Often departmental activities will be funded from a variety of sources that may include one or more donations. Where these costs do not relate to either research grant or trading activity there may be some discretion as to where these are charged.
In order to make the best use of the various funds available, a Department should in general seek to charge expenditure against funds in the following order of priority, subject of course to eligibility and to the extent of available balances.
| First call against | Restricted funds:
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| Then | General donations |
| Finally against | Other balances available to the Department |
Responsibility for ensuring that Departmental procedures achieve this order of priority rests with the Head of Department.
We have a duty to spend any restricted money first, and the key factors affecting the order of spend are likely to be a combination of:
- order of receipt - we have a prior duty to spend earlier funds first (and this should affect our decision to accept subsequent restricted gifts);
- relative restriction - if fund A's purposes are wider than fund B then it may make sense to spend fund B first in case its purposes "dry up" in the future.
- we have a moral and charitable obligation not to avoidably accumulate balances in trust funds.
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Example of priority spending It has received a £1m donation, specifically for the telescope purchase which is allocated to source of funds HYCA. The balance is to be funded by £755k from a general donation (SoF EFKM) and £45k from a surplus on a trading account (SoF GAAA). The department should therefore: (a) initially charge all expenditure to HYCA until the £1m limit has been reached; Telescope cost centre |
It may be tempting to code expenditure to just one source of funds with the intention to transfer elements as part of the year end process. Please do not as it could have serious implications for the University's Financial statements and the information that is provided to Finance Committee.