The perpetual "money left in other acct" question

Our girls did a silent auction fundraiser for girls camp. Then they went to girls camp. The auction raised more than they spent. I 'm just now noticing that we have a few hundred dollars sitting in that bucket.
I read that that money is to be returned to the donors. Problem is we had many donors, with many varying amounts. I don't want to try to split it up amongst all the donors. Are there any other options?

Thanks.

I think the preferred option in this case is to carry it over to next year's camp or spend it on equipment. The alternative is to send it to CHQ.

If this was a case of the families paying for the camp and there was left over - then it would be best to refund the excesses. But as you've noted, that's not really practical when there is a fund raiser.

hansg wrote:Our girls did a silent auction fundraiser for girls camp. Then they went to girls camp. The auction raised more than they spent. I 'm just now noticing that we have a few hundred dollars sitting in that bucket.
I read that that money is to be returned to the donors. Problem is we had many donors, with many varying amounts. I don't want to try to split it up amongst all the donors. Are there any other options?

The first step is to make sure that all the funds received and expended were put in the correct category; I've seen many cases where clerks were not careful to make sure that the expenses were properly categorized as Budget or Other.

Once you've done that, you have to do something with the surplus.

Returning money to the donors is one option, but it is understandably difficult when the money came from a fundraiser.

Another option could be to carry forward the funds for the next year's camp. Some stakes are pickier than others in this regard, depending on the interpretation of the relevant policies by the stake president, the audit committee, and the area auditor. In our stake, we're allowed to carry forward reasonably small amounts from year to year if it's for the same purpose (funds raised for 2014 YW Camp can be carried forward to 2015 YW Camp).

aebrown wrote:The first step is to make sure that all the funds received and expended were put in the correct category; I've seen many cases where clerks were not careful to make sure that the expenses were properly categorized as Budget or Other.

Good point. You shouldn't transfer funds from Other to Budget, but you can recategorize checks written from budget for the camp to Other.

And it's perfectly fine to write a check from Budget to cover any deficit in Other. While that may sound odd, the main thing is to keep a audit trail that shows that all funds raised were spent on the camp simply by looking at the Other account without having to look at the entire budget. This is to show that policy was followed and the raised funds didn't go into the general activity fund/budget.