Hello everyone, and welcome to today's Session Foundation Fund Administration presented by Veronica Roman. We encourage you to use the chat box on the right hand side of your screen to connect with each other throughout the session. And please give the Q&A box to submit any questions for Veronica Recordings and Slide PDFs from today's session will be posted in this community at the end of the conference. Thank you for your participation today and I am pleased to welcome Veronica Roman from California State University San Marcos. Welcome, Veronica. Thank you. Hi, thank you. Thank you so much, Natalie. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the session. Foundation Fund Administration. As mentioned, my name is Veronica Roman. I am the director of Foundation Project Administration and Advancement Services, which is housed within University advancement at California State University of San Marcos. So I'm excited to talk about fund management programs that are implemented on our campus. But first, here's some information about my campus. So we are one of 23 campuses in the California State University system. We were founded in 1989. We're located in San Marcos, which is Southern California. San Diego enrollment is over 16,000. So our employment, we have over 3000 employees and includes faculty, staff and student employees on our campus. We're a small but mighty team and it consists of various departments as well. So as you can see on here is a photo of our team. Some have come and gone, but some of are definitely joined in. So some information about our team. So within university advancement there is Advancement services. So we have budget resources Foundation project administration, which is me, gift processing reporting. We have process research database administration. We also have a Department for development, our development officers. We're giving officers corporate foundation relations, alumni engagement events and conferences as well as special events. So let's go back to fund management. So I have a couple of questions that I'd like to ask you, so please feel free to put it in the chat. I'm not going to see them at the very moment, but please feel free to put them in the chat. So first question How many of you have heard the perception that foundation funds are philanthropic funds or rainy day funds? Feel free to answer way. Next question How many of you heard of department say, Oh, I didn't know we had those funds available or No one told me how to use it. It's pretty painful, probably. Right. So in this session, we're going to discuss why fund management is important, how fund management is an essential component of donor stewardship, how fund management ensures fiduciary responsibilities are met. We'll also talk about some best practices that we've done for our campus in order to be able to provide transparency to our donors. And we'll talk about the program I established on our campus Foundation Project administration. So first and foremost, it's important to note that collaboration and communication is extremely important in fund management. It is key to ensure everyone is on the same page. Everyone receives the same information of the importance of donor funds. Everyone plays a very, very important role. So here are some areas, just some of the areas which looks like a lot that I've worked with in order to implement this plan. You'll see the development team, as I mentioned, there are giving team advancement services such as the gift processing financial aid department for scholarships and awarding or accounting of office donor stewardship and our donor relations and our stewardship office. Again, very important. And then all of our campus programs. So pretty much every single person on campus we really want to work with in order to make this happen. So understanding donor funds and its intent is imperative when honoring its legacy. So it could be for either a short time or in perpetuity. But really, where do we start? So first thing we want to do is gather all the information on all of our accounts. And those programs seem like a lot. We want to review all active funds, and this includes campus programs and endowments for both programmatic endowments and the scholarship endowments, as well as current youth scholarships. So a couple of things we want to look at. We want to look at every single agreement for that account. We want to look at the financial history, specifically from inception. What is the fund intent, really? What is the intent to have these funds available? Who's the relationship manager or the gift offer officer liaison? What college or department does it pertain to? Who is responsible for spending the funds? And a bigger question are they still with the university and our endowments? Have we sent an endowment financial report to our donor? So as you can see, this is where each and every account. So this is going to be quite the list. So from this list I organized, it, created a master project list. Once the list is started, you won't regret all of the hard work. It's really just maintenance from there, adding, moving, whatever needs to be updated. So, yes, this was a manual process as we don't have an automated process. But if your campus happens to have an automated process, then wonderful. You're definitely ahead of the game and we've definitely saved a lot of information or is a lot of time in gathering the information. So with all of this information that I had gathered, I shared my findings internally, first with our vice President of advancement and a vice president of philanthropy, directors of philanthropy. And they really presented a plan, as I saw so many areas of opportunity. I laid out the information and including areas of opportunity and then provided potential solutions and recommendations for each. So as a part of this plan was to provide training across campus for each college separately. I provided an info session on all aspects related to philanthropic funds. So this was a collaboration between myself and University Advancement, Donor Stewardship, Auxiliary Accounting and the Development Officer liaison. So those attended the session were project directors, fiscal authorities, budget admins, analysts, budget analysts, sorry. And