Funding
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In Landscape, funding is used to track where you obtain funds from to acquire a property or perform work. Landscape is able to track 3 different aspects of funding: Sources, Agreements with those sources, and subsequent Disbursals. Funding Expectations can also be added to a Project. Only Disbursals (which can be tied to funding sources or agreements) are tied directly to portfolio records. This funding structure makes it easy to see how much money you've received from a single funding source over time and towards which projects.
Funding Source
A Funding Source can be thought of as a pot of money that you rely on regularly. So, for example, a land trust may track 'Department of Fish & Game' as a Funding Source, and 'Internal Acquisition Fund' as another. An individual donor should not be represented as a Funding Source, as Landscape is not intended for donor tracking. Instead, you may want to track 'Private Donations' as a Source, or bundle that into your 'Internal Acquisition Fund' Source, depending on your reporting needs.
Creating a Funding Source
You can create a Funding Source from the main Funding page or any time you add a new Funding Disbursal, such as from a Property's 'Funding' tab or within a work item:
Once you create a Source, you can add one or multiple contacts to it. The Funding Source entry will also display all associated Funding Agreements and Disbursals. You can add and delete Agreements and Disbursals from this location as well.
Funding Agreement
A Funding Agreement is an agreement (formal or informal) for an amount of money with a source. This may be an agreement with a funder to fund a particular protection project, or it may be an agreement to provide a certain amount of money for applying towards any number of projects.
In queries and report templates, Funding Agreement objects also serve as a connection between Funding Expectations and Funding Disbursals.
Creating a Funding Agreement
There are several ways you can create a new Funding Agreement:
| From the Funding Source editing window on the main Funding Page |
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| When you add a new Funding Disbursal |
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| When you add a new Funding Expectation |
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Funding Agreement Fields
Funding Agreements have many additional fields for tracking information specific to that agreement. The Funding Agreement must be created using one of the methods described above before you can view and edit these fields.
Type is a customizable dropdown field. It was originally designed for organizations who regularly provide funds to other organizations ('Internal' vs. 'External'), but is also useful for specifying Grant vs. Loan, or other categories that are relevant to your organization.
Identifier allows you to capture the ID number of the grant, if it has one.
Source specifies which Funding Source the Agreement is tied to.
Amount is the total amount of the agreement.
Match Amount Required is where you can enter the match amount required by the agreement. Note that this money is not added automatically as 'expected funding' in a Project, and so depending on how you are tracking funding, you may need to create or incorporate this amount into a separate Funding Expectation entry.
Team Lead allows you to specify which staff member is in charge of this agreement.
Applied On, Approved On, Executed On, and Ends On are all date fields which allow you to capture those respective values.
Active indicates whether the agreement is open or not. This is also a quick filter on the main Funding page.
'Use Allocation'
This feature allows you to portion out agreements. For example, you could designate X amount as for the purchase of the property, and Y amount as for transactional costs. Additional allocation types can be added via Settings > List Items > Funding (must be an administrator to access settings).
If you toggle this setting on, then the 'Amount' field will disappear from the agreement and will be replaced with the 'Amount Allocations' table. The total amount of the agreement is then the sum of these allocations.
When you add a disbursal to the agreement, you can specify which specific allocation amount it is from from the disbursal editor:
Funding Disbursals
A Funding Disbursal captures how much money actually changed hands, when, and for what. Disbursals can be tied to a Portfolio record as a whole, or to individual work items within a Portfolio record. Funding Disbursals can also be tracked in Projects (more on that here: Tracking Funding in Projects).
It is not necessary to have an Funding Agreement to create a Disbursal. You can simply create a Disbursal straight from the Funding Source if there's no reason to track additional agreement details.
Creating a Funding Disbursal
There are several ways you can create a new Funding Disbursal:
| From the Funding Source editing window on the main Funding Page |
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| From the Funding page on a Portfolio or Project record |
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| From a work item |
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Managing Funding Disbursals
Once you've created a Funding Disbursal in a Portfolio record, you may want to link it to a Project record that you added later, or vice versa.
To link a new Funding Disbursal from a Project to a Portfolio record, use the 'Linked record' field at the bottom of the Funding Disbursal creation popup to select the appropriate Portfolio record. Note that the Portfolio record must be linked to the Project in order to show up in this list.
To link an existing Funding Disbursal in a Portfolio record to a Project, first navigate to the Portfolio record's Funding tab. Hover over the name of the Disbursal until you see the horizontal menu appear. Click 'Add disbursal to a project.'
You can also do this from the Project record by clicking the '+' sign to add a Funding Disbursal, then select the radio button next to 'Find existing disbursal'. Note that the Portfolio record must already be linked to the Project for any results to appear.
Funding Expectations
Funding Expectations are unique to Projects. Read more about them in this article: Tracking Funding in Projects.
Funding Examples
Here are a few examples of how you might use funding in Landscape:
- You applied for funding from the Department of Fish and Game towards a fee acquisition project. You create an expectation to represent the $70,000 you think you could receive from them. When adding this expectation, you create a funding source for 'Dept. of Fish & Game'. You also create an agreement for the grant you applied for from them. You enter the details of that grant in the agreement details. Finally, you create a disbursal for $69,532.22 (the actual amount you received) when the money is disbursed. In the future if you receive further grants, you can simply add them as new agreements to the existing source.
- You are made aware of a funding source to protect land in your watershed to enhance climate change resilience. You create a funding source for the 'Mill River Watershed Resilience Grant'. There are a certain amount of funds available in FY2024. You create an agreement called 'MRWRG FY2024' and give it an amount of $200,000. From that agreement, you apply one disbursal of $78,999 to Property A, and one for $113,788 to Property B.
- Your organization has a certain amount set aside for property stewardship at the beginning of every year. You use a source of 'Internal Funding' to track these funds, and create an agreement called 'FY2024 Property Stewardship Fund' for $23,000. When site work is performed on these sites, you log the individual disbursals within the work items that describe this site work (likely site visits with a type of 'Site Work'). The agreement details can then show you how much has been disbursed and towards what projects over the course of the year.
When to track something as a Source vs. an Agreement
This depends on how you're used to tracking these items and how you wish to report out on them. Typically a source is the biggest bucket you can define without losing details in the subsequent data or making things too complex. For example, 'Government' would not make a good source to track because it's too broad - your agreements would then need to define the government entity, and then there would be no room left to describe the agreements themselves. Being too specific in defining a source can also be detrimental in making things easy to report later on. Also consider your own regular reporting requirements when defining these buckets.
Funding vs. Budgets vs. Expenses
Funding is where you expect to receive money from (source), how much you expect (optional - agreement), and how much was eventually received and towards what (disbursal) - "We expect to receive $45,000 from the Department of Fish and Game. We got $44,999 and put it towards the purchase of a property."
Budgets (tracked within projects) are for tracking how much money you expect to spend and on what - "We're going to spend $60,000 to purchase the actual property, and $5,600 on associated costs."
Expenses are how much money you actually spent, when, and on what. "We spent $49,000 on the actual purchase price, and $4,300 on associated costs."
Projects allow you to see all of this information in one interface so you can see how this all adds up.