temple (specific) Donations

Here it says that temple (specific) Donations are charitable. Our finance clerk says that with the new CUBS system, these donations are not being shown on members statements as charitable now. Are we missing something or are others seeing this too?

It is my understanding that Temple Specific donations aren't allowed anymore. I realize you might be talking about old donations (when that was allowed). You may have to go back to the donation record and change the donation to the general "Temple Construction" fund instead of Temple Specific. But then you have to worry about a negative balance because you probably already sent a check to HQ in order to make the "transfer" of the Temple Specific money. Hmmm. A puzzle.

Hey Greg, thanks for replying.
Is there some documentation that indicates that temple specific funds are not allowed anymore? The donations are only old in the sense that most of them were made before CUBS was implemented, probably even some donations were donated after CUBS. We are in Brigham City so you can understand that we are getting Temple Specific donations. If they aren't allowed, it would have been nice to receive a notification via MLS messages from the finance department. If there was a message we surely missed it some how.

Can anyone shed any further light on the current official status of Temple Specific donations.

Thanks

elderlarryhawkes wrote:Here it says that temple (specific) Donations are charitable. Our finance clerk says that with the new CUBS system, these donations are not being shown on members statements as charitable now.

Temple specific donations may not be appearing on member statements now. However that does not necessarily mean that the donations are no longer considered a charitable donation. The MLS programers are still trying to catch up to the CUBS system. This may, or may not, be one of those areas that has not caught up (my speculation only).

GregAnderson wrote:It is my understanding that Temple Specific donations aren't allowed anymore.

Has there been an official statement from CHQ to this affect? What is the source of this new information? Before any information of this sort gets passed around we need to make sure the source for what appears to be a change is not just someone's speculation. There are several aspects of the transition to CUBS that may be cause for speculation about changes in the way the Church does business. The best source for questions such as this one about temple specific donations is the tax administration office.

Tax Administration
50 East North Temple Street, Room 2223
Salt Lake City, UT 84150-3620
Telephone: 1-801-240-3003 or 1-800-453-3860, extension 2-3003

Calls to this office should originate from the bishop or stake president.

elderlarryhawkes wrote:Is there some documentation that indicates that temple specific funds are not allowed anymore?

Certainly. It is in the long MLS message that was first sent out about CUBS, and which is now in the Church Unit Banking Services wiki article in the Subcategories section. It says simply:

Other:Temple Specific has been eliminated. Donations can still be made to the Temple Construction category.

So there's no need to bother the Tax Administration office. Just make donations to the Temple Construction category as is documented. I'm sure that the change was made on purpose, and that there is no need to be concerned whether a donation is going to a particular temple -- such donations will be used for temple construction where the funds are most needed.

I imagine that these specific donations caused unnecessary headaches for the Church. For example, what do they do with donations earmarked for a temple that has already been completed, or for which all necessary funding has been procured? Should such donations be returned if they can't be used for the intended temple? That is obviously rather silly. I think the new simplified system will work just fine.

elderlarryhawkes wrote:Here it says that temple (specific) Donations are charitable. Our finance clerk says that with the new CUBS system, these donations are not being shown on members statements as charitable now. Are we missing something or are others seeing this too?

On a similar note, members have complained to me this week that their "Temple Patron Assistance" donations are marked as non-charitable on their year-to-date summaries given in advance of tithing settlement. I researched and found that apparently the CUBS changeover reclassified all temple patron donations into the Other:Authorized Member Financed Activities category, even though the Other:Temple Patron category still exists. I edited the 15 or so batches, changed the category back, and the donations are once again charitable.

86Bengal wrote:On a similar note, members have complained to me this week that their "Temple Patron Assistance" donations are marked as non-charitable on their year-to-date summaries given in advance of tithing settlement. I researched and found that apparently the CUBS changeover reclassified all temple patron donations into the Other:Authorized Member Financed Activities category, even though the Other:Temple Patron category still exists. I edited the 15 or so batches, changed the category back, and the donations are once again charitable.

I seem to remember that Temple Patron Assistance is a now-obsolete category as well. Recategorize old donations so they show up, but do not accept future donations to this category.

crislapi wrote:I seem to remember that Temple Patron Assistance is a now-obsolete category as well. Recategorize old donations so they show up, but do not accept future donations to this category.

I don't remember an announcement on this category. Do you have a link or a hint where I could learn more?