anyone else that may have access to these funds. We went over fiduciary responsibility for each project balances for each and how to review financial information funded time for each project and donor and stewardship and their roles as well. So as these meetings were becoming an area, we then had additional in-depth meetings as some may want to keep their information confidential. Some professors may want to share with other what they have to other professors and so on. So we just wanted to be sensitive to that. So we held separate meetings. So in those meetings, we worked in detail with the areas to review each and every one of their findings to, as well as cleaning up any accounts as well. That no longer had me. We had signers on the accounts door to be able to spend the funds. So early on during these trainings I really saw that room for education across the campus, an appropriate use of donor funds and regardless of the amount. And so then I established a program, foundation, project administration to support campus donors so they can be updated on the progress and impacts of their gifts and effort to provide greater financial transparency. So what is Foundation Project Administration? I mentioned that a couple times. So this program is meant to be a resource for our campus partners. We offer support, guidance and education on the training of the use of the generous donations our donors give us. We also outline roles and responsibilities. We oversee all foundation project accounts and is funded for each again for campus programs, endowments and our scholarships. So as donors are giving through the foundation, I'm urging both the creation of new accounts, as well as donations received to our existing accounts. Again, ensuring it aligns with the original intent. I also share the importance of spending our donors contributions timely. I created guidelines that include all this information, plus more as a tool for our campus partners. I'll share was included in those guidelines to support our campus partners. So I established these guidelines to provide guidance on the use of foundation projects, ensuring room meeting, donor intent. So within the guidelines, I discussed shared roles and responsibilities that we have project fund agreements, spending, plan, expenditure review tools and resources. I also included a list of frequently asked questions. The more tools we can provide our partners, the more successful this will be. So we're going to go over each section briefly. And what I noted in the guidelines on this new program, on our campus. So it's a shared responsibility, ensuring donor funds are spent timely and as intended. So Foundation project administration, what is the role? So again, to provide education and training on the fiduciary responsibility of foundation projects to create new and current project agreements, or to update current project project agreements to perform to perform financial compliance reviews on restricted funds, ensuring we are honoring our commitment to our donors and spending according to their intent. We also complete find the Endowment financial reporting to be included in impact reports to our donors. So what is the role of responsibility for project directors and those of the school authority? One is to ensure funds are expressing compliance with the mission of the university, the foundation for policies and procedures, as well as any restrictions imposed by the donors. They're also required to ensure endowment spend allocations are spent annually, again as intended. They're also required to provide impact reports to donor relations on how the donors funds were expense. Now, when we look at directors of philanthropy, development directors is various names for them. But I'm going to kind of go back and forth saying directors of philanthropy, directors of gift officers and directors of development. So in their role as it as it pertains to foundation part administration is to aid in the program fundraising activities, to attend foundation project training sessions, to support campus programs and endowments and to attend foundation party administration on spending plans, financial activity and expenditure review findings. We're going to talk about those program for donor relations again, as it relates to foundation project. Maturation is their responsibility is to collect data and stories of impact of philanthropy to share with our donors. As funds aren't spends, the department are not able to share that data and stories, which is why a spending plan is important and again, we'll go over that shortly. So project agreements on our campus are used to establish an account and to report contributions and expenditures which are posted in our financial systems on our campus we use data Warehouse is within CFS Project Agreement records the benefit and the purpose of our donors contributions and the fiduciary responsibilities of those with fiscal authority to spend according to its intent. So an effort to ensure sorry and never sue as your contributions are established with donor returns with the appropriate allowable expenditures. We actually took over that process where previously each department had ownership of that process in establishing fund accounts and creating project agreements. So as donations are received, there could be restrictions on how those funds can be spent with that ownership and is really we've been able to to maintain that. So taking over the process ensures that the allowable expenditures for a particular project is in line with purpose of the project. It also provides transparency, but the directors of development are gift officers. Ensuring is purpose aligns with the intent of the donor as they have established that relationship with the donor. This also allows for proper tracking and stewardship. So all the way initiate this project agreement and complete information according to donor intent departments are also also involved in the signature routing process, validating that they understand their fiduciary responsibility and the spend on that project. So I found taking over this project or this over this process was received very well by campus. So the transition did go very smoothly. So I wanted to share an