Missionary fund tracking

Okay, since we are no longer allowed to add subcategories under Ward Mission, how are we supposed to keep track of future missionaries who put money in the fund prior to leaving on their mission?

We have two young men who are at least a year away from their missions, but have been putting money into the Ward Mission fund to pay for their future missions. Without being able to keep this in a subcategory in MLS, the odds are very high that those funds will not get properly credited to their mission.

rpyne wrote:We have two young men who are at least a year away from their missions, but have been putting money into the Ward Mission fund to pay for their future missions. Without being able to keep this in a subcategory in MLS, the odds are very high that those funds will not get properly credited to their mission.

Wouldn't it make more sense for them to put it in a savings account and have their parents make the payments out of the savings account once they leave?

rpyne wrote:Okay, since we are no longer allowed to add subcategories under Ward Mission, how are we supposed to keep track of future missionaries who put money in the fund prior to leaving on their mission?

We have two young men who are at least a year away from their missions, but have been putting money into the Ward Mission fund to pay for their future missions. Without being able to keep this in a subcategory in MLS, the odds are very high that those funds will not get properly credited to their mission.

When my bishop asked me to open a sub-category for a prospective missionary in this situation, I strongly urged helping the missionary set up a savings account instead of using the Church depository. There's a lot that can change over a year, and if they save a bunch of money through the Church and then choose not to serve a mission, they lose all that money that could otherwise have been put to use for their education or something of benefit to them.

Maybe it's just me, but I think long term donation to the ward missionary fund is bad practice and ought to be discouraged.

rpyne wrote:Okay, since we are no longer allowed to add subcategories under Ward Mission, how are we supposed to keep track of future missionaries who put money in the fund prior to leaving on their mission?

We have two young men who are at least a year away from their missions, but have been putting money into the Ward Mission fund to pay for their future missions. Without being able to keep this in a subcategory in MLS, the odds are very high that those funds will not get properly credited to their mission.

It appears that many categories will now be generated by HQ. Instructions have already come down stating donations should be applied to the general ward mission fund, then transferred (or update the original donations) when HQ creates the sub-category.

scgallafent wrote:Wouldn't it make more sense for them to put it in a savings account and have their parents make the payments out of the savings account once they leave?

Not necessarily. Things to be considered include tax implications, whether or not the future missionary has family who support them on their mission (non-member/unsupportive parents), or the ability of others to contribute to their mission fund.

rpyne wrote:Okay, since we are no longer allowed to add subcategories under Ward Mission, how are we supposed to keep track of future missionaries who put money in the fund prior to leaving on their mission?

We have two young men who are at least a year away from their missions, but have been putting money into the Ward Mission fund to pay for their future missions. Without being able to keep this in a subcategory in MLS, the odds are very high that those funds will not get properly credited to their mission.

See this post for the official statement. I would suggest a savings account. Otherwise, you will have to either (1) keep track and transfer once the category is set up or (2) once the category is set up, find all their original donations and change them to the sub-category.

There is a similar problem with tracking funding for senior missionary couples who are receiving some support from the Ward Missionary Fund. As you can read on page 96 of the Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 1 [2006], it is within policy for senior missionary couples to receive financial assistance from the Ward Missionary Fund when specific conditions are met.

All those conditions are met for a couple serving from one of the wards in our stake. But we cannot track donations and expenditures for that couple as a subcategory of Ward Missionary as we used to. That creates an accounting challenge that could be easily solved if we could just create a subcategory of Ward Missionary Fund.

Alan_Brown wrote:All those conditions are met for a couple serving from one of the wards in our stake. But we cannot track donations and expenditures for that couple as a subcategory of Ward Missionary as we used to. That creates an accounting challenge that could be easily solved if we could just create a subcategory of Ward Missionary Fund.

Since we cannot create subcategories of the Ward Missionary Fund then I guess that could be done by CHQ. Perhaps LUS can get the subcategory set up for special circumstances such as this. It would be nice to know how CHQ plans on handling these situations in MLS.

jdlessley wrote:Since we cannot create subcategories of the Ward Missionary Fund then I guess that could be done by CHQ. Perhaps LUS can get the subcategory set up for special circumstances such as this. It would be nice to know how CHQ plans on handling these situations in MLS.

I did send a message to LUS asking how we can handle categorization of Ward Missionary Fund donations for a senior couple. I'll report back when I get a response.

If we have problems with our missionary balances, where do I call to talk to someone at CHQ?

sportstats wrote:If we have problems with our missionary balances, where do I call to talk to someone at CHQ?

All depends what the problem is. However, a good starting point would be local unit support.
Contact info can be found here.
For a busy signal, you could try calling in.
For a reply, try sending an email. You could also message them through MLS.

aebrown wrote:I did send a message to LUS asking how we can handle categorization of Ward Missionary Fund donations for a senior couple. I'll report back when I get a response.

Since someone recently posted to this thread, I saw that I had neglected to report the response I got back from Local Unit Support. It was pretty much what I expected:

This is a good point, and I have submitted this to our programmers for consideration on future updates. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.