Guidelines for Establishing a New Gift Accounts

The Controllers Office tries to follow certain criteria when establishing a new gift account. The two requirements that should be met before the Controller’s Office establishes a gift account are the following:

• the contribution or gift should total $25,000 or more; and
• the donor has placed written restrictions on how the gift shall be utilized.

The initial gift does not have to equal $25,000 but the total amount of contributions over time must equal or exceed the $25,000 limit. The donor must also stipulate in writing how the gift is to be used. (By doing this, the donor has restricted the use of the gift.)

If the gift is restricted and does not meet the $25,0000 limit, the gift will be placed in the departments/colleges general gift account and all gift expenditures will be made out of this account. The department/college can track all contributions and expenses for this gift via Financial Edge transaction attributes to determine the availability of funds and to insure compliance with donor requirements. If the gift, regardless of amount, is unrestricted, meaning it can be used for any purpose, the gift is automatically placed in the departments/colleges general gift account for general use.

The main reason the Controller's office established these two guidelines is because if a gift account was established every time someone gave a small gift for a specific purpose, the university could end up having thousands of different gift accounts. The logistics involved in accounting for and keeping track of all these gifts accounts for the entire campus would be enormous.