Coupling Between LUF Forum and Church Finance Dept?

A bit of an odd question, and it also exposes my naivety about this forum, but is there any coupling between this forum and the official Church Finance Department?

In my short life here so far, it appears there is little or no coupling. Does the CFD silently monitor the forum for learning, or, are some of the active members here officially representing the CFD?

Would someone explain to me what this coupling looks like?

ckmcdonald wrote:In my short life here so far, it appears there is little or no coupling.

I believe that would be an accurate statement. This is primarily peer to peer support. There are some church employees who are here, but if you know you need something done at the CHQ end, it's best to contact Local Unit Support.

RussellHltn wrote:There are some church employees who are here

But, as far as I know, none of those employees monitor the forums as an assigned part of their jobs. They do it on their own initiative and very possibly on their own time. So, although they are often extremely helpful, you can't assume that they will see and/or reply to any given post.

Stating (and probably re-stating) the obvious... it would often be helpful if there were a few Church Finance Department employees assigned to officially monitor (even lightly) the forum and chime in when a thread started concluding an incorrect answer or a topic stalled without a resolution - even to the point of forming new or correcting errant policy when needed.

The idea is far from unique so I assume there is a good reason this isn't done.

ckmcdonald wrote:Stating (and probably re-stating) the obvious... it would often be helpful if there were a few Church Finance Department employees assigned to officially monitor (even lightly) the forum and chime in when a thread started concluding an incorrect answer or a topic stalled without a resolution - even to the point of forming new or correcting errant policy when needed.

The idea is far from unique so I assume there is a good reason this isn't done.

It would be helpful to have employees monitoring the forum, but it's a question of resources. Given the current set of resources, would you rather have hold times even longer when you call Support because employees are spending more time here on the forum? I think not. The community does a pretty good job -- when one of us makes a mistake in an answer, there is sufficient knowledge on most topics to give a correction pretty quickly.

When the moderators and administrators find a topic that needs to be escalated, we do have some contacts for doing that. But it is rare that we need to do that, because there is almost always sufficient information in the community as a whole to address issues that are raised. That seems like a pretty efficient way to handle topics raised on the forum.

Brother Brown is correct. The vast majority of the folks monitoring and steering the forum are volunteers, not church employees. I served many years as a finance clerk, and as great as this forum is for quick answers, I found the best way to get a definitive answer on a sticky finance question was use the MLS message system with "Finance" selected as the "Type". They get read by church finance employees and are automatically escalated to a higher tier support, if needed, to obtain an answer. I've developed a great love and respect for the people at the other end of those messages.