Restricted giving creates a promise. Most organizations keep it — and cannot prove it, because the delivery evidence lives in a folder while the gifts live in a database and nothing connects them.
The chain you need
- Restriction: the constraint recorded on the fund, readable by anything that spends.
- Allocation: net reconciled funds assigned to a programme, checked against that restriction.
- Fulfillment: what was delivered, in what quantity, over what period, recorded by an accountable person.
- Evidence: the count, filing, invoice or report supporting the fulfillment.
- Update: the donor-facing statement, linked to the specific gifts that funded it.
The test
Pick any number in your last impact report. Can you get from it to a list of gifts in under a minute, without asking a colleague? If not, the number is a claim rather than a finding.