First off, I want to apologize for such a long post…

We have several funds, more than probably anyone else could ever imagine, we are looking into revamping them a bit.  We want to consolidate some of the funds, create new, etc. to hopefully get a smaller number of funds and have them work for us the right way.  Now that we are in RE we have the ability to do things differently and the last several years, we have not taken the time or opportunity do get a way from the “old” way.  We would like to change that going forward in the 2010 year.  So we must start working on this now to have all of the kinks and questions worked out between the Finance Department and our department.

Has anyone been faced with anything like this in the past and what have you done regarding this change over?  I am at a debate on whether to create all new funds for the new way but then how do I compare year to year figures?  Or do I consolidate the accounts via a global change to what we want to make them.  This is a big concern for me as I look at how I will prepare my board reports, donor wall, annual report, etc.

Just to give you an example, we have 6 different memorial funds.  Due to our old, old system, this was the way they had to do things for the tracking of the gifts from individuals and our lodges and the different limitations the money could be used for. 

Any help, advice or anything anyone can give me it is greatly appreciated!!!!

I would suggest working closely with your accounting department. The General Rule of thumb is that separate restrictions have separate accounting ledgers and therefore separate funds. So if your memorial funds truly have six different restrictions on how the monies can be used - you should probably keep them separate.

It isn't that they all of restrictions.  Three are for individuals or other groups, while the other three are from lodges within the state of Ohio.  There is a restriction between the three within each group.  My feeling is that we can do away with have six and just have the three.

 Fund 1 - Used to care for a select group - interest only used

Fund 2  - Used to care for a broad group - interest only used

Fund 3 - General Operating (established to meet current care needs of any resident) Used upon receipt or at a later

I hope this helps a little.

In my opinion I think you are headed in the right direction, though I would add the words Endowment to Funds 1 & 2 and put them in a separate Campaign for Endowments and mark the funds as Permanently restricted (since you can only use the interest - that is what I am assuming they are) wheras the Fund for number 3 would be Temporarily restricted and placed in your current basic Campaign (annual fund or Capital or whatever you are soliciting for)