Girls Camp expenses in 2023

Stake Clerk here. In the past, the wards and branches have collected funds for girls camp in a Member Financed Activities account and forwarded those funds to the stake. Then we paid the bills. Now, with no MFA account, how are such events to be funded in the future? Is it to come from budget funds (we would create a new category for girls camp) and if so, will budget allocations increase or are we to tighten our belts? Are fundraisers still a part of the plan? I am aware that we are not to add funds to the budget. Thanks for all input.

You'll want to read the official letter Donation categories simplication: Discontinuation of“Authorized Member Financed Activities” Category dated Sept 9, 2022. It provides details.

Basically they have made an exception so that payments for youth camps and funds from the one authorized fundraiser for youth camps can be deposited into a Budget category. The same rules from the handbook otherwise apply without change (i.e. that normal budget allocation funds should be used first, payments from families can be requested if the budget isn't enough and one fundraiser per year can be done to help fund camps if the others are not sufficient). But that is the only new exception (return of advances and return of deposits or refunds are still allowed as always). Deposits to Budget for other activities is not allowed. This is all mentioned in the letter.

So if normal budget funds aren't sufficient then wards should collect payments into a Budget category and then they will transfer to a stake Budget category (assuming the stake is running the camp and paying the expenses).

The question then is how to identify, and keep separate, those contributions so they can be managed as previously in the Other:AMFA subcategories. In other threads there are discussions about this. The method my ward will be using is to create a subcategory, just as was done in the Other:AMFA category, in the appropriate budget category.

The benefit to this change is the elimination of the need to transfer funds from budget to the Other subcategories to keep them balanced. Using the budget subcategories will help, but not eliminate, the potential of using member contributions to inadvertently, or intentionally, supplementing the unit budget. This has the potential of being an audit challenge.

jdlessley wrote: Sun Oct 02, 2022 10:50 amThe benefit to this change is the elimination of the need to transfer funds from budget to the Other subcategories to keep them balanced. Using the budget subcategories will help, but not eliminate, the potential of using member contributions to inadvertently, or intentionally, supplementing the unit budget. This has the potential of being an audit challenge.

Ah yes. I hated that shell game. When I was stake clerk, there were times when I had to pay expenses before the wards transferred their obligations to the stake. But if I ever allowed an Other:AMFA account to go negative, I would immediately receive a nastygram from HQ. So I had to pay expenses from budget, and then change the source of those expenses to Other:AMFA when funds became available there. As a ward clerk, I had similar situations arise.

I am in a stake YW presidency in Utah. In our stake, the stake presidency approves sufficient funds for our budget to pay for camp on a stake level. We don't ask wards to pay anything, unless they want to get a few extra personal things for their girls or if they want to make something for their ward's assigned meal for everyone that costs a little more than the money we have budgeted per meal (as part of our stake camp expenses). In that case, they pay for any extra cost with ward YW funds but don't mix it with stake funds.
When we get reimbursed on a stake level,we indicate it is for Young Women's Camp meals or workshops (or whatever) but it comes out of our stake budget that we set up the previous Nov (so Nov 2023 for 2024 activities). Wards aren't mixing any money with the stake's.
If ward young women decide to have a shorter ward camp to supplement the stake one every other year (now that the church is cutting the time down at Heber Valley), the ward could do the one annual fundraiser (with their bishop's approval) for that if they don't have enough in the ward budget, but again that would be on the ward level and money earned is put into their own ward YW budget.

Hi. New stake financial clerk.
If ward raised money in 2023 for 2024 camp how do they preserve the money from getting cleared on January 2nd? Or better, what should they have done to preserve the money?
Thanks!
Steve B.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong - I believe the money was swept into ward allocation along with all other unspent budget at year end. It would be up to the ward to transfer that money back. However, if the stake sees a large amount they may ask for it. It would be important to know where all the money comes from before complying.

At this point I don't know as there's any category (other than ward missionary) that rolls over the balance from one year to another like the old "Other" account did.

It is mostly as russellhltn stated. The remaining budget funds from the previous year appear in the new year budget in the Balance Forward line at the Prepare Annual Budget tab. Regardless as to what unit subcategory the funds were allocated to in the previous year they will be combined to one amount that appears in the Balance Forward line in the new year. The ward clerk can then reallocate those rolled over funds into the appropriate budget subcategories.

