Relief Society Lists

Howdy,

Can anyone help me with this situation?

The Relief Society has asked if I can re-arrange two of their visiting teaching lists.

These lists show up in MLS under the VT section under district 1. They are a list of sisters who are "do not contact" and "moved but address not known yet."

Currently these two lists have the RS president's name associated with them as if she is the visiting teacher.

She would like her name not to be associated with them, but it appears that I have to assign a sister to the "routes" - they can't be left blank.

Any ideas?

I had this one - create a non-member record with just the titles "No Contact" and "Moved." I discovered that if it is a non-member record, MLS will accept just the name - so it matters not what name is entered - no address or phone needed. This way I can "assign" these titles to these lists.

Am I OK in trying this, or is there another way to solve this problem?

Thanks. :rolleyes:

Ozzy wrote:I had this one - create a non-member record with just the titles "No Contact" and "Moved.

I'd be concerned about this "non-member" showing up where you don't want it. Like in ward directories.

I suspect that attempting to "fix" this problem could result in bigger problems. Off hand, I don't see what the issue is in leaving them under the RS President's name.

It would skew all your statistics for visiting teaching too. They would each need to be reported as visited or not each month, and these visits (or hopefully lack thereof if the numbers are being entered accurately) would be counted as "not contacted" for each report. Why not just delete her companionship / district / whatever, and then recreate it. Would drop all the names back into the general mix of unassigned families / sisters.

As a side note, instead of trying to unassociate herself from the names and avoid responsibility, she could always accept that these move outs and no visits are part of her stewardship. Maybe it would be better to lovingly encourage her to follow the process for locating these lost members, and if this fails (or succeeds) they can be moved out of the ward list to a place where people can reach out to them, or visiting taught if they are really still there. Taking her name off them on the VT list may help her feel a little more warm and fuzzy inside, but it doesn't correct the underlying problem (members who have been lost, or who are lost to follow up because of a no contact request). If she doesn't know the story behind the no contact flag, it is worth discussing with the Bishop. If he doesn't know either, I wouldn't want to be the one reporting to the Lord that I had ignored these families because of a flag on a computer screen. If nobody remembers, it might be time to find out where the problem originated. The worst case scenario is they could request a name removal (which would also get them off her list). I'm not suggesting that we ignore people's wishes, only that we make sure we truly understand what their wishes are.

Thanks for the feedback.

jltware wrote:It would skew all your statistics for visiting teaching too.

Wouldn't that remain unchanged? I thought the stats were calculated from the number of sisters visited and the number in the ward - no amount of districting was going to change the results.

Usually the reason for assigning them to a dummy district is to keep the list of "unassigned" clean so new problems can quickly be spotted.

I've always taken the view that membership records are a listing of the ward's stewardship. Even if the member moves away, the ward is responsible for taking appropriate move-out action to pass the baton to the next ward. The RS President can help by obtaining a new address for the member. (Likewise the Priesthood still has them as a HT family and they can assist in the same way.)

Hi All,

Really what's going on in my ward is that the RS moves sisters who are on a bishop's DO NOT CONTACT list to a "companionship" that currently bears the name of the RS president to keep track of those they are not supposed to bother. They also have a "companionship" with the presidents name on it that they put sisters into who are reported to have moved out of the ward, but have not been officially confirmed as moved.

They were asking if I could simply create a title for these two "companionships" that more accurately reflects what these two lists represent so that any in the RS leadership can look at the VT roles and easily identify what is going on.

I created a non-member record for our scoutmaster and he doesn't show up on the ward directory. My original thought was to create a NM record with a title for each of these lists and then I could "assign" the NM title to each list, making it easier for the RS. These titles shouldn't show up on the directories given to members.

Would any of you do this? Is it appropriate? I don't see any other way to get around the MLS software limitations for this type of situation. Maybe this is one for the programmers out there to write into a future version of MLS.

I found out that non-member records can't be assigned to VT positions. So much for my brilliant theory title the lists.

No, they can't. But why not create a separate district for each list? Districts can be called anything you like, and that would stop it appearing on any VT supervisor's contact list. Would still need to be assigned to a member for a visiting teacher, but maybe a couple of the sisters already in that particular list could be chosen as the teachers and everyone else in the list added as the sisters they teach. Isn't quite the same, but would probably achieve the same net result.

I'm uncertain about your question of whether this is appropriate, as you are essentially falsifying a VT list. But seems like the best way to achieve what you're aiming to if that's the way you want to go. If your Bishop is aware of the plan and has no problem with it, then he is the one called to answer that question, not us, as I can't think of any black and white policy that would cover that situation.

Thanks for the reply and tip. I'll check with the bishop.

Ozzy wrote:Hi All,

Really what's going on in my ward is that the RS moves sisters who are on a bishop's DO NOT CONTACT list to a "companionship" that currently bears the name of the RS president to keep track of those they are not supposed to bother. They also have a "companionship" with the presidents name on it that they put sisters into who are reported to have moved out of the ward, but have not been officially confirmed as moved.

They were asking if I could simply create a title for these two "companionships" that more accurately reflects what these two lists represent so that any in the RS leadership can look at the VT roles and easily identify what is going on.