example of project agreements form new accounts. So this is specifically when a new account is to be established. I want to provide a visual. Generally, this information is provided to me from the approach of the directors of philanthropy or the AVP or the Vice President to information roles. And we know gifts are going to be coming in. We may have already received the gift or were expecting the well, we need to create an account. So this this form right here provides up on the top gray screen is the chart filled stream, which is the account information. Again, I'm completing the project information, which is the name, the department. The department name, all that information is and the benefit and the purpose of the fund. I also have this is through Adobe Sign as well. So I was routed to everybody ahead of time. I also have it routed to the directors of philanthropy to review it again as they have the relationship with the donor. They're reviewing this, making sure that it is accurate within that review. They're also looking at the expenditure. So have we done this form? You'll see payroll, equipment, supplies. So we check the box that is appropriate to what the donor had intended it to be, that they don't want trouble. That's not what they want the funds for or they don't want awards being issued from this account. So this really determines and establishes what is appropriate for this particular account. Right. Under that is a notice of Project fiduciary acceptance. So this is information to the project director and the fiscal and fiscal authorities ensuring they understand their responsibility in spending the account as as it should be spent. So again, it gets out to the project director to assign fiscal authorities and sign. We have up to six people can sign, which is determined by the project director. We have our AVP of Advancement Services, our financial systems, which adds information to our CFS, our data warehouse, our county department, and then myself as a final review for foundation project administration. So here is our other form. This is a project agreement Change form. So this one is a little bit different. Looks very similar, but it's a little bit different and which is used to close an account to change department ID if the funding is now owned by another department and there is a fiscal authority change which can only be authorized by the main individual, which is the project director. And if there's a project change. So in order to ensure sticks with alignment, if there are any changes to a project name to the purpose or its allowable expenditures, this does require the review and approval of the development officer, not by the request of the Department and again, as a development team has relationship with the donor. We want to make sure that this is appropriate and again, this is to ensure we're honoring the commitment of our donors in their initial intent. So in reading this, read this together. So the potential for future giving may lie and being able to know and communicate the financial health of all donor funds, not some, but all donor funds. So we need to not only look at our top ten donors, but trust me, of course they're very, very important as well. But we need to look at all donor funds if we don't know how the funds are being spent or if they're being spent, we cannot communicate that to our donors for the potential of a future gift. We need to ensure funds are not only being spent but being spent to their intent to donor intent. And we can start that by requiring a spending plan that I had implemented on our campus. So I initially had the idea of a spending plan. But given this was a very new process for our campus, I had to get the blessing from everyone, including especially senior leadership, which is extremely important, first and foremost to get that going. So our communication and support is key in making this successful. Everyone needs to be aware and everyone needs to be on board and everyone needs to be on the same page. So I put together an idea, a plan, and I presented it to our presidential administrative team, which includes all our vice presidents, our chief officer and the provost. I provided the who, what, when, where, and really focus on the how and the why. This is extremely important for our university. Well, I got that blessing and moved forward in implementing a required spending plan. So once the blessing was in place, I communicated it to our campus partners. But really, why have a spending plan based on the information that was collected in that initial review that I mentioned earlier, looking at every single account, every single agreement, financial history, all of that from looking at the information that was collected. I really saw a need and requiring spending plans. So it's important to develop key metrics and have an understanding of spending trends. We have some funds that can be non restricted funds, but that doesn't mean they should not still be spent on a regular basis. Restricted funds, maybe restricted to be spent on a certain time frame and non restricted may seem a little bit more lenient. But again, we still have that responsibility. We have that fiduciary responsibility showing ensuring contributions are being spent timely and as intended in order to be able to steward accordingly. So don't just want to see the impact of their gifts. So in order to do so, we need to ensure those gifts are being spent. So I implemented, as I mentioned, a required spending platform in efforts to ensure donors contributions are being utilized, is intended, stewarded and administered. It also ensures tracking of the spend. A completed spending plan is required for every annual endowment spend, allocation and campus program projects that, through my review, have been identified with minimal to no financial activity. So for endowment spend account allocations, departments are notified of their spend allocations, which is the percentage approved by the board. Our accounting department sends an email in July, which is the beginning of our fiscal year to each project director and the fiscal authorities are assisting in providing that amount that will be allocated to their endowment spend account and the programs provide program