Hi!
Is anyone’s organization tracking contributions designated for capital projects that are apportioned over a number of years to match the depreciation expense of these capital items? We are planning for a capital project where the costs will be spread over a number of years as depreciation expense once the project goes into service. Some of the gifts we anticipate to be significant and we don’t want those contributions to affect annual memberships. One initial thought was to create a separate campaign and membership structure for these gifts. Has anyone done that? Does anyone have a different way they are tracking contributions to capital projects?
Thanks
Jess Levy
San Francisco Opera
Hi Jess,
We are doing exactly that. We recently were awarded some money from the Arts Council in England to regenerate our Front of House area. As part of this we had to raise a certain amount of money ourselves. As part of this we've setup a specific campaign within Tessitura to track donations. One of the way's we've tried to encourage people to give is by setting up a standing order so they can give smaller amounts, regularly over a 4 year period. It was all relatively simple to setup, allowing for the restricted GL, and the separate constituency codes etc. The only real difficult we've had is that the pledge payment schedule function doesn't work very well (at all!) trying to calculate a payment schedule over 4 years, so the agent has to manually create this.
Yes we have a separate Capital campaign (that is not part of membership) and fund codes. You can make the fund codes as elaborate as you wish but we stayed with simple an unrestricted and restricted code. For the Restricted code we used designation to indicate the restriction. This helps Finance know how to assign any other GLs to the gift. The gift is temp restricted until Finance request release of funds. Note this also means this is not an annual campaign since gift/pledges may come in one year and used several years down the road
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Jess LevySent: Monday, April 22, 2013 7:56 PMTo: McKinley, LeslieSubject: [Tessitura Development Forum] Capital Projects
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Gosh, I’ve never heard of tying the recognition of fundraising income to a depreciation schedule. I believe (from an accounting standpoint) that you have to set up the INCOME side to show the full pledge in the year in which it was made as income, with an offsetting receivable to match either pledge payments or time restrictions. The EXPENSE (depreciation) side is normally straight line over x number of years, regardless of when the money comes in to pay for the asset in question, and is tracked in your accounting software, not in Tessitura.
If you don’t want gifts to a capital campaign to affect memberships, then you simply set up a new, multi-year campaign separate from your membership structure.
_______________
Julie P. Hamre
Finance/Development Associate
Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc.
5301 Tuckerman Lane
North Bethesda, MD 20852-3385
301.581.5136; fax 301.581.5201
in office Monday-Tuesday-Thursday
www.strathmore.org
Support what you love. Strathmore Stars enjoy
10% off Strathmore performance tickets, advance
ticket purchase, discounts in the Shops at
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From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Jess Levy Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 7:54 PM To: Julie Hamre Subject: [Tessitura Development Forum] Capital Projects
We have a separate campaign, membership levels, appeals, etc. For reporting, this campaign is not part of the grouping of annual campaigns. Therefore the contributions are not counted. We also only have one campaign which spans the life of the campaign. We have separate funds for particular projects and support.
I hope this helps.
Thanks,
Marie
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Jess Levy Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 6:52 PM To: Marie Kocher Subject: [Tessitura Development Forum] Capital Projects