Other Member Financed Activities - Online Payment

A friend of mine in another state informed me that they were able to pay for their YW Camp using the online donation slip. They were told to just place it in any category and then add a note indicating where it should be moved to.

I'm not sure how you go about ensuring that the note is brought to the clerks attention, but it appears that the donor statements can, in fact, be adjusted online to pick up the Other Member Financed Activities list from the ward.*

Is this a valid way to go about collecting these donations online for those who prefer to do everything electronically? Is anyone else doing this (or something like it)?

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*P.S. They really should add tooltips or something to the drop-down selections in the "Other" box when adjusting donations. The other member financed name categories are too long to read and you end up having to add almost all of them in order to find the one you are looking for.

It sounds like some enterprising clerk has found a way to abuse the functionality that allows a clerk to correct a donation slip. This kind of creativity creates new work for developers.

I personally wouldn't do it.

scgallafent wrote:It sounds like some enterprising clerk

Or perhaps an enterprising YW leader... When I was clerk, I was constantly doing damage control when organization leaders would make stuff up on how these kinds of payments could work when advising the members. I usually did not find out until members started following incorrect directions from the organizations. I cannot count how many times I had to tell members, "no, the annual fundraiser activity is not tax deductible even though you were told by (the organization) president that it would be."

I've been tempted to tell a couple members to do this in the past when they had forgotten to bring their camp check for 4 weeks in a row . But as scgallafent said, this definitely feels like an abuse to get around a policy decision and I never felt good about it. So I usually just ended up texting them shortly before church to remind them.

scgallafent wrote:It sounds like some enterprising clerk has found a way to abuse the functionality that allows a clerk to correct a donation slip. This kind of creativity creates new work for developers.

I personally wouldn't do it.

Is it an abuse of intended functionality? Or is it a workaround for a yet-to-be implemented feature?

I would think that eventually it would be possible to submit payments into these other categories electronically (e.g., Girls Camp, High Adventure, Christmas Aid, etc.).

That's certainly what many in our ward would prefer to do.

Just wanted to get an idea if this was something other wards / stakes were doing already.

noah940 wrote:Is it an abuse of intended functionality? Or is it a workaround for a yet-to-be implemented feature?

scgallafent is a church developer. That doesn't mean he knows everything that might be planned but he probably has better information than most of us.

The FAQ for donations says:

No, contributions made for fundraising activities are not considered donations but are considered a payment for goods or services and cannot be completed online. They are similar to paying for the cost of craft projects that are part of a Relief Society activity. They must be done through your local ward or branch.

I'm not sure exactly why the distinction between donations and payments is important but the statement makes it sound like this is a policy or legal issue rather than something this just hasn't been a high enough priority to do yet.

In any case, to me the statement says that these payments should not be made though the online system at least at this time.

eblood66 wrote:

noah940 wrote:Is it an abuse of intended functionality? Or is it a workaround for a yet-to-be implemented feature?

scgallafent is a church developer. That doesn't mean he knows everything that might be planned but he probably has better information than most of us.

In this case, it does mean that he knows one of the developers who works on this team and has talked to him in the past couple of days.

The decision to not allow members to contribute to AMFA ("other") categories was a business decision. Until there is a change in that business decision, this is NOT a "yet-to-be-implemented feature."

Strictly speaking, submitting a tithing or fast offering donation and then having the clerk modify the donation is an abuse of intended functionality. The dev and business teams for this application are aware that units are using the functionality in the way it has been described. If they decide to change the system to not allow that, there isn't going to be much sympathy if a unit complains that it is now "broken."

If you need another reason not to do it: IIUC all the stock "Other" categories available on the online donation form are pretty regularly swept into the church coffers- seems like a good way to lose your payment.

I also really wish there was a supported way to do this. Since it's somewhat unclear as to how much supporting documentation is required for audit purposes, we'll often just fill out a donation slip for each payment and file it just as we would for tithing, just to be safe. At first blush, it seems like overkill, but in the absence of other guidance or process, I'd rather err on the side of caution...

You bring up a good point about audit. Where's the paper trail that shows the donation was supposed to be reclassified? Perhaps printing out an email that shows the request to change it? I'm not sure as using the paper slip to change an on-line donation will cut it.

Oh, I wasn't even talking about the reclassification hack- I just meant that we fill out a donation slip even for all-paper "Other: Authorized Member-Financed Activities" donations (eg, Girls Camp payments)- basically anytime we get a check from someone.

There's a "Notes" field in the online donation form that might be usable for audit-trail purposes for folks that do the "Other" reclassification, but I don't know if/where that shows up in LCR. I'll have to add a note on my next tithing payment and see if I can find it on the backend...