expenses specifically. It also includes any unspent balances for prior years. So within that email it notes that I will be contacting the project director to complete a spending plan form for that fiscal year. So they need to make a plan for that entire year for campus program. Project balances are run monthly and I record them on that master project list that I mentioned earlier. I review accounts that do not have spend for two or more years. If there's no spend for two or more years, I then require a spending plan. There can be times where a department is holding the funds for a particular purpose. Let's say in that third year they have a big plan to spend in due to a new program or if there's a new initiative, as long as a plan is in place, that's fine. What's the issue is when it's not communicated. So we need to be able to know what's going on. Donors need to be able to know that they donated, knowing that it may not be spent during that fiscal year or even that's just for year. Again, why a spending plan is very important. So I work with a project director directly to support and ensure execution of the spending plan. So really, all in all, this process assists the directors of philanthropy as it can make it challenging to fundraise for areas that have not even spent any of their funds. So this helps also donor stewardship as well. So one stories of impact are requested to the department to provide to so that we can provide to our donors. They already have a spending plan in place. They already have a plan for that fiscal year. So they can use that as a guide in order to be able to provide their stories. Also, when I mentioned all gifts, that includes, for example, those gifts that maybe we received 20 plus years ago, an endowment minimum. That really was an endowment minimum at that time, or maybe it was 10,000 much smaller for those donation. Those donors may actually never give again. But regardless, regardless of that, we still need to honor their intent. So why wanted to provide an example of a very basic spending plan that we did? I try to keep it as simple as possible, and this is mainly because we don't want I didn't want the department to feel like, Oh, here's another form and another form we have to fill out. I really kept this as simple as you can see, very basic as possible. So again, here's the example of it and then there's a timeline. I'll start really quickly. On the left side, you'll see the the spending plan, the fiscal year. So this is by fiscal year. I fill out that top information, which is a project number, whether it be the campus program or the endowment spend account. The project name its purpose. As a reminder, I also attach the project agreement. If there is a spend allocation, if it's an endowment, and then the total project available, a balance. So they could see that there is a running total that needs to be spent. So I complete this form again, the software double sign then gets right. It's the project director. They fill in this box where it says spending plan justification, justification of unexpended balances. And you'll see here, just to keep it simple, what I did was just ask for a quarterly plan of to make it a little bit easier also for them in order to be able to execute. Once they complete the information, they sign it. It then goes back to me to review to make sure that plan is in alignment with original donor intent. It also gets to the development officer. So the gift officer liaison for this particular particular account, and then it goes to the Associate Vice President of Development Philanthropy as well. Just to review just one final review, on the right side of this form, you will see the spending plan, instructions and procedures provides the campus just the purpose. You know why we're doing this? Instructions for completion and then a process timeline is when I plan on giving it to them, when I expect them to receive it, when the entire team is going to be signing it. So then between November and June, I shall back up a little bit. In November, the everyone will should have received a copy of this, including everyone that signed here, the project director, as well as the fiscal authorities. Again, this is where it could be a little bit of a misstep where sometimes the fiscal authorities, aside from the project director, those that can also spend may not know what that plan is. And so this is where, again, communicating with everybody, making sure everybody's in the know, everyone knows what that plan is at the end of the day, this is what they're going to be doing by the end of the fiscal year. So between November and June, I then track it and monitor it, basing it back on their plan, let's say between July and October, they have this plan. Well, I'm going to check October or November once expenses of it, to make sure I'll follow back with them again, just to make sure that they're in alignment and something needs to be changed, that that's something we communicate to to make sure it's notated. The changes are to be made, and then around July or September time, as we provide our endowment financial reports to our donors around November for the prior fiscal year, between July and September. Donor relations Contact the project directors to complete an impact report. So really this impact report of how their spend was, what did they spend the funds on? This is again for that prior year and this is just to make sure that we have a report with graphics and photos and everything that we can provide our donors. What I want our departments to feel blindsided that they're like, Oh, we have this funds to spend, which is why we're doing that pre-work and making sure they know they have the funds to spend. What is their plan to spend it, make sure they execute it so that at the end of the fiscal year they already have their plan set on. The strategies have to those. One more question. So why is it important? This seems like a given. Why is it important to audit or to perform a review of your existing books? Again, feel free to add some comments in the chat. I'll definitely be taking a look at those a little bit later. Can't see them now, but definitely excited to see your answers. Seems pretty much a given the right, but sometimes it's