Question about donation to other category

Scenario: A member has a youth mow their lawn to earn money towards girls camp. The member writes a check to the local unit and on the donation slip requests that the donation be placed in the girls camp category for this specific youth. Who do I put down as the donor, the member donating or the member in which the donation is intended for. It is an other category donation so taxes shouldn't be an issue. If I am to enter it as the one donating how will we know who the money is being donated for?

drbailey05 wrote:Scenario: A member has a youth mow their lawn to earn money towards girls camp. The member writes a check to the local unit and on the donation slip requests that the donation be placed in the girls camp category for this specific youth. Who do I put down as the donor, the member donating or the member in which the donation is intended for. It is an other category donation so taxes shouldn't be an issue. If I am to enter it as the one donating how will we know who the money is being donated for?

If the young woman is earning her own money for the camp, then I don't see why the ward has to be involved at all. It's not a fundraiser, but simply someone doing work and getting paid for that work.

But if you do run it through the ward, it seems to make sense to have the donor be the actual donor. Although the payment is not tax-deductible, still it was made by that person and will appear on their donation statements.

If you want to keep track of how much has been earned by a particular young woman, then you can make a sub-sub-category of Other for her. So you would have "Other:Young Women Camp" and "Other:Young Women Camp:Lucy Van Pelt" to keep track of Lucy's money. Then after the earning is done and you're writing checks, you can transfer the money from Lucy's subaccount to the "Other:Young Women Camp" category so that you can write checks from that single category.

Or you can just deposit all the money in "Other:Young Women Camp" and keep track separately in a spreadsheet or by some other means.

I understand that it makes more sense to have the donor be the actual donor and I don't know why the ward members wont just pay the youth and make them responsible for donating the money on their own (we have really good youth so shouldn't be a trust issue). However, there are some bishopric members who feel that they would rather keep track of the money by placing the donation under the one who is receiving the donation rather that the one who is actually donating. Is there any church documentation to back up your suggestion. I have nothing to go back to them with if I can't find a source. The bishop doesn't want us to use sub-sub categories. He and I don't like them. They stay on the records for 3 years and you cant delete them or ghost them until the 3 year period of inactivity is up. It's a mess using sub-sub categories in my opinion.

drbailey05 wrote:. . . they would rather keep track of the money by placing the donation under the one who is receiving the donation rather that the one who is actually donating.

. . . as long as you remember who wrote the check if it bounces. If this happens, you will know about the donation not working long before you will see the actual returned check and know who wrote it, so you might want to make a note on the donation slip of the name on the check, along with the check number.

drbailey05 wrote:they would rather keep track of the money by placing the donation under the one who is receiving the donation rather that the one who is actually donating. Is there any church documentation to back up your suggestion.

Every piece of documentation I know of describing procedures for receipting donations says to record the donor in the donor field. For example, in the MLS Help Manual, on page 4: "Click the name of the member whose donations you want to record...."

It's so obvious that you would record the donor in the donor name field, that it's not always explicitly mentioned, but when it's mentioned, it says to put the donor name there.

As was mentioned, tracking bounced checks is one reason to make sure the donor is properly recorded. Basic accounting principles would also dictate that names should match all the way through the process -- check to donation slip to donation record in MLS.

drbailey05 wrote:The bishop doesn't want us to use sub-sub categories. He and I don't like them. They stay on the records for 3 years and you cant delete them or ghost them until the 3 year period of inactivity is up. It's a mess using sub-sub categories in my opinion.

I have no idea what you mean by "ghost", but you can deactivate any subcategory as long as the balance is 0. At the end of the year you can deactivate the sub-sub-category, and then it won't show up in most places.

But that was just one idea. It's pretty simple to keep a separate spreadsheet. Or if you know this particular donor only donates for a particular young woman, then it's easy enough to determine his donations to the "Other:Young Women Camp" category.

As Alan points out, there is no strict policy on who you put as the donor in this case, but it makes sense to put the actual donors name in case the check bounces, etc.

If you want a suggestion...
I would always record the actual donor's name and then provide an Income and Expense report on the Other:Girl's Camp category to the YW Pres. and let her keep track of how much for each girl.