Moving a record when don't know destination

I have a Bishop asking to move out records in his ward. It's a student ward, and they have a lot of records for people they can't find.

Does anyone have a link to the 2012 list of steps you take to move a member? I think it was circa 2012 but links I've found to it are broken.

If they follow all the steps and still can't find where the person moved to, where can we move the records so that the ward list reflects who is there and should be ministered to vs. cluttered with records of people they can't find? I remember a sort of 'dead letter' place you could send records, but that was years ago. It is not the goal to send them there, and I'm looking at a service we can subscribe to that may help us find people more easily when they disappear on us, but if we hit the worst case, where do we send those records?

Try to move out a record, indicate the new address is unknown and I believe you'll be presented with a list of instructions.

As far as ministering, the best you can do is create a district for them. Usually under the EQ or RS President. They still show up in your stats, etc, but at least you're keeping them separate.

russellhltn wrote:Try to move out a record, indicate the new address is unknown and I believe you'll be presented with a list of instructions.

That is exactly what will happen. At that point, on the first record, you might want to just jot down the eight or nine steps that are required. Then you can follow the steps for all of the other records without having to go into LCR every time to do it.

Then, once you have completed those steps, you can go in, check off all the boxes because you've done the work, and then send out the record. It will leave your unit at that time.

Having served as a clerk in a student ward, here are a few additional suggestions:
– Work with friends of the member who moved out, who are still in the ward. Share the list of those who have moved with ward council members, and assign parts of the list to them to gather information. If ward council members aren't in contact with the person who moved already, they can use Facebook's "mutual friends" feature or ask around to find someone who is.
– If you have home ward information (where the student's parents live), sending the records there is usually better than to "address unknown." In Leader and Clerk Resources, you can see the previous wards the member has lived in (I think for the past year). You might be able to see specifically which ward their parents are in on the family tab (but I no longer have access so I'm not sure).
– Start gathering information about members who are moving a couple of weeks before the next semester change. It's a lot harder to gather information after the member moves. On the other side of the coin, if you gather information too early, a lot of people won't know where they're moving yet.
– Services for locating people are less likely to be reliable for students, who tend to move relatively frequently and don't leave as much of a traditional paper trail – so, I don't know if it would be worth the investment.

The list of steps can also be found in the Help Center in the article Move Records Out.

sbradshaw wrote:– Work with friends of the member who moved out, who are still in the ward. Share the list of those who have moved with ward council members, and assign parts of the list to them to gather information. If ward council members aren't in contact with the person who moved already, they can use Facebook's "mutual friends" feature or ask around to find someone who is.

It is my belief that the church's intent is to have the local ward be the "boots on the ground" and use local resources, such as friends, to locate the member. While some wards use on-line people locator services, that's something the church can do just as well. There's nothing in the instructions that call for doing that. And the services can be out of date and inaccurate. Done wrong, they're more harm than good.

sbradshaw wrote:If you have home ward information (where the student's parents live), sending the records there is usually better than to "address unknown." In Leader and Clerk Resources, you can see the previous wards the member has lived in (I think for the past year). You might be able to see specifically which ward their parents are in on the family tab (but I no longer have access so I'm not sure).

As sbradshaw said, moving the student's record back to be with the parents may be a better choice than sending them to address unknown.

You can see the member's prior unit on the Individual tab and the parents' unit(s) on the Family tab in LCR. I would start with the parents' unit information on the Family tab. If the parents are in different units, you could look at the unit history on the Individual tab to see where the student came from and try to determine which ward would be most appropriate.

In order to move the record without an address, you will need to move them into the parent's household. You will need either the parent's MRN or name and birth date to complete that. Printing the student's membership record will help with that step.

I'm not sure how it works now, but eons ago when I was a ward clerk (before modems were used), I'd just write "regroup with parents" on the record. You could probably still do that via the "Special Request" feature. (Although, these days you have to wonder if the parents are still one household...)

As an option we have had some success with: if the parents are members of the church, you can see what ward they are in from the child's record (click on the member's "Family" tab and click on the unit number listed next to their parents names (if they are both in the same ward/branch, you will see that as well). That will give you contact information for their parent's bishop. We have contacted the bishop of the parent's ward/branch and requested contact information for the parents so we can find where their child has moved to. Then we contact the parents and request assistance for a current address.

Thank you all for the excellent suggestions.