CASE Insights on Fund Management in partnership with FundMiner

Video Transcription

Video Summary

CASE Insights and FundMiner presented findings from a two-year research project on fund management, featuring practitioners from the University of Nebraska and The Ohio State University. The research examined staffing, policies, standards, impact reporting, monitoring, and training.<br /><br />Fund management is increasingly recognized as an institutional priority—not merely an advancement task. Unspent or misused gifts can undermine donor trust, create legal and financial risks, and leave resources unavailable to support institutional missions. Yet many organizations remain in the early stages of fund management, with limited formal policies, staffing, and consistent oversight.<br /><br />Common barriers include unclear fund ownership, outdated or inaccessible information, staff turnover, inadequate training, restrictive or outdated agreements, and siloed systems. Because institutions often manage thousands of funds, reactive, manual processes make it difficult to identify root causes and ensure funds are used as intended.<br /><br />Presenters recommended establishing clear policies and responsibilities, involving senior leaders and cross-functional teams, improving data access, and using regular reviews to spot issues early. Communication should be tailored to its audience: visual, plain-language reporting can help fund managers act, while leaders may need concise measures of unspent balances and donor risk. Training should be ongoing and customized to different roles.<br /><br />Impact reporting also presents challenges, especially collecting recipient stories and measuring donor engagement. Institutions can streamline data and reporting processes, expand coverage beyond scholarships and endowments, use prompts or profiles to gather stronger stories, and ask donors for feedback.<br /><br />The session concluded by inviting participants to share questions and identify resources, training, and benchmarking that could advance fund management across the sector.

Keywords

fund management

donor trust

institutional oversight

impact reporting

staff training

fund policies

monitoring

data access

unspent balances

benchmarking