Fundriver Balance Knowledge Base

This article covers the differences in the way we see our Fundriver clients track their spending distributions.

When thinking about how your specific organization processes or posts spending distributions against your endowed funds, here are some questions for you to consider:

1. Does your organization post its full spending policy as distributions against your endowed funds?

OR

2. Does your organization use your spending policy as more of an available budget that your endowed funds are allowed to spend up to each year and then only post distributions against your endowed funds as money is actually awarded or spent?

If you answered YES! to the above Question #1, your organization posts your endowment spending to what Fundriver calls ‘Expendable Funds’.  The next question for you to consider is whether or not your ‘Expendable Funds’ are invested or not?   

• If your ‘Expendable Funds’ are invested (either within the same investment pool as your endowed funds or in a separate investment pool), Fundriver is able to setup these funds within our standard Fundriver package. These funds can have a setting established so that the balances do not pull into your year-end endowment financial statement footnote reports. These funds would receive investment activity earnings allocations based on the investment pool they reside within.
• If your ‘Expendable Funds’ are not invested, Fundriver would be able to setup these funds within our our Expendable Funds Module. This module can help clients automatically post the necessary transactions to reduce the spending distribution from their endowed funds and then subsequently post this amount as revenue within their ‘Expendable Fund’. Clients can then track actual expenses against their ‘Expendable Fund’ within this module and run activity reports for various periods. ‘Expendable Funds’ within this module do not receive investment activity earnings allocations.

If you answered YES! to the above Question#2, your organization posts your endowed spending as it actually happens. The market value of your endowed fund does not decrease by your organization’s full spending policy, it is only reduced as actual expenses/distributions are spent. Your organization can use our Spending Bucket Function! This feature allows organizations to track and run reports on your organization’s spending policy (or budgeted available spending) for each endowed fund along with actual distributions that are posted to each endowed fund throughout the year.  Fundriver’s Spending Bucket reports would allow your organization to see any remaining unspent balances for each endowed fund for each period throughout your fiscal year. The amounts sitting within a fund’s Spending Bucket are still considered a part of the Market Value of the original endowed fund and do not receive separate investment activity earnings allocations. Spending Bucket balances can either roll forward from year to year or can be wiped out at the start of each new fiscal year based on your organization's preference.