Donations to a Restricted Fund

Restricted Funds

Nonprofits are required to track when contributions they receive are restricted by the donor for a particular purpose (e.g., a specific program, a specific time frame, an endowment, etc.)

When you record a restricted grant in MonkeyPod, the software automatically creates a restricted fund for you and associates the grant with it. But what if you have restricted funds that you're fundraising for on an ongoing basis?

Creating a New Restricted Fund

Visit your Chart of Accounts and choose the section for "Net Assets". Then click the link to "Add With Donor Restrictions Account".* Enter the name and other information for the account and click Save. 

Receiving Donations to the Restricted Fund

When a donor contributes to a particular restricted fund, you should record that in MonkeyPod. When recording the donation, click the link (under Accounting) to change the account to which the gift income will be credited. The options available will include your regular contributed income accounts along with any restricted funds that you've created. Simply select the correct restricted fund and record the gift as normal.

Releasing Restricted Funds

Time to spend that money! Once the conditions specified by the donor (i.e. the purposes for which the restricted fund was created) have been, there's still an additional step before you can spend the money. You need to issue a Fund Release, which will officially remove the restriction from the funds and make them available for general spending.

Choose "Release Restricted Funds" under the Transactions menu. Select the date and amount to release, along with the account from which the funds should be released. It's recommended that you include an explanation of the release purposes/justification in the memo field. 

Once funds have been released from restriction, they're now available for regular spending. 


*Yes, that wording is awkward, but "With Donor Restrictions" is technically the account subtype, so...

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