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Congratulations February Leaders!
Congrats to our Top 10 Compass contributors in February! You'll all be entered into a random drawing for a surprise pick-me-up. One winner will be selected. Thank you for starting compelling conversations and sharing your expertise with our community! @AudraClodfelter @AlyseBraaten @KristenBrandt @KarenWolf…
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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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How do you define DEI?
The following graphic was shared in a Foundant presentation this week. I really liked how the DEI terminology was presented here, so I thought I'd share it with you!
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New Australia, Canada and USA badges!
Foundant has customers in Australia, Canada and the USA, and now we have badges for you to share your country pride on your Compass profile! You can also click on any badge to see who else has the same badge, and meet people with something in common! Click the Badges link at the top of the page, or the links next to the…
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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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Hello from Atlanta!
Hello everyone! My name is Emma Wojack and I am from Oak Park, IL, a suburb of Chicago. I am one of the new team members here at Foundant technologies. I am a sophomore at Georgia Tech in Atlanta and I am a business administration student with a concentration in information technology management! I am on the club swim team…
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Scholarships and off-campus housing
My organization is trying to sort out how to best handle scholarships for off-campus housing (aka paying apartment rent). This has been a request from a few students who have explained that they've received a softball scholarship at their local community college (*with no campus housing*), but the school or coach (I'm not…
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Caramels arrived! Thank you!
What a lovely surprise that arrived today! And they are very very yummy 😋 Thank you ever so much! it's been fun learning from and chatting with everyone. I'm so glad we have Compass!
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Best Practices for Youth Engagement
We are preparing to launch a new program that would invite funding proposals from local youth (12-24 age range). We want to make the process accessible and invite creative approaches for applicants to share their vision and ideas. I'm curious to hear some ideas about the dos and don'ts when it comes to getting teenagers…
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Scholarship Processes Thought Partner Needed!
Greetings, I'm looking to have some scholarship process chat with anyone that is available. I need a thought partner. There are so many different processes involved with administering scholarships and renewals and my brain is fried as I'm trying to think through some more efficient processes! I'd love to talk through/pick…
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Volunteer Evaluators & Student Privacy
Hello everyone - we are looking to update some of our policies for scholarships, and specifically one for our volunteer evaluators that addresses student privacy. Our evaluators access the students applications through SLM, but I do know some of them print the forms out to review. We want to ensure proper destroying of the…
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Texting Service to Reach Students
Hi Compass Community! Our foundation is considering purchasing a text service so that we can better reach our students (our student advisory committee keeps stressing that this is better than email). I’m going to start doing some research on what options we have, but does anyone have recommendations for a texting service?…
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Scholarship funds for wraparound services
Good afternoon, I have a question about some of our affiliate scholarship funds. Have you ever applied variance power to named scholarship funds to provide wraparound services to students? We would like to change these funds since the affiliate has a Promise Zone that will be able to provide 4 years of full tuition…
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Need Based Scholarships for Private School Students
Wondering how other scholarship programs handle the issue of private high school student eligibility for their need-based scholarship opportunities. Currently, out of over 100 locally offered scholarships for graduating high school seniors, none have been created that specifically include private schools. Typically they…
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Temporary Job Opportunity - Part-Time Grants Manager (Mar-Sept)
We are looking for a temporary part-time grants manager to cover during maternity leave of one of our staff. We're open to remote candidates. See job description for more details.
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New to Foundant!
Hello everyone! My name is Ethan and I am an applied math major and varsity swimmer at Wheaton College! I am new to the Foundant team and am really looking forward to working with you! I used to work at a Community Foundation, primarily helping them implement Community Suite, so I hope I can be helpful! I enjoy spending…
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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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Card Testing
Hi All, We've just gone through a major issue with Card Testing. This is where hackers use scripts to verify stolen or generated Credit Card numbers through a donation link. We've had more than 10K of these types of charge attempts. Generally, these donations are at the $1 mark because it flys below most people's radar.…
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#TuesdayTip: Setting up your email notifications!
Welcome new Compass members! Here's a quick how-to for setting up your notification emails if you haven't done so already! On the top right corner of Compass, click your picture/emoji and select Edit Profile On the left side of the Edit Profile page, click Notification Preferences: Opt-in for emails for actions by checking…
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The Pandemic and Philanthropy
Philanthropy has changed. Read this insightful white paper on the new realities we face. Encore is a consulting firm that helps philanthropic leaders welcome, engage and manage a changing environment. Encore’s team of consultants and associates have combined the benefit of their experience in combating the many obstacles…
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Hello from Bozeman!
Hi! I'm Nathan Kynett and I've just started here at Foundant in Bozeman, Montana! I'm a student here at MSU and I'm currently working on my computer science degree. I love to bike around town, play games with my friends, and try to cook without burning the house down. I'm excited to be here and am looking forward for…
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Who is coding nonprofits by sector AND by services provided?
Hello Foundant community, I am fairly new to Foundant. When the time comes to tell a "story" about where your grants were allocated, what system do you use to pull the data? Do you code in c-suite and GLM? Do you have more than one field that allows for multiple codes per grant allowing you to filter by both sectors of…
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Donor Management Coffee Talk: Stewardship Strategies for New Donors in The New Normal 01-06-21
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Donor Management Coffee Talk: Stewardship Strategies for New Donors in The New Normal today! We loved hearing about what you are all doing: that a few of you are having big year-end returns from your direct mailings, some fantastic virtual tour ideas for engaging your donors,…
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Family Foundations - Planning for Rapid Increase of Corpus
Hi! Just looking for other Family Foundations that have recently experienced a rapid increase of corpus. Seeking lessons learned for planning and educating board members. Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated.
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Moved: Templates for cSuite
This discussion has been moved.
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Hi Foundant community! From lockdown in Costa Rica (yes, for real)
Hi all! Thanks to Foundant for hosting great conversations on philanthropy and for providing a space for resource exchange. I currently consult to a few different scholarship-focused organizations (Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a national scholarship provider based out of Washington, DC, and National Scholarship…
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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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Hello from Bozeman!
Hey everyone! My name is Thomas Moore and I am one of the new Team Members here at Foundant Technologies in Bozeman, Montana! I live here in Bozeman and my background is in working within Hospitality and Culinary Arts. I enjoy socializing with people from all walks of life and bonding with my loyal canine companion. I look…
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Framework for on/off boarding new initiatives
Hello all! We are looking at creating a framework around our initiatives that provides a starting point/decision tree. As we start this process, the question arose (as always) 'how do other community foundations do it?' Wondering if anyone already has a framework in place that outlines their process in taking on a new…