YSA budget allocation thought

I've seen some discussion about reserving 100% of all YSA Budget Allocation by the stake and then hand writing a check to the YSA branch. Thinking that through, it shouldn't be necessary.

If all (or at least the vast majority) of your young singles are attending the YSA branch, then there would be no YSA's in the regular wards. 100% or 0% of 0 is still 0. Since all the YSA's would be attending the YSA branch, they would have an representatively high YSA allocation, but it would still be in the appropriate place. Ideally, in this situation, 100% of the YSA allocation could go to the branch because all stake level YSA activities would still be administered by the YSA branch.

Anyone care to comment or dispute this line of thinking?

Bro_West wrote:If all (or at least the vast majority) of your young singles are attending the YSA branch, then there would be no YSA's in the regular wards.

That's the sticking point.

IIRC, the number of YSA is calculated number based on the number of YSA "of record" (not necessarily active) and the ward's "activity" level. Short of moving all the inactive YSA records to the YSA ward, you're likely to get a significant amount of "YSA" funds directed toward the non-YSA wards.

And before suggesting moving all the inactives, one common problem I saw was that many of the inactive "YSA" are in fact inactive married. It's just they got married while inactive and no one has collected enough information to update the records. So handing them off to the YSA ward is likely counter-productive.

Bro_West wrote:If all (or at least the vast majority) of your young singles are attending the YSA branch

The problem is that if you even have one YSA attending a family ward, they family ward will generate an allocation. If you select for that family ward to receive 0%, the allocation will end up with the stake.

When you give the YSA ward 100% of the YSA allocation, they will only get the allocation generated by the YSA ward/branch. All the other wards that had any YSA attendance will generate additional funds, and giving them 0% will move all those funds into the stake.

You still have to cut a check to send the funds that were retained at the stake level over to the YS Award/branch.

Am I missing something or not understand how the allocation distribution works?

RWoodmansee wrote:You still have to cut a check to send the funds that were retained at the stake level over to the YSA ward/branch.

Am I missing something or not understand how the allocation distribution works?

Your understanding is mostly correct. The one little adjustment I would make is that the key point is if the family wards have any YSA members at all -- it doesn't matter if they attend any meetings. The original poster discussed a hypothetical situation where all the YSAs in a stake were members of the YSA ward/branch. In that extreme case, it wouldn't matter what percentage of the YSA-based allocation was assigned to any of the other wards, since nothing would be allocated to them anyway.

But your post and the other post make a point I also agree with -- there aren't going to be many (if any) stakes where all the YSAs are in one ward/branch, and no YSA (active or inactive) membership records are in any of the the other wards. So that hypothetical situation may be interesting, but is not very practical.

RWoodmansee wrote:When you give the YSA ward 100% of the YSA allocation, they will only get the allocation generated by the YSA ward/branch. All the other wards that had any YSA attendance will generate additional funds, and giving them 0% will move all those funds into the stake.

You still have to cut a check to send the funds that were retained at the stake level over to the YS Award/branch.

The only way a stake can get an allocation from one ward to another is to keep it at the stake and then write a check to the other unit. So if a stake wants all of the Young Single Adult allotment to go to one ward, it will have to zero out the other wards and write a check for that amount to the ward that will be given the funds.

We have a case where a new ward did not exist when the 3Q 2010 quarterly report was prepared. It was created from two existing wards.

For the 1Q 2011 allotment, we will zero out both wards, then re-divide the money between the three and write checks from the stake.

By the time 2Q 2011 rolls around, the new ward will have a report (4Q 2010) in the system and we will have reset the allocation percentages back to normal.

This new procedure does take some getting used to.

lajackson wrote:The only way a stake can get an allocation from one ward to another is to keep it at the stake and then write a check to the other unit. So if a stake wants all of the Young Single Adult allotment to go to one ward, it will have to zero out the other wards and write a check for that amount to the ward that will be given the funds.

Our stake opted to allocate 100% of the Young Single Adult allocation to the Young Single Adult ward. Any funds generated by young single adult activity in family wards are allocated 100% to the stake. The stake then writes a check to the Young Single Adult ward.

MY QUESTION: When the stake writes the check to the YSA ward, what budget category should we draw the funds from? Should we expense it from Budget: Allocations, or should we create a sub-category like Budget: Single Adult * Young Single Adult Allocations.

If we use Budget: Allocations our budget report will show a negative amount in the Miscellaneous field in the Allowance section. If we use a Budget sub-category it is easier to understand where the money went.

Has anyone else retained the YSA allocation at the stake level and written the check to the YSA ward? What did you do?

RWoodmansee wrote:If we use Budget: Allocations our budget report will show a negative amount in the Miscellaneous field in the Allowance section. If we use a Budget sub-category it is easier to understand where the money went.

It seems to me to be better accounting to use the Budget Allocations category. After all, you are dealing purely with the goal of allocating budget funds to units. When you run a Budget Report, the Budget Allocations category is excluded. Thus the Budget Report shows the stake's actual expenses against the stake's actual net allocation.

On the other hand, if you use a Budget subcategory, then you are saying that the stake was allocated these funds and then actually spent them. That isn't what is happening -- you are not spending the money, but are simply completing the process of allocating budget funds to the various units.