Cole Reese Accountability and Stewardship

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Accountability and Stewardship

Cole Reese

7 August 2013


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Gift processing

Mail sort

In the Virginia Mason Foundation, to keep our staff honest and avoid any question, we

have a different person sort the mail than does the gift entry. This way, we have more

than one person recording the number of gifts that come in through the mail. Having two

people helps make sure no gift is missed or lost in the beginning stages of gift processing

Gift Processing boardOnce the mail has been received and sorted, the number of gifts received is entered onto

the gift processing board. The board serves as a visual cue, so the person doing the gift

processing knows what is expected of them. Additional gifts coming in throughout the

day are also logged on part of the board. The numbers from the day before are recorded

on a log sheet so we can track what has been entered before the board is wiped clean and

the process starts over.

Standard work for entryThe majority of standard tasks at Virginia Mason Medical Center have a document called

Standard Work associated with them. This document outlines all the steps to complete

a given task and to make sure it is done accurately without parts of the process being

skipped. Gift entry is one of the tasks that has standard work associate with it. The

standard work for gift entry outlines how to enter a credit/debit, check, and/or cash

donation. It also lists how to assign a fund to a gift, so we know where the money should

be credited. In addition, it covers how to print out the acknowledgment letter, which is

done at the time of gift entry.


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There is additional standard work for how to run a deposit, how to process a credit card,

and how to enter event gifts, or grants.

Coding of fundsTo make sure that the hospital complies with a donors intent on how their money should

be used, our accounting system is set up with many funds. If someone wants their money

to go to diabetes research, their gift is coded to that fund. If someone wants their donation

to go to help uncompensated care, their gift is coded for the Sweet Charity fund. If

someone doesnt care where there gift goes, it is coded for the Virginia Mason Fund for

Excellence, which is our undesignated fund. These funds are connected with accounting

codes, so once money is assigned a fund, it is registered for a particular account in the

hospital. This helps to make sure that we are respecting the donors/funders wishes

Statement on acknowledgement lettersAs a verification, to make sure we have assigned their donation to the correct account,

our acknowledgement letter/tax receipt states what fund the donors contribution went to.

This serves as an additional check for us and for the donor. Last week I received a call

from a woman whose gift had been assigned to general gynecology, when she had

intended for the gift to go to gynecologic oncology. Interesting point to note: the mistake

was not on the gift processing end, there donor had marked the wrong box on her

donation form.

Visual cues in database

Even with the standard work, errors can still be made if someone is distracted or not

focused while doing gift entry. To help reduce errors when entering gifts, our database is


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set up so required fields are highlighted in blue, while non-required fields are beige. This

way, one can simply look at the screen to see what they are missing.

Daily gift checkAt the end of every day, the person who sorted the mail is responsible for doing a

successive gift check. There is a query that is run that brings up all the gifts that were

processed that day, and the mail sort person goes over the report to make sure the correct

letters were assigned to people based on the fund they gave to, that everything is spelled

correctly, et cetera. Again, having two sets of eyes on this helps to reduce mistakes.

Credit card reconciliation

In addition to the entry check, a credit card reconciliation report is run to make sure

dollar amount processed through our credit card processor matches the amount of credit

card donations logged into the database.

Daily bank reportsMuch like the credit card reconciliation report, the daily bank report verifies that the

dollar amount and number of checks entered through our remote deposit match with what

was entered into the database.

Monthly reconciliationOnce a month, our operations manager will run a Monthly totals report. She will then

verify this against the daily reports that were run. To add an additional level of

accountability, once the monthly and daily reports match, the totals are verified against

the actual amount of dollars in the bank.

Yearly accounting audit


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All of the process listed above are run by people in the foundation. To make sure the

foundation is being honest and accountable, every year, the hospitals accounting

department will do an audit on the funds. This makes sure that no mistakes were carried

over from month to month, and it helps to make sure nothing fishy is going on between

operations and gift processing.

Appeal process- It is so vitally important to use the money that has been donated as efficiently as

possible. Being irresponsible with how donations are used is just as reckless as not accounting

for where the money goes. Historically, the VM foundation was notorious for over-ordering

supplies, this was primarily because there was not a comprehensive inventory system. To make

sure that donated money being spent on fundraising is used as efficiently as possible, I

implemented the following controls at the Virginia Mason Foundation to make sure we were not

hemorrhaging money from improperly managed inventory.

Inventory work sheetsThis sheet is on the outside of our letterhead/paper supply closet. When one removes

items from the inventory, he or she is to log this on the sheet. This is the first step in the

process to making sure people are accountable to how we are using resources.

Weekly inventory updateOnce a week, the numbers from the sheet are applied to our inventory spreadsheet to

adjust the inventory count so we know how much stock we have on hand. By updating

this weekly, we make sure to stay on top of keeping track of numbers.

Quarterly inventory audit

Standard work and templates


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Faux letterheadStewardship

Standard work for thank you notes Weekly stewardship charts

Staff accountability

VMPS board for leaders

Cole Reese Accountability and Stewardship

Documents

Transcript of Cole Reese Accountability and Stewardship