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Best Practices for Agreement Terms for Capital Grants
Does anyone have language they are willing to share with respect to any limitations in your grant agreement when making a grant for an investment in real estate or other assets? Do you place a restriction on the grantee's ability to sell the asset purchased or invested in? If so, is there a time limit on that restriction,…
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Market Earnings as Spendable
We have a policy that allows our DAFs to earmark a portion of their gift(s) as endowment OR spendable (or both). In the event of market gains and based on the way Foundant's Fund Advisor Portal portrays details, any market earnings do not show up on the Fund Holder's landing page. That causes confusion. Similarly, we…
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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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Bequest Valuation - Stepped Up or DOD
Hello! Can you tell me what your auditors recommend for valuing a probated noncash gift, such as stock? From what I understand you can do a stepped up value or a date of death value. Thank you! Missy Belles Whatcom Community Foundation
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E-Checks
Is anyone using e-checks in lieu of mailing checks or ACH? Are you happy with it? Any significant cons to using them?
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Program Officer vs Senior Program Officer?
I am curious how other foundations delineate the job responsibilities between Program Officers and Senior Program Officers? If you have any examples of job descriptions that would be helpful as well. Thank you!
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Can you share your grant agreement language for multi-year grants?
We are going to start making multi-year grants in 2021 (woohoo!) and I am looking for examples of language / templates that others are using for their multi-year grant agreements. We have a solid template in Foundant for one-year grants, but would love to understand what needs to be written in there for mutli-year awards.…
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Capital Projects- Payment After Work has Already Been Done
Good morning, We are encountering nonprofits who are completing grant applications while work is in process, and requesting funding after work has been completed. Does anyone have experience dealing with this? We have a policy that states we will not pay for work that was done prior to the grant award, but it seems to be…
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Fraudulent Activity
We just experienced fraud on one of our bank accounts. This is an account we use for all of our grant writing. Somehow they have images of our checks and have been able to remake checks payable to themselves. We had one that succesfully cleared our account, but have been able to stop others. We closed the account and are…
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New Auditor Search
Hi everyone! We are getting ready to start the process of looking for a new auditor. I wanted to reach out to see if anyone has experience with this transition and if there is any guidance you can give for necessary steps. Is there a formal process, specific questions I should be asking, etc? Thank you! Jen Brambley…
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L3c Investments in Low Profit Organizations
Hi! Has anyone granted funds to the new designation L3c organizations yet? Are you using a loan document or a grant agreement for the details? Many thanks for any insight on the new designation.
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Moving recurring donations to CSuite/Stripe
One of our community foundations recently went live in Community Suite and is in the process of transferring all of their community funds from their current payment processor to Stripe. One fund in particular has a large amount of recurring donations in the legacy credit card system and the advisors are reticent to make a…
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Finding an investment advisor for the small but growing community foundation
Any referrals for fiduciary or OCIO investment advisors, specializing in community foundations with less than $2mm in investable assets and in need of investment policy development and endowment fund setup? Preliminary research finds a limited pool, ranging from shaky to possibly credible.
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Best time of the year to make the switch to C-suite from FIMS
Hello, We are planning our conversion timeline and would like to reach out and ask what was the best time folks actually went LIVE. Year end? First quarter? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Marnie Christopherson DSACF - Duluth, MN
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Navigating a New Normal for Accounting Processes and Roles
Thank you to everyone who joined us yesterday for our Finance Coffee Talk: New Normal for Accounting Processes and Roles. There were many great discussions, including how to transition to ACH payments and make that process as seamless as possible. We are creating this discussion space to continue these conversations.…
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Sharing 990's with reviewers
Hello everyone, I am curious if anyone has tips on the best way to easily share 990's with reviewers. We're looking to easily make that information accessible to reviewers. Thanks, Garrett
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Updating a Grant Contract
Hi there, I work for a small private foundation in Upstate NY. We are in the early stages of updating our grant contracts so I thought I would reach out to see if anyone has any suggestions about this process: Aside from consulting an attorney, would you recommend any other best practices or resources? Are there any…
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Annual Reports vs. Community Reports
We're on a calendar year and typically do not have our audit completed until August. Therefore, our Annual Report isn't published until September, but we would like to move the publication to earlier in the year. Is anyone transitioning to publishing a Community Report (instead of calling it an annual report) and not…
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Electronic Grant Payments Transition
We are considering transitioning at least a portion of our grant payments from checks to EFT's. For those who have converted, please share any tips/lessons learned. What is your process for collecting bank account information from grantees? Thanks in advance!
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Taking sub accounting back in house from investment company
Reaching out to the Community to see if anyone else has recently brought the sub/fund accounting back in-house from an investment company?
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Restricting funds committed to multi-year grant agreements
I am looking for input on restricting funds within a DAF which were committed by the donor advisor to a multi-year grant. The fund currently holds $1.3M invested in our long term horizon and $750k has just been committed to a multi-year grant agreement ($250k/yr for the next 3 yrs). The long-term horizon can fluctuate due…
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Family Foundation Historical/Impact Reports
Hello! We are considering creating a historical/impact report for the Foundation's 15th anniversary. I've spoken with a couple of people who have created these types of things but would love recommendations on good reports you've seen/created and/or good consultants who specialize in this sort of thing. Our Board Chair…
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Determining When Your Foundation is Listed as a Beneficiary
Does anyone have a best practice for identifying when your foundation is listed as a beneficiary for an estate, an IRA account, etc? We ask our donors to let us know, but we have not historically had a great protocol for saving and storing this information and we are not certain we are aware of all of the accounts for…
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Payroll Service Providers
We are migrating to CSuite from Quickbooks which included payroll processing. Since we will need a different Payroll Service provider going forward, I am wondering if anyone has a recommendation. Our needs are simple at this point with 3 staff (One is salaried, Two are hourly). We do not currently have any paid benefits to…
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What software products are people using to print 1099s for your vendors?
Recommendations?
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Moved: Templates for cSuite
This discussion has been moved.
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Spendable Balance for Endowed Funds - checking or invested - Community Suite
Hi! I am the Gifts & Grants Administrator for Whatcom Community Foundation and am curious if you all keep your endowed Donor Advised Funds' spendable balance in checking or do you have it invested with an "investment strategy" in Community Suite? We are trying to figure out the benefit to keeping it in checking if the…
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Balance Sheet Trends
I want to look at several balance sheets and/or balance sheet items over several periods. The resulting report would provide balance sheet trends. I have had to run individual balance sheets for specific periods for various fund groups. I would like to run a balance sheet report that shows comparable balances over a number…
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Moved: Financial Reporting
This discussion has been moved.
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Keeping paper records (vs. everything online)
The New Mexico Humanities Council has recently moved to Foundant for its grant management software and, with staff working from home due to pandemic, I'm more reluctant to print out paperwork (LOI, application, evaluations, etc.) for grants being awarded. It seems easier to "store" all documents in Foundant, use Foundant's…
