Question: Why Does Advancement Services Report to Institutional Advancement and not Finance?
Question: We have a new Vice President of Institutional Advancement whose background is corporate, not non-profit. He wants to have Advancement Services report to finance, rather than Institutional Advancement. Do you have experience with this situation? What recommendations and arguments can I make for keeping Advancement Services under Institutional Advancement?
Answer:
Knowing your new vice president is from the corporate world vs nonprofit, it may be helpful to draw analogies with which he is familiar.
In the corporate world, “Finance” does not process “Orders”, nor do they deal with “Customer Service.” Finance is all about managing money. “Orders” are part of the “Sales” process. Customer relationships are maintained by Sales.
Development work is akin to the Sales process in the corporate world. Working with prospects and donors to make a gift to support your organization’s mission relies on building trust over time with those people.
Gift processing is much more than depositing money to a bank account. We look for changes of address, the addition of a phone number, the addition of another individual to an account. Did the check come from a newly set up trust account? In the case of a joint account, who signed the check? Are the addressee and salutations fields set up correctly?Bottomline, if there is a question about a donor’s gift, you want someone from development to contact the donor.
Development people understand the nuances of soft credits, linking the gift to a proposal, an appeal, etc. They understand the timeliness of gift receipts. Finance might be more efficient in depositing the money quickly, however; these are gifts from donors, not just money being deposited.
Melissa S. Graves has great insight on this topic in the aasp forum:
“... it is a difference in goals that causes the problem. Your goal is to properly recognize and steward your donors in as quickly a manner as possible. Often finance being
in the front of the line interferes with your ability to do that. You should be able to call a donor the instant a check arrives to thank them and you cannot if you are not first in line.
Finance's goal is to quickly process incoming revenue to have cash to pay expenses. There are sometimes issues with checks that need to be resolved before a check should be deposited (restrictions, conditions, contractual agreements, etc.) and your office is best to make a judgment call on that.’”
The optimum solution is to have a great working relationship between Development and Finance to make sure both areas’ needs are met and placing the donors’ needs first and foremost.
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