Cleaning out the clerk's office

Over the past month, I have taken great joy in cleaning out my office. It is amazing how much junk gets thrown in there. I believe that when I am done, only 20% of its original contents will remain.

Now to attack the filing cabinet.

Our new Bishop asked me what to do with old manuals taking up space. Any chance the church will re-use, say, the Brigham Young book used for Priesthood and Relief Society several years back? It's still available for the Gospel Library app, after all.

My office is not a library, a closet, or a pantry. Anything that is not current or required by the stake/ward will be disposed of appropriately. If the meetinghouse library doesn't want old manuals, they go to recycling. If they are proprietary manuals, they will be shredded.

Dana, I like your attitude. We cleaned out our clerks office last year. Then we made it know that we were not the storage closet for the organizations.

I was just called as ward clerk last year. I had on my schedule to destroy anything past retention guidelines. I found 3 yrs of finance and some membership hard copies back to 1970’s. That, plus old manuals and such, prompted me to ask bishop if we could have a shredding truck come by the church and just toss the stuff in. It would take many days to shred on our little machine. He ok’ed that. Happy shredding!!

showseason wrote:I found 3 yrs of finance and some membership hard copies back to 1970’s.

Keep a watch out for Priesthood ordinations. Not all of them made it into the "system" and the data is needed.

Other then that, happy shredding.

As for the old PH/RS manuals, I'd offer them to the meetinghouse library, or put them out on a table with a "free" sign.

I have double-checked many priesthood ordination forms, and found a lot of data was either entered incorrectly or not entered at all into MLS. As I clean, I plan to verify every one before I shred it.

mrrad wrote:Our new Bishop asked me what to do with old manuals taking up space. Any chance the church will re-use, say, the Brigham Young book used for Priesthood and Relief Society several years back? It's still available for the Gospel Library app, after all.

I don't know when Distribution Services no longer takes returns, but they will certainly take them at the end of the year (e.g., if you have any George Albert Smith manuals right now). So before you give them away or throw them away, see if you can return them for credit.

We took about three large trashcans of old financial papers out of the stake clerk's office this afternoon. I think the oldest records we had were from 2001. The shredder and I were getting tired, so we decided to take it to the second counselor's house and burn it in his fireplace.

We still have a couple piles of old (2006) Handbooks to destroy. I also have a filing cabinet drawer of priesthood ordination records to review before I destroy them. Oh, and I haven't touched all the disciplinary council records in the stake president's credenza.

You cannot imagine how many hundreds of pounds of paper I have removed so far. (Or maybe you can.)

When I became ward clerk, there were over 15 years of financial records stored in both the bishop's and clerk's offices. In all there were 8 boxes of materials. I found a document destruction company that I could take the material to and watch it destroyed. 30 minutes later and for $25.00 the problem was resolved.

My ward was formed in March 2005, and has had several ward clerks. The current ward clerk reports that he still has paperwork from the beginning of the ward.

On a related note, I was checking out, tuning up a ward computer. Found MLS backups going back to 2006.

You had Clerks that actually did backups, without being prompted!

My complaint about backups is that they never verify where the backups are written. Many clerks leave the USB flash drive inserted, and simply assume MLS is writing the backup files to the flash drive without setting the backup destination. Another complain is that they do not remove old financial statements from MLS, which makes the backup files larger than necessary.

Gracious! Be the Ward Librarian in a ward that had, literally, books from the late 1800's! MONTHS of sorting. Clerks offices are generally a little easier...but not always!

drepouille wrote:Another complain is that they do not remove old financial statements from MLS, which makes the backup files larger than necessary.

At the risk of taking this tangent even further off-topic, I would note that the ability to remove old financial statements from MLS was removed a while back -- we're stuck with the old financial statements until the record retention period expires. So don't be too hard on clerks who fail to do the impossible!

When I cleaned out the current clerk's office I found myself shredding a neat collection of backup 5.25" floppies from years gone by. I had to destroy a full garbage bag (the bags for the big cans that the church provides) of documents that were long past their retention period.

To make life easier for me - and for any who come after me - after the 2nd half audit (the one that takes place in February-ish) I take all of the previous year's records and use twine to tightly bundle them up into a nice, neat package. I add a note to the top of the package that reads something along the lines of "fiance records, 20xx - destroy promptly after 1/1/20xx" and put the entire thing in the bottom drawer, with the older records at the front of the drawer. Anybody who opens that drawer will see a nice, neat bundle of records with an absolutely clear expiration date. They can grab everything with one hand and do whatever disposal process they want.

Professional document shredding service is the easiest. Throwing all of the papers into a 55 gallon metal drum with a healthy dose of saltpeter is the most fun.

Some things change, and some things don't: Last week I found a 5" floppy disk from 1991, but also a check folder labeled April 1972--and that manila folder is exactly like the new ones.

I agree that priesthood, and other ordinance records (baptisms, etc), should be kept indefinitely! In fact at one point the church was asking for Melchizedek Priesthood records from 1993 to 2001 be turned into them so that these could be recorded into the system (because the full info had not been saved in the system during that period). I believe they still want these. Does anyone know if that is the case?
I have also seen baptism info not recorded years later, and having the paperwork to prove the ordinance happened is easier than finding witnesses, or having to re-baptize the person!
Other than these ordinance records (which don't take up much space!), I agree that most clerk's offices have way too much old stuff that can be thrown out, or shredded!

cabrooksby wrote:In fact at one point the church was asking for Melchizedek Priesthood records from 1993 to 2001 be turned into them so that these could be recorded into the system (because the full info had not been saved in the system during that period). I believe they still want these. Does anyone know if that is the case?

That is still true. The missing information being sought is the name of the person who performed the ordination.

I think, though, that once the annual membership audit is completed, and it has been verified that all ordinances are recorded on membership records, it is no longer necessary to retain the paperwork longer than the normal retention period.

A thorough annual membership audit leads to a cleaner clerk's office.

lajackson wrote:I think, though, that once the annual membership audit is completed, and it has been verified that all ordinances are recorded on membership records, it is no longer necessary to retain the paperwork longer than the normal retention period.

Although this makes sense, it is often impossible or very difficult to do. Many of the young men who are ordained elders move out of the stake soon after (or sometimes even before!) the ordination is recorded on their membership record. This makes it impossible for a clerk to examine the membership record and verify that the ordinance was recorded. And such ordinations are by far the ones with the highest probability of having problems with being recorded properly.

There are other ways to verify that the ordinance was recorded, but they are substantially slower, more difficult, and less dependable. Nonetheless, if the recording of the ordinance has not been verified, it's always possible that the paperwork will still be needed at some point in the future.

Our records for the year are being put in the manual box the priesthood/RS manuals come it. It is always the same size and holds the records for a year with a little room to spare and can be easily burnt without even opening when the process is done and time expired.

jirp wrote:Our records for the year are being put in the manual box the priesthood/RS manuals come it. It is always the same size and holds the records for a year with a little room to spare and can be easily burnt without even opening when the process is done and time expired.

How do you secure the box.

Since posting to this topic, I have been looking for the official retention policy for materials other than Finances. I found it. It was updated just over a week ago.

Keep in mind what aebrown said, that it is important to verify that ordinance information actually made it to the membership record.

And in answer to the question cabrooksby asked, if you run across any very old Melchizedek Priesthood ordination information, there is still an effort in progress to make sure the names of those performing the ordinations are recorded, especially from the time period in the 1990s when they were not.

Enjoy.