Much as I'd love to ditch the paper for ward Other donations (I'm sure 90%+ of our youth's parents would pay online if given the choice), I'm definitely not going to encourage anyone to do the online Other donation hack without an official OK from at least my stake auditor and preferably from Salt Lake. I don't want to get a nastygram from anyone about it.

nitzmahone wrote:There's a "Notes" field in the online donation form that might be usable for audit-trail purposes for folks that do the "Other" reclassification, but I don't know if/where that shows up in LCR. I'll have to add a note on my next tithing payment and see if I can find it on the backend...

The Help Center FAQs say you can add a note to a new donation or to an existing donation by clicking the Notes icon at the bottom of the slip. It was my understanding that any note is for the benefit of the member and does not display anywhere else. I do not remember if I actually read that somewhere, but it would seem to me that if I added a note to an existing donation it would not be processed through the system again just to show up on a clerk administrative computer or anywhere else. You may discover something different, of course.

nitzmahone wrote:There's a "Notes" field in the online donation form that might be usable for audit-trail purposes for folks that do the "Other" reclassification, but I don't know if/where that shows up in LCR. I'll have to add a note on my next tithing payment and see if I can find it on the backend...

Just to close the loop on this one: nope- notes made on the user-side donation form don't appear to be accessible in LCR, so it doesn't look like there's any decent inline (and audit-kosher) way to let submitters direct the adjustment of an "Other" donation. I even checked the JSON responses- wouldn't surprise me if it'd cough them up if you asked for the right key name, but the notes don't come over in what LCRFFE asks for anyway.

In the US/Canada, this is a ridiculous requirement - The ONLY check I write each year is for YW Camp. And, it's been that way for a very long time. I know many, many, many, many, many people where that is the same situation. It's only a Category. If Ward Missionary can be 'variable' there is no reason that people couldn't choose a drop down from 'other'.

I've found over the decades of working in the clerking areas of the church that someone has an 'opinion' about a rule or policy or just doesn't 'feel' right about it. Because, literally, WHAT is the difference, I mean, what is the actual difference between filling out a form, indicating other:[whatever] on the form and sending a check -vs- the drop-down of selecting 'other:[whatever]' online and paying through a check online. Seriously, tell me the privacy/security/policy difference of doing it in person vs online.

While we're at it, why can't I setup a recurring donation? An ExPat can do it by paying directly to the church. The Wealthy who don't want the $$ known by other church members are able to setup recurring donations. In this particular case there is a policy or a 'feeling' or belief from people making the decisions about the solution as to why it shouldn't be there. [I don't really want an 'explanation' because it's not the point, the point is it's arbitrary, a decision made by committee or by a person about how they 'feel' about a thing - Regardless of what one might use to justify the action]

johnshaw wrote:The ONLY check I write each year is for YW Camp.

I do not write checks. My "checking" account no longer allows it. I pay for things electronically or I do not pay for them. I told my ward clerk that he ought to try a negative reimbursement to the proper Member Financed Activity account, but I do not think he is brave enough to try it. I would also hope that the system would not allow a negative number as the reimbursement amount.

johnshaw wrote:It's only a Category.

While I do not disagree, it would require thousands of drop down selections to cover all the options wards are using. And it would require a separate tracking system to keep nondeductible donations apart from deductible donations. Accounting wise, it is a very different category from the others.

I get it, it can be hard, but they were OK with it when it was MLS. So, there could be many reasons NOT to do it this way, but none of them involve what's good, better, or best for the general membership of the church, nor is it better for clerks who have to figure it out and hear about it All-the-time. I just don't see the difference between having it available in MLS and not when it's an online app.

johnshaw wrote:I just don't see the difference between having it available in MLS and not when it's an online app.

One difference is that in MLS the clerk/bishopric member is choosing the category and hopefully has a good understanding of what it is intended for and the rules around OMFA accounts, while in donations you are dealing with all the members who may not understand those things. I don't really know if that is why or not, but I'm guessing it was a business decision not just the programmers whim.

There's already been posts about problems caused by well meaning members who thwart a clerk's efforts to zero out a returned missionary's account.

That may have played a part in the business decision.

jonesrk wrote:

johnshaw wrote:I just don't see the difference between having it available in MLS and not when it's an online app.

One difference is that in MLS the clerk/bishopric member is choosing the category and hopefully has a good understanding of what it is intended for and the rules around OMFA accounts, while in donations you are dealing with all the members who may not understand those things. I don't really know if that is why or not, but I'm guessing it was a business decision not just the programmers whim.

While programmer whims always exist, the issues we normally see with members ease-of-use, not understanding why things get done are always a business decision in my book, I'd never blame a programmer for anything.

I get that, but I also don't really understand how it's different, in fact having the specific donation makes it easier, sometimes, on clerks who have to deal with donations written out by members that are all-over-the-place though I don't think it's as big a deal as we're making it out to be.

It's easy enough to have a check mark that says - make this visible for online donations or make visible from X day to Y day and inform members they can donate between those dates, otherwise they'll need to use a check.

Of course, I get that some clerks want to put as little into their effort as possible and it can get messed up... but that doesn't change online/in-person. The issues apply to both, regardless, as I see it.