How accurate are your membership records?
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 11:25 am
There are many ways you could decide to quantify that, so let me be more specific.
What percent of the the people on your membership records actually live where their records say they do?
I suspect most ward clerks would have to guess. In my case, I can say 75% do live in my ward where we think they do. 6% do not live where we think they do (I'm working on trying to find those) and 19% I don't know one way or the other (I'm trying to get ward members and missionaries to visit those addresses.)
The reason I bring this up is to tell how I know those numbers for my ward. First some basic stats for my ward. We have about 300 households, 500 members and an average Sacrament Meeting attendance of 125. In a perfect world I would be able to look at who had been visited by home or visiting teachers in the last several months and get this information. But in my ward and stake that is very far from reality and it will be a long time before we can get there. I strongly believe one of the reasons we are so far from that reality is because our records are so inaccurate. (I have moved out over 100 members in the last 6 months or so.)
So with out any real help from home and visiting teaching records, how did I get my 75%, 6% and 19% numbers?
I created a website that has the following 3 main features to help me.
1) I have a survey that lists all of the households in the ward with 2 options: “Know”, and “Don't Know”. I have had all of the members of the ward council as well as some other active members who have lived in the ward for a long time take that survey. This has helped me focus my efforts on who to start looking for.
2) Members of the ward council can see the results of the survey and see who we need to find/get to know. When they visit a family they can record a “home visit” for that family include any relevant notes as well as indicate if we need to update their records in some way.
3) I have data value for each household I call “Address Accuracy Certainty” I can set with a slider control from 0 to 10. It is 5 by default, meaning I don't have any idea if the address is correct, 0 meaning I'm sure they don't live there and 10 meaning I am sure they do live there. I also record the date the address accuracy certainty was set, so when it becomes old I am alerted we need to check again if that household is still there. For active members I see all the time I just click to refresh the set date.
Using the information I gather I have a query I run on the database that gives me the numbers and it data updates automatically as things change.
Before I had the idea for this website I had no idea how accurate my records were. The only thing I could do was keep a list of people who I had been told don't live at the address we have, and try and find out where they do live.
It is still taking far longer than I want, but at least now I have measurable goal and a way to track progress.
One of the other features I have on the website is links to quickly search county land records, court records (marriages and divorces) white pages, facebook etc. All without having to type everyone’s name in (or even copy and past) one at a time on all those different websites. Using this I was able to search the property records for every household in my ward in only 2 hours. Granted if they could be renting the home and not live there but the land records for the counties my ward is in has information that gives you a pretty good idea (though not a certainty) if someone is renting their house. That alone helped me determine 40% of my list of people that no one knows does live here. It also helps me find people that are living in a home they don't own and if there is no indication that it is a rental, I can focus more on them.
Any way I just thought I would share what I have done. I really wish the church could add features like these to LCR. Some of it I'm sure they couldn't do. Since all of the public records searches are different for every state/county/town that would not be possible to do generally.
One last note to anyone who thinks it is a lot of work to keep records accurate and up to date. That is a walk in the park compared to what I have been doing for the last year or so.
Chris W
OKC2 Ward Clerk
What percent of the the people on your membership records actually live where their records say they do?
I suspect most ward clerks would have to guess. In my case, I can say 75% do live in my ward where we think they do. 6% do not live where we think they do (I'm working on trying to find those) and 19% I don't know one way or the other (I'm trying to get ward members and missionaries to visit those addresses.)
The reason I bring this up is to tell how I know those numbers for my ward. First some basic stats for my ward. We have about 300 households, 500 members and an average Sacrament Meeting attendance of 125. In a perfect world I would be able to look at who had been visited by home or visiting teachers in the last several months and get this information. But in my ward and stake that is very far from reality and it will be a long time before we can get there. I strongly believe one of the reasons we are so far from that reality is because our records are so inaccurate. (I have moved out over 100 members in the last 6 months or so.)
So with out any real help from home and visiting teaching records, how did I get my 75%, 6% and 19% numbers?
I created a website that has the following 3 main features to help me.
1) I have a survey that lists all of the households in the ward with 2 options: “Know”, and “Don't Know”. I have had all of the members of the ward council as well as some other active members who have lived in the ward for a long time take that survey. This has helped me focus my efforts on who to start looking for.
2) Members of the ward council can see the results of the survey and see who we need to find/get to know. When they visit a family they can record a “home visit” for that family include any relevant notes as well as indicate if we need to update their records in some way.
3) I have data value for each household I call “Address Accuracy Certainty” I can set with a slider control from 0 to 10. It is 5 by default, meaning I don't have any idea if the address is correct, 0 meaning I'm sure they don't live there and 10 meaning I am sure they do live there. I also record the date the address accuracy certainty was set, so when it becomes old I am alerted we need to check again if that household is still there. For active members I see all the time I just click to refresh the set date.
Using the information I gather I have a query I run on the database that gives me the numbers and it data updates automatically as things change.
Before I had the idea for this website I had no idea how accurate my records were. The only thing I could do was keep a list of people who I had been told don't live at the address we have, and try and find out where they do live.
It is still taking far longer than I want, but at least now I have measurable goal and a way to track progress.
One of the other features I have on the website is links to quickly search county land records, court records (marriages and divorces) white pages, facebook etc. All without having to type everyone’s name in (or even copy and past) one at a time on all those different websites. Using this I was able to search the property records for every household in my ward in only 2 hours. Granted if they could be renting the home and not live there but the land records for the counties my ward is in has information that gives you a pretty good idea (though not a certainty) if someone is renting their house. That alone helped me determine 40% of my list of people that no one knows does live here. It also helps me find people that are living in a home they don't own and if there is no indication that it is a rental, I can focus more on them.
Any way I just thought I would share what I have done. I really wish the church could add features like these to LCR. Some of it I'm sure they couldn't do. Since all of the public records searches are different for every state/county/town that would not be possible to do generally.
One last note to anyone who thinks it is a lot of work to keep records accurate and up to date. That is a walk in the park compared to what I have been doing for the last year or so.
Chris W
OKC2 Ward Clerk