Frequence of LUBA payments

Dear all,

lately I thought about, why we do four times a year a budget allocation?

Would it not be easier, to have it just once or twice a year?

Reducing the times of LUBA payments would mean that the administration office would have less to do. For the units it would mean that there are flexible in timing their spending and they would be sure about what to expect. If you transfer quarterly the LUBA to the units, the units often do not know how much to expect, but if they get at the beginning of the year their budget, then they could better plan their activities.

From a cash point of view, I am not sure how it is in other countries, but looking at Germany, you do not transfer real money, because you use a cash pool. In Switzerland, I know that you need to have cash on the bank, before a ward can spend it.

I think that there would be a lot of advantages on both sides (administration office & units).

What do you think?

Kind regards

Thorsten

thorsten_GER wrote:lately I thought about, why we do four times a year a budget allocation?

Would it not be easier, to have it just once or twice a year?

It would be easier for clerks if it were once per year. It would mean fewer transactions to process, and annual budgeting would be more directly connected to the allocations.

But I'm sure there are good reasons for the quarterly allocations. The most obvious one is that allocations are based on the numbers on quarterly reports. If you start with that premise, then moving to annual allocations would mean that at least part of the allocations would be over one year after the reporting period. For stable wards, that would be no big deal, but for wards that are rapidly growing, the additional funding would come in a long time after the growth, which could create significant problems.

I imagine it also helps the Church smooth out its cash flow, although I would guess that much if not all of the money in budget allocations is not hard dollars in bank accounts. I would think that my first point is the biggest factor.

Alan_Brown wrote: But I'm sure there are good reasons for the quarterly allocations. The most obvious one is that allocations are based on the numbers on quarterly reports. If you start with that premise, then moving to annual allocations would mean that at least part of the allocations would be over one year after the reporting period. For stable wards, that would be no big deal, but for wards that are rapidly growing, the additional funding would come in a long time after the growth, which could create significant problems.

Even though we have a quarterly attendence reporting does not mean that you have to take one quarter attendence to calculate your LUBA payments.

You can e.g. calculate an average out of the last 4 quarter or even calculate a trend into the increasing/decreasing attendance. This is all possible.

You could even distinguish between strong increasing units and stable units and make for strong increasing units twice a year a LUBA payment.

It would have to use trending far beyond a year.

I am in a ward that is about 70% students with the other 30% mostly newly weds or nearly deads. Our attendance not only fluctuates greatly with the school schedule, but also with our meeting times. The years that we have an early schedule, many of those with small children attend a different ward because they can't get the little ones up and ready early enough. The years that we have the late schedule, many of the senior citizens attend a different ward during the winter because our meetings don't end until after dark.

thorsten_GER wrote:lately I thought about, why we do four times a year a budget allocation?

Would it not be easier, to have it just once or twice a year?

Perhaps, but I don't see it happening. Alan_Brown pointed out several reasons. I think the biggest reason is that when you go to less-frequent disbursements, there is a serious lag in having the budget match ward size. We had a new ward created May 2010. Even with the quareterly disbursements, we didn't get any budget money for them until October. If disbursements were less frequent, then they would be operating without budget money even longer. So if I had it my way, I'd actually prefer to have the disbursements more frequent, not less.

I don't see CHQ ever giving disbursements based on trends/forecasts. Too many units are not stable enough.

crislapi wrote:We had a new ward created May 2010. Even with the quareterly disbursements, we didn't get any budget money for them until October.

I would have expected that CHQ places some budget money right at the beginning of this new organized ward. I think it is just a matter of being organized. There are exceptional cases which needs to be reflected on.

crislapi wrote:I don't see CHQ ever giving disbursements based on trends/forecasts. Too many units are not stable enough.

Currently CHQ is trying to reduce man power in the administration offices, at least there are doing it quite heavily in Europe, and the administration office is also interested in reducing their work load. CHQ needs to find a compromise in a lot of areas. And this could be such a case to think about.

And even if the ward increases by 5 members a year. At the end it is not that much more that the unit gets.

thorsten_GER wrote:And even if the ward increases by 5 members a year. At the end it is not that much more that the unit gets.

That's pretty stable in my book.

This whole system is automated, at least here in the US. I don't see it requiring a lot of manpower regardless of the frequency of the disbursements.

thorsten_GER wrote:I would have expected that CHQ places some budget money right at the beginning of this new organized ward. I think it is just a matter of being organized. There are exceptional cases which needs to be reflected on.

In the US, the stake needs to do this. We have a similar situation where we will zero out the allocation for two wards so they will receive nothing in 1Q 2011, then we take that allocation and issue three checks from the stake to the three wards that were created in October from the two previous wards.

After the new year, we will reset the budget allocation. When the 2Q allocation rolls around, all will be in order, as all three of the new wards will have been on the 4Q 2010 quarterly report that will drive the 2Q 2011 allocation, and the automated process should work just fine.

But yes, there is a delay in the process.