Coding of Fundraising Costs

Responsible administration of fundraising activity includes evaluating costs required to solicit and obtain gifts from donors. This policy provides a mechanism to collect data needed to track and analyze fundraising costs incurred by colleges and departments.

Fundraising expenses are the total expenses incurred in soliciting gifts and grants from private sources. Units report as fundraising expenses all costs incurred in:

• Funding salaries for personnel, operating budgets and travel expenses for development offices

• Publicizing and conducting fundraising campaigns

• Cultivating and soliciting gifts or grants of all types from individuals, corporations, and foundations, or other private organizations

• Conducting special events primarily intended to cultivate donor relations in support of development goals

• Acknowledging gifts and providing stewardship

Costs and revenues relating to events (such as raffles, sales, etc.) with the sole purpose of generating proceeds in direct support of University programs are recorded separately and should not be included in these Banner accounting strings (C-FOAPAL). For example, if a unit purchases t-shirts for $5.00 and sells them for $10.00, the expenses and related revenues for the t-shirt sales would not be included in a Banner fundraising accounting string.

A separate University accounting string designated exclusively for fundraising purposes is to be established to collect fundraising costs. The accounting string should be used for all full and part-time development office personnel appointments including support personnel, as well as non-personnel fundraising expenses.

For further details on how these fundraising C-FOP strings should be coded, see Section 11.6, Coding of Fundraising Costs of the Business and Financial Policies and Procedures manual.

Last Updated: July 3, 2007