When a donor gives for a particular purpose, or your trustees set money aside for one, your finance team needs to know which gifts are tied to what. A restricted fund names that purpose so you can allocate payments to it. Restricted funds are separate from resources.

Before you start

  • You need relationships:read:fundraisingactivities to see restricted funds and relationships:write:fundraisingactivities to create, edit or delete them. See the permission catalogue.
  • To link a fund to a programme, the programme must already exist in Programmes.

Create a restricted fund

  1. In the Relationships section of the sidebar, open Restricted Funds.
  2. Choose New restricted fund.
  3. In Add a restricted fund, fill in:
    • Description (required): a short label, shown wherever the fund is listed, for example “Kitchen refurbishment”.
    • Fund type: Restricted, Designated or Unknown. It starts as Unknown. Use Restricted when the donor set the condition and Designated when your organisation set money aside itself.
    • Linked programme (optional): the programme this fund supports.
    • Notes (optional): longer notes about how the fund may be spent.
  4. Choose Create fund.

A Submitted message appears, and the fund shows in the list with a Pending badge until it has been saved, usually within a few seconds.

Find and open a fund

The All restricted funds list shows each fund’s Description, Fund type and Programme. Type in Search restricted funds to filter by description or programme name, and choose Refresh to reload the list. Select a fund to open it and read its notes.

Edit a fund

  1. Open the fund and choose Edit.
  2. Change the details in Edit restricted fund and choose Save changes.

Changes appear shortly after the Saved message.

Delete a fund

Deleting a fund can’t be undone. Payment allocations already assigned to it keep their reference to it, so check with your finance team before deleting a fund that has been used.

  1. Open the fund and choose Delete.
  2. Read the message in Delete restricted fund, then choose Delete.

Allocate a payment to a fund

In the payment form, use the Allocation section:

  • Choose the fund in Restricted fund, or leave it as Unrestricted when no restriction applies.
  • Use Fund name and Terms of restriction to record what this allocation is for and any conditions the donor attached.
  • To split a gift between purposes, choose Add allocation for each extra fund. The allocations must add up to the payment amount: the form’s checklist shows Allocations must total the amount until they do, then Allocations reconcile. If you save with a mismatch, the form tells you both totals.

If something goes wrong

  • “Description is required.” Enter a description and try again.
  • “Restricted fund not found” when opening a fund: it may have been deleted, or you may not have access. Choose Back to restricted funds.
  • The fund you want isn’t in the payment form. Check it has finished saving (no Pending badge) and reload the payment form.