not exactly the case for everyone on campus. When I just a couple of my own thoughts. Well, we want to honor, honor, donor intent and compliance. There are project clauses and restrictions for scholarships. We want to make sure that that fund purpose is still able to be awarded properly. And really is that particular program is non anymore that would be first programs as well. So something to take a look at is why it's very important to do the review. And another reason simple overall, just good stewardship. So it's natural for people to be a little hesitant or fearful when they hear the word audit. So which is particularly why I change, I just call it a review just for that point. Nobody really likes the word audit, so it's important to really take the fear out of these reviews. What we want to do is identify who our key partners are and build strong working relationships with them. If you bridge a relationship with them, they're going to see you as a resource, not necessarily as a threat or someone to be fearful of. This is a partnership. So we're not trying to hold a magnifying glass with them, keeping an eye on their every single tiny move. But we don't want them to we want them to feel comfortable to come to us. We want them to their campus partners, partners. We want to know that we are a resource for them. We want to offer help. We want to offer support, guidance and any advice as well. Another big one is we want to create awareness and the necessity of compliance. We need to explain the need of spending donor funds. These aren't rainy day funds just to be held when they're done utilizing their operating funds or their operating budget. But these are specific funds that were donated to us regardless of amounts. They were specific funds donated by us, by our donors for a specific purpose. And we want to utilize them. We also want to ensure our campus partners have the documentations of their funds and the information they need to spend. So again, this goes back to educating them and training them and providing them all the tools and resources. We can't expect them to spend the funds if they don't even know that they have the funds. There's a lot of turnover and our on our campuses and our departments, we know that there's lots of turnover and budget analyst admissions. So this is why it's really important to share that information. I'll talk a little bit later about how I plan on doing that and continue doing that as well and making sure they have what they need. They have all the tools they in order to make this happen for our agendas. So as a fiduciary of donor funds to going back to review is I implemented a process in order to monitor project balances and expenditures. So in this review we are analyzing transaction details, including the purpose ensuring expenditure complies with the donor intent and fiscal authority, ensuring the appropriate individual science, the expenditure. So as a part of that review, I currently this may seem like a lot, but I currently review all direct pays also known as check request, which is generally used for catering promotional items awards really any type of giveaway. I also review travel requests and expenses so requests before they travel and then expenditures when they return as well before their expense through accounts payable. And this is to ensure they count being used supports the requested expense. For example, remember when we looked at that project agreement form, there were a lot of allowable expenditures. If travel is not checked and for that particular fund that they want to travel using or look at that travel expense or that travel claim form. So back to the project agreement, does this one allow for travel? If it does not, I can't approve it. They will have to use another fund because the donor did not specifically note that they want travel to be used for that. I also review all check deposits that are provided to a cashier's department. They may not root through us directly sometimes or just sent directly to our cashier's apartment. They're filled out the deposit slips filled out by our admins or my department admins, so those actually get routed to me to review to take a look at all those that are philanthropic funds that are using foundation funded accounts just to review them, make sure it's being coded appropriately. If it is a donation is because of this donation, it's not a donation. We want to make sure that that's reported appropriately. Moving on, I also review all transfer requests. So transfer requests making sure they're appropriate before they are processed by our accounting department. So the important of this is when a donor donates to a particular project for a specific purpose, we lose the visibility of the funds in order to be able to report back to the donor. If the funds are transferred to another account, we then risk the funds being used in ways that there were not for the were not intended. So currently transfers are completed by our department. They're approved by those are fiscal 30. Project Director Rivers has authority on that and then they're provided to our county department system. So now I as I mentioned, I am review of them. So it's important for me to review them to have the visibility to making sure that we're providing accurate information on air and down financial reports or any other reporting that we're doing for our donors. So under campus, we use fund driver for our endowment financial reporting. Not sure if anyone else uses that. I know there's so many different applications or campuses currently with some driver, so if there's a transfer that takes place, it will pull up on that transfer report. So if we provide, it pulls up as a transfer line. So imagine if we provide in JAMA Financial report may look good and the donor sees that transferred money went out. So we're going to wonder where did that money go? So they go, That's why it's really important to make sure in case there are any that may have something. So it wasn't routed to me. So working on streamlining that process, if it wasn't routed to me, I, I run another report, first person driver and just for all transfers and making sure that he trusts what took place so I can go ahead and make that adjustment before the