86Bengal wrote:

crislapi wrote:I seem to remember that Temple Patron Assistance is a now-obsolete category as well. Recategorize old donations so they show up, but do not accept future donations to this category.

I don't remember an announcement on this category. Do you have a link or a hint where I could learn more?

I too really doubt this. I recall no such announcement, and the category is still active. Furthermore, there is still a page for this fund on the LDS Philanthropies site, so unless we receive specific direction to the contrary, I would think that wards should continue to receive donations in this category.

Since the category is specifically set up as a subcategory of Other, and not with the Authorized Member Financed Activities subcategories, it should be swept automatically and indeed be treated as a charitable donation.

Alan_Brown wrote:Certainly. It is in the long MLS message that was first sent out about CUBS, and which is now in the Church Unit Banking Services wiki article in the Subcategories section. It says simply:

Other:Temple Specific has been eliminated. Donations can still be made to the Temple Construction category.

Thanks Alan,
Your help is greatly appreciated.
The information in this following link needs to be updated too. It just provides for additional confusion:

elderlarryhawkes wrote:Here it says that temple (specific) Donations are charitable.

This is nothing against you Alan, but it's also ironic that at the bottom of each of your posts it suggests the use of the Wiki for answers. It provided the wrong answer in this case.

May I suggest that not only does the programming code need to be as correct as possible when released, all documentation needs to be updated to exactly match the new policies and procedures as well.

elderlarryhawkes wrote:May I suggest that not only does the programming code need to be as correct as possible when released, all documentation needs to be updated to exactly match the new policies and procedures as well.

In this case, the "documentation" has been created by the community, to help the community. It may lag behind the deployment of new features. When updating, it's not easy to catch all the places it needs to be changed in the wiki. So we really depend on users to point out what slips though.

Because of all the changes made as a result of CUBS, I'd pay careful attention to the "edited by" dates.

RussellHltn wrote:In this case, the "documentation" has been created by the community, to help the community. It may lag behind the deployment of new features. When updating, it's not easy to catch all the places it needs to be changed in the wiki. So we really depend on users to point out what slips though.

Because of all the changes made as a result of CUBS, I'd pay careful attention to the "edited by" dates.

Thanks for the input Russell.
So who goes back and updates the community documentation and is there a more specific procedure to notify the right person when documentation needs to be updated? Will the documentation I pointed out in this thread get updated now with no further action or does some other process need to take place to get it updated?

elderlarryhawkes wrote:Thanks for the input Russell.
So who goes back and updates the community documentation and is there a more specific procedure to notify the right person when documentation needs to be updated? Will the documentation I pointed out in this thread get updated now with no further action or does some other process need to take place to get it updated?

I guess you're new to the concept of community documentation. The community is YOU (and me, and everyone else). So when you notice some community-built documentation is out of date, the best course of action is to fix it yourself. You have as much responsibility to fix it as anyone else does. Barring that, the second-best course is to report it to someone, which you have done. But there is no automatic fix.

Alan_Brown wrote:You have as much responsibility to fix it as anyone else does. Barring that, the second-best course is to report it to someone, which you have done. But there is no automatic fix.

I have updated the Donation categories wiki article, but I know there are many others that still need to be updated.

Alan_Brown wrote:I guess you're new to the concept of community documentation.

Or more specific, the idea of a Wiki. You'll find that if you log in with your LDS Account, you can edit the content yourself.

Likewise others can correct your edits until it's something everyone agrees with. I know, it sounds like a recipe for chaos, but it works surprisingly well.

While I think we'd all love it if the developers would take on the task of full and complete documentation, that's not what's been happening. For whatever reason, (most likely putting the resources available where only they can do the work) it's just not the way things work - and it's been that way for quite some time.

The community documentation came about because it's better and more efficient to write complete articles and point people to that then to write the same quick reply to the 10 different people with the same problem in the forums.

And the community itself exists because we find we know more about our job by plugging into the collective then we would if we tried to go it alone. And that's true for even the most knowable of us.

Alan_Brown wrote:I guess you're new to the concept of community documentation. The community is YOU (and me, and everyone else). So when you notice some community-built documentation is out of date, the best course of action is to fix it yourself. You have as much responsibility to fix it as anyone else does. Barring that, the second-best course is to report it to someone, which you have done. But there is no automatic fix.

