Funds vs campaigns
Both Funds and Campaigns are record types that can help you organise, view and report on your data.
Many things can be linked to these, like two sides of the same coin. Campaigns capture where money or activity has come from, while Funds capture what money will be spent on.
Tip: You should only use Funds when money has been donated for a specific purpose!
For example:
Sampletown Community Centre want to raise money to help rebuild their roof.
They create a Campaign called 'Fix the roof 2020' and put that in the fixed data of a donation form so that they can see how much the form raises. They also ask for cash donations from anyone who visits the centre and assign them to the campaign when they manually enter them into Beacon. They can now see and report on the results of their campaign to raise money, and how successful each channel was.
Sampletown Community Centre also allocate all of the money raised in the 'Fix the roof 2020' Campaign to a restricted Fund called 'Roof repairs' so that they can see the pot of money reserved for the repairs. If they were to also apply for and receive a capital works grant to help with the construction, they could also mark the income restricted to that Fund, though might not be part of the original Campaign.
The community centre is able to easily see both how much they have raised, and from where, as well as how much they have to spend, and that the money is restricted rather than for general use.
If Sampletown Community Centre host a general fundraiser, then they may link those donations to a Campaign called 'The Spring Appeal' but they wouldn't record a Fund as the money isn't restricted to any particular purpose.