd love to hear your recommendations and…
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Data Governance Policy / Data Management Plan examples?
We are creating a Data Strategy cross-departmental team at our CF to address data governance and management (and eventually broader strategy related to our strategic goals). Is anyone willing to share their data management plans or data governance policies? We would very much appreciate seeing other examples. Attached are…
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How has your foundation managed database functions / jobs internally?
Hi, TCF transitioned to CSuite in September 2020 and is seeing the need for a FT role to focus primarily on CSuite, and help our teams use it to its maximum ability. (We are a staff of 19.) I am proposing that the role be focused on marrying our internal operations to our strategic goals with CSuite as the explicit tool to…
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Stripe Fees
I was curious if anyone has stripe fees going into a separate fund at your organization versus going back into the fund the donor is making the donation to. If you do, is it your operations fund or did you create a new fund? I'm also curious if other foundations are covering the cost of the stripe fee if the donor doesn't…
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Loan Software
As our loans become more robust, we are looking for loan software that is more sophisticated. We'd like the software to create an amortization schedule for us and process the payments. What loan software are other community foundations using? Please share your recommendations.☺️
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Corporate credit card policy and forms
Hello, Does anyone have a general credit card policy and credit card use agreement they could share? Thank you.
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Looking to move from an Annual Grant Cycle to Spring and Fall Cycle
Hello all, Our Foundation currently runs 1 grant cycle per year (4 different Grants), with applications opening in Feb to March. Then April/May are adjudications, decisions etc. and payments are in June. The funding usually targets projects for the summer and remainder of the year, but they can also use the funding up to…
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Tips for creating and forecasting a managed funds budget
As we all strive to effectively manage and grow our funds to support our mission and community, I’m interested in learning more about best practices for creating and forecasting a managed funds budget. Specifically, I’d like to hear from you on the following points: Revenue Projections: How do you estimate investment…
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Annual transfer of Operating Net Income to a Reserve Fund?
Wondering if anyone else has worked out the mechanics behind this kind of a transaction. Essentially we have an 'Operating Reserve' and each year the Net Income (with a few adjustments for fixed asset acquisitions and depreciation) is intended to be rolled into that Operating Reserve. The way we are set up now we have the…
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How do you reverse a donation?
We have a donation posted to a Profile which is actually from several Donors. We need to reverse the original donation and post the correct donations. (We have posted a negative donation amount and this works, but we've found you can't edit a negative amount in the Donation record.) How do you post a reversal of a donation?
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ACH Payments
We are in the process of having all of our grants paid ACH and are looking to have our scholarship payments paid ACH as well but I did hear that some colleges and universities still prefer check. Has anyone been successful in getting colleges and universities to make the switch to ACH? Also, are there any community…
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Mobile App for staff expenses
This is a rather practical question. Our staff have travel and office expenses paid personally to be reimbursed by our Foundation. Is there a reasonably priced Mobile App that you might suggest to capture and categorize the receipts to make things easier and less time consuming for our staff and bookkeeper?
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Best Practices for using ACHs
Hello, Our foundation is thinking of moving away from checks and utilizing ACHs to make our grant payments. I was wondering how other organizations that are using ACHs get the banking information from the recipients. Thank you for your input. Linda Cleveland
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Advice for using & implementing Nonprofit Directory
Hello colleagues and happy new year! We will be implementing the Nonprofit Directory later this year and would welcome any advice, suggestions, or lessons learned from those of you using it. A specific question I have is this: Do you have a maximum time length (i.e. 90 days, 6 months, etc.) you keep funding…
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Recurring ACH donations
Does anyone use Stripe to process recurring ACH donations? Is there a way to link these donations to a promise or pledge?
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New Fund Checklist
We're new to CSuite and coming from an "undocumented" FIMS environment. Wondering if anyone has a New Fund checklist you'd be willing to share...
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Who is using Foundant CRM very well
We need help! We are currently in CSuite but has not moved our CRM to Foundant we are still using Raiser's Edge NXT but we are wanting to move over to Foundant CRM quickly. However, we don't know what we don't know. Are there any foundations that is utilizing the CRM very well. How are you utilizing the moves management…
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Best practice for inviting applicants to apply
I am working with a Foundation that is implementing Foundant. Although they will import historical data, that will happen after go-live. Currently, they offer a single stage, invite only application. We've been exploring the options for inviting applicants to apply, and would like to poll other foundations for their best…
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Generating spendables on new endowed funds
Hello, We would love to hear on how what other CFs' policies and procedures are in generating spendables on new endowed funds. If you wait until the next fiscal year to calculate a spendable, what is your process in ‘removing’ that fund in your batch calculations? Thank you! Sally Hermann St. Croix Valley Foundation
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Fund Holder Identification
We received an email from a gentleman interested in opening a DAF. We do not recognize the name and he said he would call but he is traveling overseas. We have been communicating via email and he is very interested in starting a fund. I am a little nervous because all of the identity theft and so forth going around these…
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Procurement Software: Is anyone using procurement software and interfacing it with CSuite Vouchers?
Hello, We are looking to improve and streamline our invoice payment process. Wondering what other Foundations are doing. Does anyone use procurement software and interface it to CSuite to create vouchers? We would appreciate a conversation if you have any ideas. Thanks in advance for you thoughts! Elaine Nedder Stewardship…
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Cryptocurrency Donations
Hello! Does anyone take Cryptocurrency donations? We recently received our first one through Engiven and I'm just wondering what the process for the audit was like. Also, We did not treat this gift like a gift of stock, it was entered like a normal ACH gift. However, we were not sure how to enter it and account for the…
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Payment Options
For donors, does anyone have payment options other than credit card or cryptocurrency on their website? I'm thinking e-check, quick checkouts, google/apple pay, venmo, etc for mobile options. If you do have these other options, can a donor who creates an account save their payment information for quick check out in future…
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Charting Projected Giving/Workflows
Hi Compass, I'm wondering how others are understanding and charting their projected giving. We're currently struggling to understand what our next year looks like in terms of paying out installments, and how heavy our reporting workflows will be because there isn't a straightforward way to track estimated/anticipated…
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Bequest Scam Warning
Hello all, We wanted to make everyone aware of this scam that was attempted on our Community Foundation. Please share this! We received an email (copied at the bottom of this post) from someone stating his mother, Julia Sadler, had recently passed away and indicated in her trust that she would like donations made to…
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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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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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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…