Well, I'm not very experienced with editing this type of HTML formatted text,;) but I gave it a shot and added a bit of additional info to help make the Donation categories Temple (specific) area a little more up to date.

elderlarryhawkes wrote:Well, I'm not very experienced with editing this type of HTML formatted text,;) but I gave it a shot and added a bit of additional info to help make the Donation categories Temple (specific) area a little more up to date.

The change you made indicates that Temple (specific) donations are not charitable. That should definitely not be the case. I know that you said that this was your experience in the first post of this thread, but if that is the case, then it is an issue that should be fixed. I made a note of this in the wiki article, and made sure that such donations were listed as charitable.

I work at the stake level, so I have not seen such donations myself, but there are two issues here:

1. Going forward, there is no "Temple (specific)" category. That's fine; as directed by the CUBS documentation, members should now make all donations for temple construction to the "Temple Construction" category. Such donations will be considered by MLS to be charitable donations, as they should be.
2. Existing donations for "Temple (specific)" made prior to the CUBS conversion seem to have been recategorized in a way that makes them appear as non-charitable donations. I have not verified this myself, but if it is the case, then there are two possible fixes:
   • the MLS developers develop a patch (either to the software or to the MLS data) that will make sure those donations are moved to Temple Construction or some other charitable category; or
   • financial clerks that have such donations up through 17 Oct 2010 find them all and change them to be in a charitable category.

I don't know if the first possible fix is in the works, but someone should find out if it is the case; if not, all financial clerks should do the second fix (if they have such donations).

I checked with one of our units using MLS 3.2.4 and they ran a YTD Summary and a Official Tax Statement (US), both show that the Temple Construction donations are listed as a charitable donation for donations made before and after the CUBS conversion.

On the question of temple specific donations. The 'Other:Temple Specific' category may have been eliminated but I don't know that this means that they are not allowed. CHI Book 1 ref 14.4.5 "If members want to designate the donation for a specific temple, they may note this on the form." It sounds like temple specific donations are allowed but the donation is still processed through the Temple Construction Fund without the specific temple being identified in MLS.

Alan_Brown wrote:The change you made indicates that Temple (specific) donations are not charitable. That should definitely not be the case. I know that you said that this was your experience in the first post of this thread, but if that is the case, then it is an issue that should be fixed. I made a note of this in the wiki article, and made sure that such donations were listed as charitable.

I work at the stake level, so I have not seen such donations myself, but there are two issues here:

1. Going forward, there is no "Temple (specific)" category. That's fine; as directed by the CUBS documentation, members should now make all donations for temple construction to the "Temple Construction" category. Such donations will be considered by MLS to be charitable donations, as they should be.
2. Existing donations for "Temple (specific)" made prior to the CUBS conversion seem to have been recategorized in a way that makes them appear as non-charitable donations. I have not verified this myself, but if it is the case, then there are two possible fixes:
   • the MLS developers develop a patch (either to the software or to the MLS data) that will make sure those donations are moved to Temple Construction or some other charitable category; or
   • financial clerks that have such donations up through 17 Oct 2010 find them all and change them to be in a charitable category.

I don't know if the first possible fix is in the works, but someone should find out if it is the case; if not, all financial clerks should do the second fix (if they have such donations).

GregAnderson wrote:It is my understanding that Temple Specific donations aren't allowed anymore. I realize you might be talking about old donations (when that was allowed). You may have to go back to the donation record and change the donation to the general "Temple Construction" fund instead of Temple Specific. But then you have to worry about a negative balance because you probably already sent a check to HQ in order to make the "transfer" of the Temple Specific money. Hmmm. A puzzle.

Alan,
In thinking about your second option to item 2 above, Greg brought up a good thought in having to consider the effects of doing that since we have already sent a check to HQ, and creating a possible negative balance. Can you shed any light or your thoughts on what would really happen by doing that.

Or is this situation one that we need to contact church HQ to get an offical clarification of how to proceed. If so, what would be the most efficient way to contact HQ for this matter?

elderlarryhawkes wrote:In thinking about your second option to item 2 above, Greg brought up a good thought in having to consider the effects of doing that since we have already sent a check to HQ, and creating a possible negative balance. Can you shed any light or your thoughts on what would really happen by doing that.

Or is this situation one that we need to contact church HQ to get an offical clarification of how to proceed. If so, what would be the most efficient way to contact HQ for this matter?

