Demo Community Foundation: restricted funds to accountable impact

Demo Community Foundation is a fictional nonprofit operating food-security and digital-skills programmes in the UAE, India, and Kenya. It receives restricted grants in USD, unrestricted donations in AED, in-kind goods, and corporate sponsorship. The foundation uses branches, warehouses, programmes, funds, projects, cost centres, and beneficiary privacy roles. This scenario shows how OSERP can connect money, goods, people, and evidence without treating a donor promise as spendable cash or an impact metric as an accounting entry.

Grant and fund setup

The grants manager creates grant FOOD-2026-UN, donor, award date, start/end dates, currency, restriction, programme, budget, reporting schedule, allowed cost categories, indirect-cost percentage, and responsible manager. The grant record is the source of truth for what may be purchased or distributed. A restricted balance cannot be used for an unrelated programme simply because cash is available in the bank.

Field	Example	Purpose and impact
Grant code	FOOD-2026-UN	Stable donor-report key
Donor	Global Relief Trust	Donor statement and stewardship
Restriction	Food baskets only	Blocks unrelated cost coding
Programme	FOOD-DXB-01	Operational delivery unit
Currency	USD	Award and donor reporting currency
Budget	USD 500,000	Approved spending ceiling
Reporting date	Monthly	Evidence and submission calendar
Approval threshold	AED 25,000	Procurement routing

The grant is not revenue merely because it is signed. Recognition and release follow the applicable policy. The programme budget is not a bank balance; it is an approved plan against which commitments and actuals are measured.

Programme and dimensions

The programme manager creates FOOD-DXB-01 with location, beneficiaries, target dates, manager, cost centre, project, WBS, outcome measures, and privacy classification. Postable WBS leaves distinguish procurement, warehouse, transport, volunteer expense, and distribution. Use dimensions on each document line where a single document serves more than one programme.

The foundation also creates an unrestricted fund and a digital-skills programme. A purchase of laptops for digital training must not be coded to the food grant. The dimension and validation design should make an incorrect grant visible before posting, not rely on a month-end spreadsheet correction.

Donor, supplier, and in-kind donation

The donor record stores legal name, contact, currency, reporting preference, tax details where applicable, relationship owner, and restriction. Supplier records store legal name, bank, tax registration, category, conflict declaration, and approved status. Beneficiary records are minimized: programme, household or cohort identifier, eligibility evidence, service received, and consent. Personal identity data is available only to authorised roles.

A supermarket donates 2,000 food boxes. The receiving user records donor, donation date, item, quantity, UOM, estimated fair value, valuation policy, batch, expiry, warehouse, bin, condition, and attachment. In-kind goods are not silently valued at the selling price if policy requires a different basis. The warehouse receipt proves physical custody; the donor acknowledgement is separate evidence.

Procurement and budget control

The programme needs 10,000 food boxes, 2,000 blankets, and transport services. A purchase request records grant, programme, WBS, item/service, quantity, UOM, required date, budget line, specification, and requester. Requisition, RFQ, vendor quotation, comparison, approval, purchase order, goods receipt, quality inspection, supplier invoice, and payment are separate stages.

The procurement comparison includes price, quality, delivery, supplier status, currency, freight, and conflict declaration. A purchase order creates a commitment; it does not mean the grant has been spent. The budget check should show:

Approved food budget                 USD 500,000
Open purchase commitments             USD 220,000
Posted food receipts/invoices         USD 145,000
Forecast remaining distribution       USD 105,000
Available planning headroom            USD 175,000

The exact calculation depends on the configured budget policy. The important discipline is to display commitments, actuals, and forecast separately.

Warehouse receipt and quality hold

Food boxes arrive at the Dubai warehouse. The receiver records supplier challan, transporter, vehicle, batch, manufacture/expiry date, accepted quantity, rejected quantity, warehouse, bin, and programme. Quality inspection holds 80 boxes with damaged packaging. They cannot be distributed until released or disposed with an approved reason.

Expiry-sensitive goods require FEFO or another approved allocation rule. A distribution report must show which batch went to which programme location. The foundation should be able to answer a donor’s question about the number of baskets delivered without exposing beneficiary identities.

Distribution and beneficiary evidence

The programme team schedules a distribution event with location, date, programme, planned quantity, beneficiary cohort, responsible staff, transport, and safeguarding controls. The warehouse issues stock by item, quantity, batch, destination, and WBS. The beneficiary service record confirms household/cohort eligibility, quantity received, consent, and acknowledgement. The operational event records service delivery; it does not automatically equal an impact outcome.

If 950 boxes are planned and 920 are distributed, the remaining 30 must be explained as shortage, damaged, rescheduled, or returned. Editing the plan down to 920 hides a delivery exception. A return to warehouse records quantity, batch, condition, and reason; saleable food and damaged food follow different dispositions.

Volunteer expense and payroll

Volunteers claim AED 3,200 for transport and coordinators incur USD 1,100 of programme travel. Each claim records person, date, currency, category, programme, grant, WBS, purpose, receipt, approval, and reimbursement method. Payroll staff and volunteer reimbursements must remain distinguishable for donor reporting. A receipt attachment is evidence, not proof that the cost is allowable under the grant.

The exchange rate used to translate AED and USD costs is dated and documented. A later bank settlement may produce FX difference; do not change the expense’s original rate to remove it.

Donor report and restricted close

The grant manager prepares a monthly report with award, approved budget, commitments, actual expenses, in-kind value, distributions, beneficiaries served, outcomes, variances, forecast, and explanations. Financial figures come from posted records; beneficiary and impact figures come from programme evidence. They are reconciled but not substituted for each other.

The GL Mapping simulation should test grant receipt, restricted release, purchase invoice, inventory distribution, volunteer expense, bank payment, and FX. A restricted fund may use separate dimensions, ledgers, or validation rules. The consultant must document which is authoritative and ensure the same cost cannot be counted in two grants.

Controls and exceptions

Risk	Control
Restricted grant used for wrong programme	Grant/fund dimension plus pre-posting BLOCK validation
Supplier conflict	Declaration and approval status before purchase order
In-kind goods overstated	Valuation policy, donor evidence, and quality receipt
Expired stock distributed	Batch/expiry validation and quarantine
Beneficiary privacy breach	Role-scoped fields and minimum-data design
Duplicate reimbursement	Receipt/reference duplicate check and idempotency
Donor report mismatch	Posted ledger-to-programme evidence reconciliation
Unapproved spending	Budget check, threshold routing, and audit trail

Close and consultant challenge

Close requires donor receipts, grant restrictions, budget and commitment review, stock and batch reconciliation, distributions, returns, volunteer claims, supplier balances, tax, FX, restricted release, impact evidence, and open approvals. Test an ineligible purchase, partial distribution, expired batch, in-kind valuation change, donor refund, grant extension, currency movement, beneficiary correction, duplicate claim, and period lock.

For every test record field, owner, permission, source evidence, physical effect, ledger effect, donor-report effect, and privacy impact. Label the result as product-supported, configured, policy-dependent, or extension-required. Use this chapter with Inventory, Accounting, Advanced GL Mapping, Projects, and the API Library.