DATE:
TO:
Deans and Directors
FROM:
John D. Wiley, Chancellor
SUBJECT: UW-Madison
and UW Foundation Policies
I believe it is
important to reaffirm the long-standing policies and procedures governing gift
funds provided to the UW Foundation.
Please share the contents of this document with those in your units who
deal with the Foundation.
Gifts
coming to us through the UW Foundation are made with thoughtful care and with
great love for this institution.
Let us not forget that we all have the responsibility to cooperate with
the Foundation in the solicitation of the gifts and to
provide good stewardship of the gifts once received. By adhering to the policies and
procedures set forth in this memorandum we will continue to benefit from this
partnership for many years to come.
It is the purpose of
the UW Foundation to solicit and accept gifts on behalf of the University, and
then to invest and protect those gifts until the University needs them. The policies and procedures outlined in
this memo are designed to make sure that the Foundation is used in this way and
does not become an operating arm of the University.
Gift
Acceptance
The Foundation accepts only those gifts that meet
all of the following criteria:
1.
The gift must
provide support for broadly defined activities, such as professorships,
scholarships, building projects, fellowships, research and instructional
programs. The donor may restrict
the use of funds to a specific program area or purpose.
2.
No detailed
technical reports are required as a condition of the gift. The unit or faculty member involved may
provide the donor with a brief summary of the results of supported activities
and a statement that expenditures were made in accord with the intent to the
gift. If detailed fiscal or
technical reports are required, the gift becomes a research contract and must be
awarded to the Board of Regents of the
3.
All patents,
copyrights and other intellectual property rights that result from activities
supported by the gift are not claimed by the donor.
4.
The gift
contains no restrictive provisions, such as delays or advance notice concerning
publication or dissemination of data and information derived from activities
supported by the gift.
5.
The gift is
irrevocable by the donor.
The
Foundation will not accept funds which are derived from University sponsored
revenue producing activities such
as fees for services or for use of university facilities, revenues from ticket
sales, registration fees, and similar activities, or from grants, contracts or
business arrangements. All such
funds must be deposited directly with the University into appropriate types of
accounts.
All
checks deposited to the Foundation must be intended by the donor to be given as
a gift, meeting the five criteria above. Preferably the checks should be made
payable to the UW Foundation. Instructions provided to donors for gifts to be
provided to the Foundation should instruct the donor to make the check payable
to the UW Foundation. It is
acceptable to deposit checks payable to other names, if there is documentation
that the donor intended the check to be a gift to the Foundation or a fund in
the Foundation. That documentation
must be forwarded to the Foundation with the check.
A
All
checks not meeting the gift criteria stated above must be deposited to
University accounts.
Appropriate
University deposit procedures should be used to deposit such funds. Questions regarding deposit of
University checks should be directed to Research and Sponsored Programs at
262-3822 for gifts, grants or contracts or Accounting Services Cash Management
at 262-5980 for all other types of University revenue.
Good
internal control procedures must be followed,
whether checks are payable to the University or the Foundation. These include:
·
restrictively
endorsing checks “for deposit only” immediately upon
receipt
·
depositing
checks within five days of receipt
·
storing
undeposited funds in a locked desk or safe
overnight
·
reconciling
deposits you send to the Foundation or the University to ledger records to see
that they are credited to the proper account.
·
having
donations made by credit card be made directly to the UW Foundation, rather than
through your department. Donations
may be made through the UW Foundation website at : http://www.uwfoundation.wisc.edu/web/www.nsf/allpublished/make+a+gift
by clicking on “Give Online” or by contacting the UW Foundation Gift Processing
department at 263-4545.
·
where
credit card payments for events are accepted by departments, obliterating the
credit card number from any copies of source documents after providing the
original documents to the Foundation.
In
accordance with the IRS regulations and good donor relationships, all gifts must be acknowledged in
writing. In almost all cases, the
Foundation receipts and acknowledges gifts. In situations where
the donor makes a gift of $75 or more and receives any goods or services in
exchange for the gift, the gift is classified by the IRS as a quid pro quo
transaction that is partly a gift and partly the purchase of goods and/or
services. All solicitation
materials produced by the University or the Foundation for donations involving
quid pro quo are required to contain information about the tax effect of the
contribution as well as a reasonable estimate of the value of the goods and
services being delivered to the donor in exchange for the gift. It is always a good idea to work with
Foundation personnel in any situation where gifts involve an element of quid pro
quo before solicitation materials are distributed.
It is
a good practice for the department receiving the gift to also thank the
donor. A sample letter for
acknowledging a gift is available through RSP. For those with authorization to the UW
Foundation’s Campus Access website, a merge file of donor names and addresses
may easily be produced to merge with a thank you letter written by your
department.
