Page last reviewed on Feb 27, 2025. Pages are reviewed annually.
Many donors to the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) have chosen to support the University by making either a current use or endowed gift with the intention of transforming the faculty and student experience. One of the most important ways we steward our relationships with our donors is by respecting their intent regarding spending the money that results from their giving. Failure to utilize the funds or spend in accordance with donor intent can lead to negative donor relations as well as legal consequences.
Understanding Your Unit's Gift Funds
Back to TopPlease refer to Workday reports R1252 and R1300.5 to understand your gift funds. Workday allows you to drill down into the individual gift worktags to see the summarized descriptions and restrictions, although we always recommend reading through any available endowment documentation. Our team can help you track down additional documentation, as well as provide guidance around what might be allowable.
Addressing Unspent Balances
Back to TopThis outlines the basic options for utilizing gift funds with large unspent balances.
Current-Use Gifts (a.k.a. Term Gifts)
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The Dean's Office encourages the use of the general strategy of "Spend, Merge, or Amend" as laid out in the Spending Gift Fund Balances Overview
Endowments
At times, strict restrictions on allowable expenses may impair your ability to utilize the fund at all. The following three documents outline the most common solutions for these situations. The memorandum to file is used to temporarily expand the agreement's restrictions, while amendments usually involve coordinating with our central partners and the donors to revise the restrictive language. UPMIFA's are typically used when the donor is no longer living, and a normal amendment is impossible.
You may choose to reinvest accrued distributions and increase the size of future distributions. Please consider that reinvestments may not provide particularly good stewardship opportunities, and we encourage you to ensure you have a spending plan in place as you reinvest. Please contact our team if you would like to set this up, whether for one-time reinvestments or recurring reinvestments.
Other Resources
Back to Top- Finding Endowment Agreements
- Endowment Step-ups
- Closing Gift Budgets
- Selling Merchandise to Support Your Unit
Another great resource is Endowment & Donor Service's page on Fiscal Stewardship. Please note that we are in the process of writing new documentation and coordinating with what is on EDS's page, and we may add sections and move links. There may be topics we have not included yet, so please feel free to reach out to us, using the Contacts section below. Thanks for your patience!
Contacts
Back to TopPlease contact the Advancement Services team anytime at CASadser@uw.edu with questions or for more information about how we can help your department steward your donors. Additionally, you are welcome to reach out directly to either Becky and Mike on the Advancement Services team or Debbie in the Dean's Office:
Becky McIntire, Assistant Director, Donor & Fiscal Stewardship
Mike Lee, Data & Reporting Analyst
Debbie Olson, Assistant Director of Finance & Administration (Dean's Office)