For example, our ward transferred excess ward budget funds to the stake on 29 December, 2023, and retained the YW camp funds for 2024 that we had collected in 2023. The funds we had collected in 2023 for the 2024 YW camp ended up rolling over into 2024, but not into any budget sub-category. The funds deposited in 2023 into the Budget : Young Women : YW Camp category showed up in the 2024 Balance Forward line in the Budget : Prepare Annual Budget tab. I manually entered the camp funds amount in the 2024 Budget : Young Women : YW Camp category.

Note that the funds collected in 2023 for the unit YW camp in 2024 are not included in the stake budget allowance allocation computation for the purposes of the 50% annual budget allowance allocation sweep.

Edit: I notified our stake president and clerk in December of our year end budget situation with how much budget remained, how much would be transferred to the stake, and how much we would like to have rolled over and why.

jdlessley wrote: Tue Jan 09, 2024 1:24 pm Note that the funds collected in 2023 for the unit YW camp in 2024 are not included in the stake budget allowance allocation computation for the purposes of the 50% annual budget allowance allocation sweep.

Is that because they're being held at the ward level?

russellhltn wrote: Tue Jan 09, 2024 2:16 pm

jdlessley wrote: Tue Jan 09, 2024 1:24 pm Note that the funds collected in 2023 for the unit YW camp in 2024 are not included in the stake budget allowance allocation computation for the purposes of the 50% annual budget allowance allocation sweep.

Is that because they're being held at the ward level?

When I spoke to the GSD they said it was that and also because the funds are not budget funds but rather non-charitable contributions. I asked the person about what would happen to the funds, as non charitable contributions, if the ward sent all the year end excess, to include those non-charitable contributions, to the stake. She and her supervisor didn't know. They offered to send a request for information from the finance department but I declined because we had no intentions of doing that. Perhaps I should have let them find out and message me later with the answer.

jdlessley wrote: Tue Jan 09, 2024 2:31 pm When I spoke to the GSD they said it was that and also because the funds are not budget funds but rather non-charitable contributions.

Nice theory, but unless I'm missing something, the funds are co-mingled. It seems like it would complicate things to try and track it and determine how much of what remains at the end of year is budget and how much is non-charitable contributions. That goes against what I've posted in another thread about the need to keep rules simple and why the carry-over rule seems strange.

I think the fact they're in the ward is what keeps them safe.

Although, if you were to call about a sweep that included the non-charitable contributions, you'd stand a much better chance of getting that back.

I mentioned the co-mingling issue in a call to the GSD back when they announced discontinuing the Other:AMFA category. The response I got then was the Church would treat funds deposited into any budget category as a non-charitable contribution. As for tracking those funds in relation to co-mingling, they didn't have a response then as to how the finance department handled that. When I talked to them on Friday I did not mention co-mingling or tracking budget funds versus non-charitable contributions. I have been at a loss ever since the discontinuation of the Other:AMFA category how they track the two, if they even do, and how that affects their charitable organization status.

If ward raised money in 2023 for 2024 camp how do they preserve the money from getting cleared on January 2nd? Or better, what should they have done to preserve the money?

From what I understand, stakes have full discretion whether they "sweep" any funds from wards at the end of the year, or if they allow wards to retain their full rollover amounts (and the Church does not do any automatic sweeping of wards). So many wards will simply retain the 2023 camp funds in their top-level 2024 budget amount, as described in previous posts. If your stake does transfer funds from wards==>stake at the end of the year, then communication with the stake prior to any "sweeping", would allow the ward to retain those funds (probably the right thing no matter what due to the non-charitable issues, but also just a good idea to retain camp funds if possible). If funds were transferred from the ward to the stake prior to 12/31, and then the stake had those funds swept by the Church on 01/01 due to a 50% overage, that's a bit tricky. But if the stake was under the 50% limit and essentially still has those funds, I'd expect talking with the stake about this would convince them to transfer those specific funds back to the ward.

But that's just my understanding, and I'm no clerk...