How does your organization break down fund groups, subgroups, divisions, and segments?
Hello!
We're currently evaluating how we utilize the organization of fund groups, subgroups, divisions, and segments and would love to hear how other community foundations are using these categories.
Currently we use group like fund type - as in endowments, DAFs, fiscal sponsorships, scholarships, and community funds. But actually, community funds with us are either fiscal sponsorships or endowments. And some scholarships are endowed, while others aren't
We use subgroup as physical location - like a particular community in Oklahoma. We serve all 77 counties in OK, so our "Service Area" field is by county.
Division is where we note who set up the fund - Agency or Individual established.
Finally, segment is used for how our CF interacts with the fund - is it "managed" by us or not. We use "managed" to describe funds like scholarships where we are hosting the scholarship app, administering reviewers, paying the school versus cutting an annual distribution check to a school foundation who administers the scholarship.
We suspect there could be a more helpful and efficient way to categorize funds - how does your org categorize funds?
Best Answers
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I think our set up is fairly similar!
Group - Fund type; we have quite a few so this area is pretty drilled down & specific. EX. DAF - Legacy - Endowed; DAF - Legacy Fixed Advice; DAF - Express - Nonendowed; etc.
Subgroup - We use this as more of an umbrella grouping EX. all Endowed, Nonendowed, Legacy, Field of Interest, Designated, permanent funds, scholarships, DAFs, CGAs, Trusts, etc.
Divisions are more so used for separating entities that require a different income tax process.
Segment is used for separating out how a fund is invested. Ex. equity pool, growth pool, general pool, etc.
4 -
We use groups as follows
Group - broad categories: Advised, Designated, FOI, Unrestricted, Deferred Asset, Agency, Scholarship
Subgroups - this is used to break out the Groups into smaller buckets to make running financial reports easier. Example: FOI group has subgroups of: Pre-allocated, Competitive Grants, Women's Foundation, Seperate Advisory Committee, Hardships, and Special projects
Division - used to identify funds with different tax processing
Segment - used to group funds by type of investment. We do this to expedite running fund statements for funds invested in less complicated investment pools.
2
Answers
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I think our set up is fairly similar!
Group - Fund type; we have quite a few so this area is pretty drilled down & specific. EX. DAF - Legacy - Endowed; DAF - Legacy Fixed Advice; DAF - Express - Nonendowed; etc.
Subgroup - We use this as more of an umbrella grouping EX. all Endowed, Nonendowed, Legacy, Field of Interest, Designated, permanent funds, scholarships, DAFs, CGAs, Trusts, etc.
Divisions are more so used for separating entities that require a different income tax process.
Segment is used for separating out how a fund is invested. Ex. equity pool, growth pool, general pool, etc.
4 -
We use groups as follows
Group - broad categories: Advised, Designated, FOI, Unrestricted, Deferred Asset, Agency, Scholarship
Subgroups - this is used to break out the Groups into smaller buckets to make running financial reports easier. Example: FOI group has subgroups of: Pre-allocated, Competitive Grants, Women's Foundation, Seperate Advisory Committee, Hardships, and Special projects
Division - used to identify funds with different tax processing
Segment - used to group funds by type of investment. We do this to expedite running fund statements for funds invested in less complicated investment pools.
2 -
We use as follows:
Group —> Type of Fund (FOI, Scholarship, Unrestricted, DAF, Scholarship, etc.)
SubGroup —> Permanent, Non-Permanent, Operating/Administrative, Special Project
Division —> Affiliate Fund or Main Foundation Fund
Segment —> We don't use at this time.
Julie Posey
Senior Development and Stewardship Officer
Parkersburg Area Community Foundation
1 -
This is something I've been wanting to investigate further, as I'm not happy with some of our grouping but I think it was set up this way in FIMS and I've been in my role for a year and a half and haven't changed anything yet. But we have ours set up as follows:
Group - typically the type of fund (DAF, designated, FOI, scholarship) but is further split out in some respects (donor or org founded for designated and scholarship funds, endowed vs nonendowed for DAFs).
Subgroups - this is where I struggle, as it appears the subgroups are a mixture of asset types that we now ultimately track through investment strategies in CSuite (Community Foundation Pools is our most common, but we do also have outside managed investments as well as subgroups for individual complex assets like annuities, trusts, etc). We also track fiscal sponsorship/project funds in subgroup as well. Ultimately, some funds could fall into multiple subgroups, which is why I don't like our setup.
Division - used to group funds by whether they are part of one of our geographical affiliates, our supporting org (gifts/maintenance of property), or our main org. I don't like this because if I want to run a 1099 or 990 report in CSuite, I can only pick all or none for the divisions (i.e. not a checkbox) so I can't always use it.
Segment - used for scholarship funds only to track how the scholarship is awarded (school directly, foundation-managed, etc). I don't like this one either, but I'm told nobody else had a use for it at the time so the scholarship team decided to use it.
1 -
We are currently evaluating how we have been using groups and divisions, as our current use requires us to filter for Board reports, whereas if we adjust, we can use the dashboard view.
As for segments, because you can create spendable grants from it, we use assign each Fund a spendable segment, based on the month the grant is to go out, and if the grant is designated or not. This helps us to do two things:
- For designated grants, we can create the spendable grants for that month real easy.
- For all grants, we have a report that shows what grants are to go out in what month, and have on that report also fields about the type of fund, the fund advisor, etc.
Lorna
Lorna Sandberg
Director of Philanthropy and Donor Stewardship
(306) 527-7630 (cell)
(306) 751-4751 (work)
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