It is certainly possible that recategorizing a donation from a category that was not automatically swept (Temple specific) to one that is automatically swept (Temple Construction) could cause a negative balance. I guess I haven't heard enough details yet as to what the donations made to Temple (Specific) prior to October 17 look like now, so it's tough for me to make a good recommendation.

I do think it's good to contact Local Unit Support for this issue, which you can do by any of the means listed in the linked wiki article. You will probably get a reply to an email or MLS message within 2-3 days. You can get through by phone these days with patience and a bit of luck, and by choosing times that aren't as busy (probably not a Monday, and not in the evenings, although clearly some people do get through any day and any time they are open).

Oh, and please report back what you hear from Local Unit Support.

I will get more specific information, on what the donations made to Temple (Specific) prior to October 17 look like now, tomorrow. We will also contact LUS and report back.

Thanks again for your assistance, it is greatly appreciated.

Here is what I sent to LUS this morning.

Dear LUS,


1. Question) We are looking for Official guidelines on how to proceed in making Temple (specific) donations (now showing as Non-Charitable on all donor statements with the implementation of CUBS), show up as Charitable on donor statements.


2. Question) Can donors still make Temple (specific) Charitable contributions for temple construction? or should all temple construction donations be Processed on the tithing slip line called Temple Construction even if a member specifies a temple on the other line as describe in the new Handbook 1 section 14.4.5?

The following link is an example of a statement with the problem in question 1, which now shows a Non-Charitable total of $260.
http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr21 ... ample2.jpg



When reviewing the batches for each entry shown with a red arrow in the image from the above link, each entry is now in a sub category called:
Other:Authorized Member Financed Activities:Brigham City Temple Construction
which is now aNon-Charitablecategory automatically created under the CUBS system.

Before CUBS, all of these entries were in a category called something close to:
Other:Temple(Specific): Brigham City Temple construction,
which was a Charitable category before CUBS.

86Bengal-p40 wrote:I don't remember an announcement on this category. Do you have a link or a hint where I could learn more?

Probably long-since resolved, but I was incorrect. It was Other: Temple Specific which is now obsolete. this was mentioned in the extremely long message we got just before CUBS was released.

Q. Why do I no longer have the category Other: Temple Specific?
A. Other: Temple Specific has been eliminated. Donations can still be made to the Temple Construction
category.

Sorry to pester this old thread but it was what the searching returned. Tonight I was trying to enter a donation for 'Temple Construction' (non-other, still on donation slips) and I cannot figure out how to do it in MLS (3.4). Has that been removed now or am I just really missing something obvious?

dajoker wrote:Sorry to pester this old thread but it was what the searching returned. Tonight I was trying to enter a donation for 'Temple Construction' (non-other, still on donation slips) and I cannot figure out how to do it in MLS (3.4). Has that been removed now or am I just really missing something obvious?

I just checked and it is still there. It is the seventh item down just below Humanitarian Aid and just above Perpetual Education. MLS still mirrors what is on the Tithing and Other Offerings slip.

I'm obviously missing something.... here's a screenshot of my MLS:

http://susepaste.org/584d03c8

As this is the Stake version of MLS is it possible there are fewer categories here? Seems odd, but it's the only thing that even remotely makes sense.

dajoker wrote:As this is the Stake version of MLS is it possible there are fewer categories here? Seems odd, but it's the only thing that even remotely makes sense.

The stake version of MLS has some categories that wards don't have, and is missing others that wards do have. Stake MLS is not designed for receiving donations from members. If you'll notice, there is no Tithing or Fast Offering category, either. As with those categories, donations to Temple Construction should be made at the ward level.

Just as a follow-up, the instructions on the wiki ( https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Donation_categories ) were incorrect when they stated to write a check to HQ. Per a response back (due to our check being written to them) I have updated the wiki. If anybody is interested in contact information for the source of that information please let me know, with a way to contact you off of this list, and I'll forward the contact information (avoiding pasting it here, and in the wiki, to avoid getting the poor lady spammed). From her e-mail, though:

<quote>
We no longer receive checks for surplus funds or specific donations. We ask that units put these donations in humanitarian aid, temple construction, perpetual education or temple patrons assistance, rather than creating a specific sub category in Other. People do not receive donation credit any longer when they are recorded this way.
</quote>

In summary 'Temple (specific)' should now be put in the general Temple Construction category. Also, anything pre-CUBS conversion (as was our case) should be moved over to Temple Construction as well, including using an anonymous donor if the previous donor is no longer in the ward (also from the e-mail).

Happy New Year.