end of the fiscal year and before we report back to our donors. So each month after the period closes, I run a financial activity report of all of the foundation projects. I perform quarterly reviews on transactions to verify alignment with donor intent. So in one fiscal year, every single project has been reviewed at least once. So although yes, as the responsibility of the project director and those are fiscal three to ensure funds are properly expense, that is their role, that is their responsibility. I have found that extra support and recheck has definitely proved to be beneficial and very effective. If there are any findings, what do we do? Well, it's a conversation that I have with the project director and it could be a training moment and something that maybe was missed or something that they misunderstood. So I use it as a training moment in educating them on how the funds should be used. Maybe we may have to make adjustments, move the expense over to another count where it should have been taken from initially. Again, all this information is on the guidelines. And as I mentioned, the Foundation project administration guidelines, which also notes if there is consistent not just a few times but consistent noncompliance, then we might be a conversation with senior leadership just to provide a little more extra information. This is what we're trying to do. It's not quite being followed. Let's come up with another approach on how we can do this. So we've gone over a number of topics that are in the foundation project administration guidelines. Lastly, I also provided a list of tools and resources to provide additional support. So in this list of tools of resources, it includes who to contact. Sometimes they don't know who to go to. Well, this is going to provide exactly who to go to in one area, and I'll talk about that shortly. There's also a prerecorded, very basic program endowment info session, which is actually ready to be uploaded. There's resource links on how to simply complete a financial transfer form, how to run financial reports, some commonly used account codes. We have our Dollar Bill of Rights and our C is USM Foundation board reporting transparency. There is also quite an extensive list of frequently asked questions. So all of this I created a web page on our website. It includes all this information and links and one location for very, very easy access. So another process that we implemented on our campus is when a department wants to raise enough funds to build social endowment. So I'm not talking external guests, I'm talking internally. The department really wants to establish an endowment for each of their college, not necessarily a named one, but just a one for for their area. So on our campus, the minimum to establish an endowment is $25,000. So in the past, what was done is it was simply a request. So an account was created. There were some funds raised, no terms and conditions. It was placed in an account and it was just really sitting there. So the funds can really just sit and not be utilized at all as intended. It's really timely as ARM establishes. There really isn't a process in place. So we established a request to build towards an endowment with very specific terms and conditions. Again, this is for internal purpose only for the university. For our external donors, we'll use an official gift to bring it. So this is actually a holding account. Funds cannot be expense from this account as a purpose is to raise enough funds to have it endowed again requested by the college. Therefore it needs to have approval of the college dean or the Vice president. So they're aware of these fund raising initiatives. And so it has to be approved by the associate. The the AVP and VP of Advancement, the VP of Philanthropy, the Manager of Auxiliary Accounting and myself of Review of Foundation Project Administration. So this can be established for a program account, a program endowment or an endowed scholarship. So to start this, what we've done is a minimum of 20 $500 to establish this account. The Department has five years to raise $25,000 with a minimum of 5000 per year. So I monitoring that as well. If the minimum is not reached within five years, we'll communicate that to the project director as well as the piece and it will be converted to current use. We have also extended the options to the project directors, but they can change it to current use at any point within those five years if they do not believe it'll reach them down level. So as the funds may be in doubt or current, again, it's all about transparency. It's important to provide that transparency to our donors as well as during the fundraising efforts. So here are a few other areas and I'll just go through these pretty quickly. I think we're running a little bit out of time. You are supported by this program in support of fund management of donor relations. So for endowment, financial reporting, we run financial activity, perform necessary research, assuring the accuracy of reports that are provided to our donors. This information is provided through an impact report for our donors. Now, the reason why performing an expenditure review, It's imperative to ensure that information again, we're providing is accurate and transparent. Let me say that we're alive. It's important to be very transparent. I also meet with the Financial Aid Auxiliary Office as well as donor Sure. Stewardship twice a year to review scholarship from our endowment spend accounts for current use, scholarship accounts for fall and disbursements. So our scholarship office has provided an endowment spend allocation earlier in the year, earlier than our other campus partners for programmatic expenses so we can plan ahead for scholarships. So in this meeting, we go over every single account in detail and making sure that the scholarships are awarded. The amount of students, the dollar amount is awarded as appropriate. This includes also verifying if there's a new gift agreement. So if the intent of the amount to be awarded has been changed, we want to make sure that that's been updated as well. We also reviewed, if there's any doubt, scholarship that has been established but has not yet been in existence for 12 months in order to