I understand the effort to be "clean and tidy" on your lists. Why couldn't the sisters you mention stay "unassigned?" As in, not assigned to anyone's VT route? A"dummy" list to hold sisters that you are not teaching can circumvent a "check and balances" process in MLS.

The unassigned list generally is studied continually to examine the situation of those on it-if they've moved, it reminds us to move them out. If they said no to visiting teachers, what other contact might they agree to?

By unassigning those that are difficult, it is possible to "apparently" improve your stats for your monthly reports, or reports you hand to stake leaders, and I've seen that happen, unintentionally.

For example, our RS was reporting 100% visits to the bishopric, and happy about it. I showed the bishop and the RS president that the Quarterly Report showed their visits more around 76%, and they were a little upset. They had "unassigned" the "no contact" sisters, and weren't counting them at all, but the quarterly report counts all sisters. This gave the bishopric and the RS a chance to go over the names of those not assigned.

For priesthood quorums and RS, it is important to periodically check the "unassigned list" on a ward level, perhaps at a bishopric meeting each month.

kisaac wrote:A"dummy" list to hold sisters that you are not teaching can circumvent a "check and balances" process in MLS.

It depends on your method of operations, but I would disagree. Some wards may have a fairly large number of "no contacts". While I would agree that the list needs to be reviewed periodically, if the list is large enough, it won't scrutinized in detail monthly. Therefore, a sister that has fallen though the cracks will end up "hiding" in a large list that may only get looked over every few months.

Off the top of my head, I'm unaware of any policy on this issue, so I think ultimately it's up to how the ward wants to handle it.

The best suggestion I can come up with is to shuffle things around so these special districts have special numbers - like 1 is DNC and 2 is move outs. That way they won't appear in the middle of "normal" districts.

Administrative note:

The Scoutmaster question and response have been moved to a new thread.

These two lists of sisters are basically "unassigned." They are "assigned" to the RS president as holding tanks. When a current RS companionship is printed, these two lists (assigned to district 1) are understood to be the DNC list and moved, but unsure where list. This gives the RS presidency more organization within the "unassigned" sisters list.

I tried to create a separate district for each of these lists, but found that districts can't be named anything other than "Disrtict 1" 2,3,4,5, etc.

I also found that I was able to go in the back door and create a non-member record with a title lilke "Do Not Contact" or "Moved," but when I went to add that title in as a visiting teacher, MLS would not assign a non-member to be a VT.

So, I was outsmarted on all fronts by MLS.

In our ward, at least, the RS is much more organized than the priesthood quorums and so maybe we have found a helpful idea for future MLS releases - at least where the RS is concerned. I wonder if MLS programmers would consider creating an assignment section for these catagories of sisters - priesthood too.

The reason the RS has a DNC list is to not offend the member who has requested no contact. With changes in the RS presidency, info doesn't get passed on and contacts can invariably be made to these sisters and negative experiences result.

Ozzy wrote:I wonder if MLS programmers would consider creating an assignment section for these catagories of sisters - priesthood too.

This is not likely to happen - at least not as suggested. There has been an MLS messageabout not adjusting or coding membership records to show it as DO NOT CONTACT.

Ozzy wrote:The reason the RS has a DNC list is to not offend the member who has requested no contact. With changes in the RS presidency, info doesn't get passed on and contacts can invariably be made to these sisters and negative experiences result.

My cautions about coding somebody "Do Not Contact:" And Here is my Do Not Contact experience.

In a past ward that had very few young men, the fathers or YM leaders would accompany the YM on fast offering collections. We usually didn't pay on fast sunday because of the timing of my paycheck. My wife explained this to the YM and his father one sunday, and they never stopped by again.

Because they also delivered the ward newsletter, we noticed that it never arrived. I asked the clerks one sunday why the YM stopped coming. He looked up some lists, and then said that I had requested "Do Not Contact." Of course, we had not, we had merely said that we don't pay by the fast offering envelope on fast sunday. Apparently the father had reported that we didn't need contacting in an effort to help the short-handed YM on fast Sunday, but the clerk notated it as we didn't want contact without any further explanation. And nobody called to clarify because now they thought we wanted "No Contact," and we were active this whole time!

There lies the problem with coding a record with "Do Not Contact." It's not descriptive enough to help anyone decide what contact might actually be appropriate, and the label might be too harsh. Some truly wish "no contact," but others might be really saying, "I'm not withdrawing from the neighborhood and would still like to be friends, and may even let certain ward members visits, just don't talk to me about CHURCH things..,"

Ozzy wrote:So, I was outsmarted on all fronts by MLS.

As exponentially outnumbered as they are, you have to give the MLS development team credit for staying a step ahead of most of us.

They should accept that comment with great credit, I think. [grin]

Ozzy wrote:The reason the RS has a DNC list is to not offend the member who has requested no contact. With changes in the RS presidency, info doesn't get passed on and contacts can invariably be made to these sisters and negative experiences result.

It has been pointed out already some good reasons why a DNC list is not a good idea. From my point of view, unless a member requested to have their name removed from the records of the church, it is a good thing if the DNC info doesn't get passed on after leadership changes.

It's up to local leaders to prayerfully decide how to handle those who ask for no contact but don't request their name removed. I always let them know that, unless their name is removed, they will invariably still receive contact sooner or later.