Managing Multi-Donor Grants

GrantLink does not have a multi-donor award model. A grant has at most one linked funder, and fund receipts do not have a donor entity field. GrantLink therefore cannot maintain donor subledgers, calculate donor-by-donor balances, allocate expenses to individual donors, or produce acknowledgment-ready donor exports.

You can still use one GrantLink grant to report on a genuinely shared restricted purpose. In that design, GrantLink tracks the combined award, recognized income, manual source references, expenses, budget, and releases at the grant level. Your donor or fundraising system remains the authority for each donor's legal identity, gift restrictions, pledge schedule, tax status, addresses, and acknowledgments.

Decide Whether One Grant Is Appropriate

Use one combined grant only when the contributions share the same:

• Purpose and restriction treatment
• Reporting period and operating scope
• Budget and expense-allocation basis
• Release-from-restriction policy
• Internal reporting owner

Create separate GrantLink grants when donors have materially different restrictions, periods, budgets, reporting obligations, or release bases. Do not combine awards merely to work around QuickBooks Project customer limits.

Create the Combined Grant

1. Create one grant named for the shared purpose rather than one donor.
2. Enter the combined award amount only if that amount is a controlled total.
3. Choose the correct donor-restriction type and grant period.
4. Add the shared budget and indirect-cost terms.
5. Link one funder only if one organization is genuinely the primary funder for GrantLink reporting; otherwise leave donor-level attribution to the donor system.

GrantLink does not require a zero-net journal entry solely to produce combined grant reporting. Record any accounting entries required by your policy in QuickBooks.

Configure QuickBooks Income Tracking

The grant can have one primary and additional revenue links. Use them to recognize QuickBooks lines coded to Customer, Location, or Project values that all belong to this shared grant:

1. Open the grant's QuickBooks links.
2. Under revenue or Money received, add each exact tracking value used for this shared purpose.
3. Sync QuickBooks.
4. Review Income > QuickBooks and trace every row to its source line.

An exact revenue link identifies the grant, not the legal donor. A funder's linked QuickBooks Customer produces only a suggestion unless another exact grant link identifies the line. If one source tracking value is linked to several grants, recognition becomes ambiguous.

Record Outside-QuickBooks Receipts

For a contribution received outside QuickBooks:

1. Select Income > Add receipt.
2. Enter the amount, received date, and source type.
3. Put a non-sensitive donor-system or payment reference in Source reference.
4. Add notes only when they help reconciliation.

The source reference and notes are free text, not a donor record. They do not enforce unique donors, link multiple payments to one donor, track acknowledgment status, or create accounting in QuickBooks.

Do not manually enter contributions that already appear as recognized QuickBooks income.

Allocate Expenses and Releases at Grant Level

1. Configure the grant's expense QuickBooks links.
2. Sync and review automatic allocations.
3. Resolve unmatched or shared expenses in Ledger.
4. Categorize expenses to the combined grant budget.
5. For donor-restricted activity, record and support releases according to the combined grant's restriction policy.

Expenses and releases belong to the GrantLink grant, not to individual donors. GrantLink does not select which donor funded a particular expense or release. If donor-level attribution is required, maintain and reconcile it outside GrantLink.

QuickBooks Boundary

GrantLink reads recognized income and expense sources from QuickBooks. Manual receipts, allocation reporting splits, and release schedules are local reporting records. Current legacy writers for allocation tags/journal entries and indirect-cost journal entries are blocked, even when related permission controls are visible.

Correct QuickBooks source coding in QuickBooks and sync. Do not create GrantLink manual rows to simulate a source correction.

Special Cases

Matching gifts

Track the original donor and employer as separate gifts in the donor system. They may both contribute to one combined GrantLink grant, but GrantLink does not preserve the relationship between them.

Pledges

GrantLink Income tracks recognized QuickBooks lines and manual receipts, not a pledge schedule. Do not infer an outstanding donor receivable from Remaining to receive. Maintain promises, installments, and acknowledgment history in the donor/accounting systems.

In-kind contributions

A manual receipt with source type Other can document a local reference, but it does not create the required in-kind revenue and asset or expense entry in QuickBooks. It also does not establish valuation. Record and approve those matters through the accounting process.

Reconcile the Combined Grant

1. Reconcile the controlled combined award amount to donor-system commitments.
2. Reconcile each recognized QuickBooks line to its accounting source.
3. Confirm every manual receipt is outside QuickBooks and has a donor-system reference.
4. Reconcile the GrantLink total to QuickBooks plus valid manual outside-QuickBooks items.
5. Reconcile donor-by-donor totals separately in the donor system.
6. Review grant-level expenses, budget, and releases without claiming donor-level attribution.
7. Retain acknowledgment evidence outside GrantLink.

See Understanding Fund Receipts and Reviewing and Reconciling Grant Income for recognition and manual-entry details.