As a general principle
and to maximum extent feasible, all support provided through gifts to the UW
Foundation shall be expended by presentation to and acceptance by the Board of
Regents for incorporation into the University’s regular budgeting and accounting
system. That is, the Foundation, upon
request of the University, will make an gift of funds
to the University. Such gifts must
be deposited into fund 133 and expended from that fund. An Extramural Support Transmittal
Form must
accompany the gift check.
Money must be
transferred to fund 133 prior to expending it from fund 133. Administrative burdens and
paperwork can be greatly reduced by making transfers no more frequently than
quarterly, anticipating the amounts to be spent in the upcoming quarter. Once gifts disbursed by the UW Foundation are
deposited into a University fund/appropriation, those gifts are governed by all
State of
Only under
extraordinary circumstances should the Foundation be requested to pay funds
directly to a vendor for a University program or purpose. In such cases, the Foundation
will make payment based on a request from the University custodian of the
Foundation fund designated to make the payment: generally a principal
investigator,
or Department Chair.
These requests must then be routed through the appropriate Dean’s or
Director’s office for a co-signature.
If a reimbursement is for the Dean or Director, the request for payment
must be approved by the Chancellor’s Office. The University custodian is responsible
for maintaining adequate justification of why University funds could not be used
to make the expenditure, as well as all documentation supporting the
expenditure. Such justification and documentation are
considered open University records, subject to public
inspection as provided in the
The UW Foundation will
not make payments directly to UW employees for services or honoraria or make
payment directly to recipients for scholarships, fellowships, prizes and similar
awards. Such payments must be made
through the University. As required
by the Internal Revenue Code, the UW Foundation will report certain payments to
recipients on forms 1099-MISC annually.
In certain cases, the IRS has ruled that activities of organizations
related to the University, such as the UW Foundation, must be considered
activities of the University for tax purposes. In such cases, the payments made by the
UW Foundation will be combined with the payments made by the University for
tax reporting purposes.
All tangible property
gifts received from a donor through the UW foundation or purchased directly by
the Foundation are to be reported on a Gift-in-Kind Transmittal
Form. This action establishes
appropriate insurance and property records for the gifts
item.
There are several general
stipulations regarding direct payment requests to the UW
Foundation:
¨
If the items
being requested for payment can be processed by the University under state
procurement and travel rules, they must be processed through the
University.
¨
The party requesting
reimbursement must be convinced that the expenditure was necessary in support of
ongoing programs such that he/she would be comfortable talking to the donor or
the press about the payment.
Examples of typically
appropriate expenditures to make directly from the
Foundation (Note: these are examples only; each case must be taken on its own
merits subject to the general stipulations above):
¨
Travel reimbursements
exceeding state maxima, to the extent these cannot be processed through the
University with appropriate explanations.
¨
Cost of hosting faculty and
graduate student candidates, to the extent these are not allowable by state
travel regulations.
¨
Cost of legitimate moving
expenses for new employees, to the extent these are not allowable under State
rules. The most frequent example
relates to paying costs of moving the spouse and children. Remember that PRIOR approval must be
requested to reimburse any moving expenses.
¨
Costs related to School or
College Board of Visitors meetings
¨
Cost of alcohol served at
events at which the other costs of the events are allowable. Remember that if an event is being held
in a University facility an Alcohol Use Permit must be
obtained.
Examples of typically
inappropriate expenditures to make directly from the
Foundation:
¨
Paying for goods and services
to avoid the State bid processes.
¨
Reimbursing travel expenses
of employees to avoid documenting expenditures and processing University Travel
Expense Reimbursement forms.
¨
Paying for the cost of
departmental meetings, parties and picnics to the extent such activities are
merely social unless the Foundation account or donor documentation is explicit
that the donor intended the funds to be used for such purposes. If there is a business purpose, the
payments can generally be made through the University.
¨
Paying for retirement dinners
and gifts or flowers for funerals of former department employees, unless the
Foundation account or donor documentation is explicit that the donor intended
the funds to be used for such purposes.
¨
Paying for parking tickets of
visitors and employees.
¨
Making donations or memorial
gifts to non-profit organizations
¨
Paying for upgrades to first
class travel where such upgrades are not allowable under University travel
regulations.
Requests for
expenditures from UW Foundation accounts must be made on a University of
Wisconsin Foundation Check Request Form available as an HTML
document on the web at http://www.uwfoundation.wisc.edu/giftdeposit
and on the Foundation’s Campus Access web site for those with
authorization to access that web site.
This
form must be printed and routed for signature through the appropriate academic
school/college Dean’s Office or Administrative Director’s Office before it goes
to the Foundation.
Any requests for
payments from the UW Foundation which Foundation staff feel are inappropriate
will be referred back to the requesting Dean or Director’s Office. University Accounting Services pre-audit
staff at 262-0121 or 262-1919 are available to assist these offices in
processing transactions through the University when possible.