Endowments and Planned Giving
Track an endowment fund's principal, earnings and how much you are allowed to spend this year, record its transactions, and keep a pipeline of bequests and other planned gifts.
An endowment is money you keep rather than spend, where only the earnings are available. Planned giving is the pipeline of gifts you expect later: bequests, trusts, insurance designations. These two screens track both.
When you’d use this
- You need to know how much of an endowment you are allowed to distribute this year.
- Your custodian statement arrived and the quarter’s returns need posting.
- A donor has told you they have named your organization in their will.
- Your board wants to know what is in the planned-giving pipeline and at what stage.
Endowment Dashboard
Where it lives: Sidebar → Nonprofit → Foundation → Endowments. The Foundation group needs the foundation capability on, and you need permission to view funds. Recording a transaction needs permission to manage funds.
Only funds created with the type endowment appear here. Create one on the Funds screen first.
Reading the dashboard
- Pick the fund in Select Endowment Fund.
- Read the four cards:
- Total Balance: principal plus earnings.
- Principal Amount: the protected corpus.
- Accumulated Earnings: what investment activity has added.
- Distributable Amount: what you may distribute.
- The split bar below shows principal against earnings.
- YTD Performance breaks the year into Investment Returns, Investment Losses, Net Investment, Distributions, Fees and Contributions.
- Spending Rate shows the rate as a percentage of principal, or Not configured when the fund has none.
- Last Valuation shows the valuation date, or No valuation recorded.
- Transaction History lists every posting with its date, type, amount, description, reference, journal entry number and debit or credit side.
How the distributable amount is worked out
The distributable amount is the lower of two numbers: the spending rate applied to principal, and the accumulated earnings. You cannot distribute earnings you have not made, and you cannot distribute more of the corpus than the policy allows. If the fund has no principal or no spending rate recorded, Muin shows no figure rather than guessing one.
The spending rate and the last valuation date live on the fund record itself, on the Funds screen.
Recording a transaction
- Press Record Transaction.
- Choose the type: Contribution, Investment Return, Investment Loss, Distribution, or Fee.
- Enter the Amount, the Date and a Description.
- For a Distribution or a Fee, set the optional Spending category.
- Press the submit button.
A distribution is checked against the policy: your distributions so far this year plus this one must stay within the spending rate applied to principal. Over that line the posting is refused with the maximum distributable and the amount already distributed this year, so nothing partial lands.
A distribution draws down accumulated earnings first and only then touches principal.
Planned Giving
Where it lives: Sidebar → Nonprofit → Giving → Planned Giving. You need permission to view donors, and the planned giving capability must be on.
The top of the screen is a five-card pipeline strip, one card per status, showing the count and the amount at each.
Recording a planned gift
- Press New Planned Gift.
- Pick the Donor. This is required.
- Enter the Amount.
- Choose the Planned Gift Type: Bequest, Charitable Remainder Trust, Charitable Gift Annuity, Pooled Income, Life Insurance, Retirement Assets, or Other.
- Set the Status, which starts at Verbal.
- Set the Expected Realization Date, the Fund, and any Notes.
- Press the submit button.
The statuses, in order of certainty: Verbal (they told you), Documented (you have it in writing), Irrevocable (it cannot be changed), Realized (the money arrived), Lapsed (it will not).
Filter the table by type and by status. Each row shows the donor, type, amount, status, expected date, fund and notes.
The pipeline cards count the open stages. Realized and lapsed commitments are deliberately left out of the pipeline total, because a pipeline is what is still ahead of you.
What it affects
- Every endowment posting writes to the journal and the general ledger, which is why each row carries its entry number and debit or credit side. The endowment dashboard is the only place these events are entered.
- A distribution writes an audit event and raises a distribution-due trigger.
- A fund balance at or below 10% of principal raises a low-balance alert, and the dashboard shows a banner: “Low Balance Alert: Fund balance is at or below 10% of principal amount.”
- A planned gift is a commitment, not money. It does not affect your revenue, your receipts or a donor’s tax-deductible total until it is realized as an actual gift.
When it goes wrong
“No endowment funds. Create an endowment-type fund to start tracking principal, earnings, and investment performance.” No fund has the endowment type. Go to the Funds screen and create one, or change an existing fund’s type.
“Distribution would exceed spending rate limit.” The message names the maximum distributable and what has already gone out this year. Reduce the amount, or revisit the spending rate on the fund if the policy itself has changed.
“Warning: Amount exceeds spending rate limit.” This appears in the modal before you submit. It is a warning, but the posting will be refused if you continue past the limit, so adjust the amount now.
The Spending Rate card says “Not configured”. The fund has no spending rate recorded, so Muin shows no distributable figure. Set the rate on the fund record.
“Failed to record transaction.” Either the posting was refused or you do not have permission to manage funds. The Record Transaction button is not hidden from users who lack that permission, so this is the usual cause.
The Realized and Lapsed pipeline cards show 0 even though you have realized gifts. The pipeline counts open commitments only. Use the status filter on the table to list realized or lapsed gifts.
You cannot change a planned gift’s status on this screen. There is no status control on the table. Delete and re-record the commitment at its new status, or record the realized gift as a contribution and mark the commitment accordingly from the donor’s record.
Next step
To post a quarter of custodian activity in one pass rather than transaction by transaction, see DAF, Custodian Statements and Unidentified Gifts. For the foundation setup that precedes all of this, see Giving Setup.