YW Camp vs. Scout Camp funds

At the beginning of this year, my ward's Scout Camp fund was empty (as usual), but the YW fund had over $3000 carried over (as usual). I know other wards in my stake have the reverse situation, in which the young men always carry over thousands, while the young women carry over nothing.
I advised the bishopric that the young women probably did not need to hold a fund-raising activity this year. However, the YW presidency scheduled a fund-raising dinner anyway. The ward council then decided that the young men would help the young women with the dinner, and thus share in the proceeds of that dinner. However, all the donation slips from that dinner were clearly marked "Other: YW Camp". So I deposited them in the YW Camp fund.
As the expenses for Scout Camp came in, and the Scout Camp fund was exhausted, I began writing checks for Scout Camp expenses from the YW Camp fund. However, Audit question #29 indicates that Other-AMFA funds should be spent only for the purpose for which they were raised. So I am now recommending to the bishop that I recategorize those expenses as coming from the YM budget, rather than the YW Camp fund.
So I guess the whole idea of the young men helping with the fund-raiser dinner didn't work out as we had hoped. In the future, do you think we should just combine the YW Camp subcategory and the Scout Camp subcategory into a single subcategory? All funds raised for either purpose would be deposited into that single category, and all expenses paid from that single category. That would probably be a bad idea, since audit question #28 indicates that such funds should be raised for a specific purpose, rather than a general purpose slush fund.
I welcome your wisdom on this issue.

drepouille wrote:So I guess the whole idea of the young men helping with the fund-raiser dinner didn't work out as we had hoped. In the future, do you think we should just combine the YW Camp subcategory and the Scout Camp subcategory into a single subcategory?

You could, and call it the Youth Camp subcategory, but I would not do that. For a joint fundraiser, I would either categorize each donation as half YW Camp and half Scout Camp, or I would add up the total contributions and transfer half of the funds raised from the YW Camp subcategory to the Scout Camp subcategory. Of course, the latter would be easier at this point if you have not already done something else.

It seems the confusion is that the Ward Council decided something that wasn't plainly communicated to the ward? Or it was just an automatic memory issue. I would've had the bishop clarify that any donations coming it would be equally applied to both YW and YM other accounts and instructed the clerks to re-classify the Funds to both.

I may have also asked that a paper trail be completed with everyone who wrote in YW Camp, or had them come fill out another slip.

Well, I am the one and only clerk. The donation slips must match the data entry for the deposits, so I didn't have the freedom to change them as I entered them. Maybe we will get this right next Spring when we do this over again.
When we discussed this scenario during auditor training yesterday, a couple of them suggested transferring funds from one subcategory to another, but I did not consider that to be appropriate, either. A transfer is just a back door to circumvent the policy.

When I said reclassify, I clearly did not intend that the slip be changed by a clerk.

My instructions to clerks in cases like this is to prepare slips ahead of time, with the donation entry filled out already with a brief write-up that says what the money will be used for, and what excess funds, if any will be used for, that way everyone signs off and I have a paper trail to satisfy, not only the initial give, but the subsequent usage if more money was collected than needed.

drepouille wrote:The donation slips must match the data entry for the deposits, so I didn't have the freedom to change them as I entered them.

I've never been quite so dogmatic in how I enter donations to Other accounts. I often get payments with various descriptions for camp which often don't match the name I've chosen for the other account. Based on the timing and the available options the intent is usually clear so I put it where it needs to go even if that differs somewhat. I've never had an auditor make an issue of that. Of course, YMMV.

In this case if there was reasonable explanation at the fundraiser that the funds would be used for both YM and YW and some only wrote YW then I'd still put it in a joint account based on the fact that the donations were gathered during the fundraiser. Often people just aren't sure what they are supposed to write. I might include a note (accompanied by the bishops signature) to explain the reasoning for a documenation trail. On the other hand, if it wasn't clear to participants that this was a joint fundraiser or if the donations were made after the fact then I would hesitate.

I do like johnshaw's idea of preparing slips for the fundraiser before hand. That does avoid much of the problem.