Gift entry process is controlled by finance

I recently started a role as a development director at a large nonprofit agency. This is not my first director position, and I’ve worked with a variety of finance departments.

This finance department operates in a way I’ve never encountered. They are the only ones who ever see the checks and communications from donors, and then they ask the development staff to code the donations after the fact. They also control what is entered into the donor database. The only thing that development staff do are pull acknowledgments, which they are not permitted to do until finance has posted the transactions.

I have a big problem with this. I’m used to having hands on the donations, checking to see if people have changed their address/written a note/etc, then scanning them for the development team, creating a batch, and sending the batch to finance for processing. The current system has resulted in terrible donor stewardship, delays in acknowledgment, and in my opinion, an inability to fully use the donor database as we need to.

I also think there is a separation of duties issue here, since finance is the only one who ever sees the actual money come in. Thoughts? I am broaching this with our controller tomorrow and I’m not sure of the appetite for change.