Tech Forum

Has anyone else been asked to track sacrament meeting attendance, males serving missions,
adult full tithe payers, adults paying fast offerings.
I was recently asked to do this and was wondering if there are spreadsheets that hold this information. The example I was given looks to have come from a "coordinating council" form
possibly from the stake. It seems to hold this info on a yearly basis for the whole stake.
Do I even have access to this as a ward clerk,
Thanks

guynewton wrote:Has anyone else been asked to track sacrament meeting attendance, males serving missions,
adult full tithe payers, adults paying fast offerings.

Depending on what level of detail you are being asked to provide for each data point you may or may not have, or even be able to get, the data.

The first one, Sacrament meeting attendance, is provided in the quarterly report as a general count of bodies attending. Getting data on each member attending Sacrament meetings is nearly impossible. I doubt that detailed of data is what they are asking to get.

Every ward I have every been in can provide the names of every missionary serving. The data of males serving should be at your fingertips.

The bishop is the only one who knows who is full tithe payers. Even then he only knows that following tithing settlement. There is no way for a clerk, or anyone else including the bishop, to get that data at any other time of the year. The only data available to the clerk is the amount an individual has contributed through the ward. That data does not include amounts contributed directly to Church headquarters. There is no way to tell from MLS data whether an individual is a full tithe payer or not. A related piece of data to paying a full tithe is the number of temple recommend holders. A temple recommend holder is presumably a full tithe payer. But since the question is only asked once every two years during the temple recommend interview the assumption that they are full tithe payers is made for the time between those interviews.

There is no direct method to getting the data about the number of adults paying fast offerings. MLS does not aggregate that data in any report. You would have to go through each donor record manually to determine that information.

jdlessley wrote:There is no direct method to getting the data about the number of adults paying fast offerings. MLS does not aggregate that data in any report. You would have to go through each donor record manually to determine that information.

In MLS, under Donor Statements, there is an option for Year-to-Date Donor Summaries by Category. You would have to sift through the list manually to get this data, but it does list all donors by category, so it's easy at a glance to see who has donated fast offerings.

jdlessley wrote:

guynewton wrote:Has anyone else been asked to track sacrament meeting attendance, males serving missions,
adult full tithe payers, adults paying fast offerings.

Depending on what level of detail you are being asked to provide for each data point you may or may not have, or even be able to get, the data.

The first one, Sacrament meeting attendance, is provided in the quarterly report as a general count of bodies attending. Getting data on each member attending Sacrament meetings is nearly impossible. I doubt that detailed of data is what they are asking to get.

Every ward I have every been in can provide the names of every missionary serving. The data of males serving should be at your fingertips.

The Sacrament Meeting attendance does not magically appear in the quarterly report by itself. The ward clerk is responsible for counting attendance weekly (a task that might be delegated to an assistant) and compiling it for the quarterly report.

Missionaries serving from the ward are now available on the Directory page for the unit on lds.org. Click the Missionary link on the left panel.

RossEvans wrote:Missionaries serving from the ward are now available on the Directory page for the unit on lds.org. Click the Missionary link on the left panel.

Which may or may not be accurate. I'd suggest cross-checking it with other sources. Perhaps the Sunday bulletin has a list.

russellhltn wrote:

RossEvans wrote:Missionaries serving from the ward are now available on the Directory page for the unit on lds.org. Click the Missionary link on the left panel.

Which may or may not be accurate. I'd suggest cross-checking it with other sources. Perhaps the Sunday bulletin has a list.

Is there a known issue with this feature on lds.org?

russellhltn wrote:

RossEvans wrote:Missionaries serving from the ward are now available on the Directory page for the unit on lds.org. Click the Missionary link on the left panel.

Which may or may not be accurate. I'd suggest cross-checking it with other sources. Perhaps the Sunday bulletin has a list.

Look at the missionary expense report it will list all the missionaries currently out, those who have received their call but not left yet, and those who have returned but the account is not closes.

RossEvans wrote:Is there a known issue with this feature on lds.org?

It's only as accurate as the information from the missionary department. There may also be a difference of opinion as to what ward a given missionary may be serving from. Is it the home ward that financially supports him, or the YSA ward he/she spiritually prepared in?

Gary_Miller wrote:Look at the missionary expense report it will list all the missionaries currently out, those who have received their call but not left yet, and those who have returned but the account is not closes.

Same issue as above - that only applies to the ones being financially supported by the ward, which may or may not fit the question being asked. I also suspect the two methods suggested are actually pulling data from the same source (financial support).

That's why I suggested checking the Sunday bulletin - it's an independent information source.

russellhltn wrote:Same issue as above - that only applies to the ones being financially supported by the ward, which may or may not fit the question being asked. I also suspect the two methods suggested are actually pulling data from the same source (financial support).

The missionary department actually tracks 4 different units for the missionary: The home ward, the submitting ward, the funding ward and the membership ward. These are also shown in the Missionary Recommendation system. I don't know which one the directory shows since all the missionaries from our ward have the same unit for home, funding and membership and they all show in the directory.

However, I think the missionary recommendation system will show the missionary if any of these are your unit. So that's probably a more comprehensive source. But the bishop or stake president has to grant access to that system.

eblood66 wrote:But the bishop or stake president has to grant access to that system.

Hmmmm. Which means the stake might be the one in the best position to answer this question.