Optimizing Donor Funds Administrative Memo

Maria Gutierrez Martin, Vice President, UF Advancement and Executive Vice President, UF Foundation

The UF Foundation is standardizing how donor funds at the University of Florida are categorized to maximize impact from these funds while also staying true to the donor’s intent. This effort is intended to reduce friction and make spending funds easier, which will improve fund utilization, reduce administrative burden and provide clearer guidance to campus units.

What’s Changing

Our donors are passionate about supporting the University of Florida and often want their funds to be utilized in specific ways or in areas that are meaningful to them. Behind the scenes, this donor intent is captured through a combination of structured codes –- college, department or purpose –- as well as a text-based narrative. In assessing this process, we have noticed that in many cases, the narrative conveys the same information that is already defined much more succinctly via the established structured codes.

In streamlining this process, the UF Foundation is identifying funds in which the accompanying narrative does not add any additional guidance beyond what is already communicated via the coding system. For those funds, if the narrative strictly duplicates the information provided by the codes, it will be removed.

If the narrative provides further information regarding fund designation, it will be retained.

Example

Narrative: The spendable income of the fund shall be used to support a Professorship in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida.

Result: The narrative is removed, with no change to how the fund can be used.

Impact

The UF Foundation has identified more than 1,800 standard funds where the narrative text mirrors the codes already in place. Removing these redundancies will:

• Make fund guidance clearer and easier to interpret

• Reduce time spent reviewing and analyzing fund restrictions

• Enable faster, more confident spending decisions

• Decrease back-and-forth between units and central teams

What You Need to Know

We are grateful to each of our donors for their generous support and the donor’s intention for how their funds should be utilized will be fully preserved through the structured coding framework. This change does not alter how funds can be used.

The Foundation will complete the removal of redundant narratives by June 30, 2026. No action is required from campus units unless you are contacted directly.

This work supports broader efforts to strengthen stewardship, improve operational efficiency and ensure funds are used in a timely manner consistent with donor expectations.

What You Can Do

Please share this information with your teams and any relevant stakeholders in your department or area. While we will be distributing this information through several channels, communicating this directly within your respective departments will be extremely valuable.

Learn More / Questions

Additional resources are available on the Optimizing Donor Fund project website. For questions, please contact Patrick Sell at Patrick.sell@ufl.edu.