mature to receive a spend allocation. At times, a donor will provide extra funding so that it could still a donation can still be awarded that year until the endowment matures. We want to make sure that's awarded as well. So prior to cleaning up these accounts, these meetings were over 2 hours long. So it was better to do a couple of meetings. So we just had our meeting recently funds for upcoming disbursements, and it was only 45 minutes long, which is great. So it shows much we're able to to achieve and really clean up our accounts, but also meet with the directors of philanthropy on areas as they support to review budget balances, ensuring funds with reporting requirements have been spent timely and importantly spent from the right funds. I also meet with deans and faculty annually and sometimes more often if needed, on purpose to oversee ensuring spending is on track or if there is any extra attention and support, or occasionally there will be meetings with Vice President provost. And they're also fully, fully supportive of this program, which is great and much needed quarterly are provided to our CFO and our VP of Balance that I also review cases for support for our annual giving programs such as Giving Day. Some people call giving Tuesday and also crowd funding, which is a 30 day fundraising initiative to raise funds. So this is just to ensure that departments who want to participate having funds raised for giving day, they're requesting funds in that case for support that aligns with the particular fund or project they want to utilize, making sure that it aligns or if a new account needs to be appropriated for that initiative, for that fundraising initiative that they have also perform various trainings across campus and presentations throughout the year as there is turnover across campus. As I mentioned earlier, this is Fisher Adams have the same. I'm also working on developing an onboarding toolkits that provides all of the information that's needed for a new budget analysts, admins, or a newly appointed project or actors and providing them everything that they need. What about the funding they have for philanthropic funds solely of what they have available? So as our donors are inspired together, we have a shared responsibility and spreading their generous support as intended and timely in order to be able to steward accordingly. We want to gain the confidence and trust from our donors as we are thoughtfully spending their generous donations so we can share those outstanding stories and the impact of the gift. So this is why Foundation Project Administration was established to provide guidance, support and training to US campus partners on philanthropic funds to ensure the contributions of our donors are being utilized as intended and to strengthen the relationship with the university through financial transparency, as it can be difficult to fundraise for additional funding if we have not already spent the funds that the donor donors have previously provided us. So that was my presentation. I thank you all for your time. I truly hope you found this information valuable. I have my contact information here, so if I don't get to all of your questions as I know timing is running out, please feel free to share that with or email me directly. I'm happy to share any information you would like. So thank you so much for your time. I think. Veronica, those are very insightful session and thank you all for contributing in the chat and the questions. It's nice to see a lot of engagement online and we do have time for a few questions, so I'll try to get to the ones that were uploaded the highest. The first question is how many active funds do you have? So with our campuses we are somewhat, I do want to say a smaller campus. We're definitely a maturing campus. We have 700 funds at the moment. I know other areas have thousands of funds and we're definitely working way up there, but we currently have approximately 700 funds right. And along the same lines, how many scholarships do you have. For a scholarships? About 80% of our endowed star are scholarships are endowed. And then we have current youth scholarships, I would say probably over all between our campus programs and Dallas Monument Scholarship. I would say out of that, maybe 60, 70% of the 700 are for scholarships. And then our final question now with the comments left, do you have any older fund agreements that can no longer be honored because the university stopped offering a degree? If so, how have you handled awarding those funds when the donor is deceased or when a living donor is struggling to agree on a new intention? That is a great question. And yes, we have. When I did my review of all the funds, I went back to day one, back to the very, very beginning, 1980 something where we have accounts. So, yes, we've had instances where the divergences and we cannot utilize the funds for that very particular purpose. It's a little bit different when it's in doubt of funds. We have to handle those a little bit differently because it is a different process. But for current use, because we have so many programs, luckily we have been able to utilize those funds to similar programs that have been created. A lot of our scholarships. Now we try not to specify to have too many specifications because then it really makes it difficult to even award one or two students. So we try and working with the donors to make sure they keep it somewhat broad. But if it's for a specific or a specific degree that they're pursuing, we haven't had one that they don't have that degree anymore. But that does still have a focus of a particular area. We have been able to transfer some of those or the remaining funds and then closing out the other counsel. The students can still receive those scholarships. So that gets us to the end of your session. But thank you so much, Veronica, for your time. And thank you to the audience. We're going to have a 15 minute break and then we'll go in to our closing plenary session at the top of the hour. Have a great day. Thank you.

Veronica Roman

Foundation Project Administration

Advancement Services

California State University San Marcos

fund management

donor stewardship

fiduciary responsibilities

transparency