My understanding of the 'appeals' field in RE is a place to record source-how-raised, or, how the monies were raised - personal ask, mail campaign, etc.

But I'm having some issues with the financial reconcilliation process. Some accountancy practices seem to designate '08 picnic' or 'sponsorship' as the destination of the money in their accountancy system, so, things like 'sponsorship' and 'auction' have been entered into the RE system under 'fund'.

To my mind, the fund is the specific destination of the cash, like, building a new structure, or endowment, unrestricted, what-have-you. The campaign you can boil down to Capital or Operating. The appeal is where you would define that money was raised through sponsorships etc. Can anyone help clarify this? Thanks!

There are some finance offices who have retained those types of funds in their system from back when fundraising databases could not do what finance could do with tracking money.  If you have the power to convince finance that it is unnecessary for them to do that as you can report on them, go for it.  Otherwise sometimes you have to live with whatever funds your finance office asks you to use.

For events there is a place on the 990 where your Fiane office has to report on event income/expenses and often a finance office likes to be able to pull this information from their own system an not trust another.  This is one place where I see it happening the most and understand it.  So long as it is understood that the 08 Picnic fund after expenses is transferred to X for whatever purpose the event was raising money.

David -

I'm attaching a "cheat sheet" I created for board members at an organization where I previously worked, so that they could interpret the reports they were receiving. They were having a hard time wrapping their heads around the differences between Campaigns/Funds/Appeals/Donors, etc. It might be helpful if you're trying to simplify the definitions in the process of making your case.

Donors, Funds & Appeals

Appeal “Packages:” An Appeal Package is a segmentation or breakdown of a specific appeal. Ø  For example, when an Annual Fund appeal is sent to alumni, alumni who have donated to Annual Fund in the past receive a different letter text (i.e. “package”) than those who have never given.