Overview

FutureFund Connect organizes your records into yearly time periods. Depending on the page you are on, the same period may be labeled “Term,” “Fiscal Year,” or “School Year.” They all mean the same thing: a year range such as 2025 - 2026.

Board members, documents, and memberships are each tied to one of these year ranges. That keeps your history organized and makes it easy to see what happened in any given year.

Filtering a Page by Term

The term is a filter on the page you are viewing — not a single switch that changes the whole site. Pages like Memberships, Documents, Board Members, and reports each have their own filter.

1. On a page that supports it, find the Term filter (it may read Fiscal Year or School Year depending on the page).
2. Choose the year range you want to see, such as a previous year.
3. The list updates to show only records from that year range.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Each page filters on its own. Changing the term on the Memberships page does not change it on the Documents page.
• Most pages open already filtered to the current year range, so you usually see today’s data first without doing anything. The exception: if you filtered that same page to a different term within the last hour, it picks up where you left off instead — so if you’re reviewing an older term and step away briefly, you won’t have to reselect it.
• Connect remembers the filters for your five most recently filtered pages. If you filter a sixth, the oldest one goes back to its default.
• To review history, switch the filter to an earlier year range. To return to the present, set it back to the current year.

How a “Current” Term Is Decided

Each entity (your unit, council, or district) has a Fiscal Start Month setting. This is the month your year begins, and it controls where one term ends and the next begins.

• The default is July, so a term runs from July 1 through June 30 of the next year (for example, July 2025 through June 2026, shown as 2025 - 2026).
• If your organization’s fiscal start month is set to something else, your term boundaries shift to match.
• The “current” term is simply the year range that today’s date falls into, based on your fiscal start month. That is the term pages default to.
• Term boundaries roll over on Pacific time, so a new term begins at midnight Pacific no matter where you are.

You can see your organization’s fiscal year on its dashboard, in the Organization panel, listed as Fiscal Year with the start and end dates.

Changing Your Fiscal Start Month

The fiscal start month is not on the everyday Edit form — it lives on the Full Edit form, which is only available to people with the entity-management role (usually your district or state PTA administrators).

If you have that role:

1. Open the organization’s dashboard.
2. Select Full Edit (it sits next to Edit in the top corner).
3. Find the Fiscal Start Month dropdown.
4. Choose the month your fiscal year begins, then save.

If you don’t see a Full Edit button, ask your council, district, or state PTA to make the change for you. That’s normal and expected — this setting affects how every term lines up, so it is deliberately kept at a higher level.

If you are unsure which month to use, check your bylaws or ask your state PTA before changing it.

Moving Data Forward to a New Term

When a new year begins, your board members do not move forward automatically. You can carry them over so you are not starting from scratch.

• Use Copy Board Members to Next Term to bring your current board members into the upcoming year. This option appears as a banner on the Board Members page from March 1 through the end of your fiscal year, when the next term’s roster is still empty.
• If your current term’s roster is empty and last year’s had members, a different banner offers to copy them forward from the previous term.
• After copying, review the new term’s roster and update any positions that have changed.

This way the routine work carries forward, and you only need to adjust what is actually different.

Past Terms Are Locked

Terms before your organization’s current fiscal year are locked for editing. You can still view every past term in full — locking only prevents changes, so your official history stays accurate. See the Board Members article for the details.

Tips

• The label changes by page (“Term,” “Fiscal Year,” or “School Year”), but it always means the same year range.
• Before entering new data, glance at the term filter on that page so your record lands in the year you intend. Entering data under the wrong year is a common, easy-to-make mistake.
• After a fiscal year rolls over, remember to copy your board members forward so the new term is ready to go.
• Filters (including Term) stick for about an hour per page, then quietly reset to the default the next time you visit.