Accountability and Stewardship

Cole Reese 7 August 2013

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 board Once 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 entry The 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.

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 funds To 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 letters As 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

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 check At 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 reports Much 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 reconciliation Once 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

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 sheets This 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 update Once 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

Faux letterhead

Stewardship Standard work for thank you notes Weekly stewardship charts

Staff accountability VMPS board for leaders