Membership Audits
Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:16 am
Thought I'd start a new thread about Membership audits, and
what tools and techniques that could be used to help spot
changes that need to be made to records.
In my stake, we tend to time the membership audit to occur
on the same Sunday as ward conference.
Generally, the stake clerk sits down with the ward clerk and
assistant clerk in charge of membership, and does the following:
1) Abbrev. Directory of Members in MLS - He pulls this up to see
if any phone numbers aren't in the preferred format for our stake
i.e. xxx-xxx-xxxx as opposed to (xxx) xxx-xxxx or xxx.xxx.xxxx
This is a quick check in most instances.
2) Action & Interview List - He goes through this with the clerk(s)
to see if anyone who is listed as not being baptized had been
baptized, but it just hadn't been recorded. He does the same
thing with the sections listing overdue priesthood ordinations.
3) He does a spot check check of the New Member Report
(formerly known as the Convert Checklist) to see that it is
up to date.
4) He asks if there are any babies that haven't been recorded
in MLS, and asks if anyone is in the ward that the ward
doesn't have records for, or if anyone has moved out of
the ward whose records the hasn't moved to their new unit.
That covers most of the membership issues.
Recently, however I've found a couple of checks that can
quickly help find inconsistencies in the records.
a) BIC check - If you run a custom report that checks to
see if members under 18 are listed as as
"not sealed to parents", you might find
that some children "Born in Covenant"
were not marked as such on their record.
b) Birth Place check - This is a bit more involved, but using
the file you can export from MLS
called PalmIndividual.csv and the
gnu utilities, you can list all the
members in the ward that do not
have anywhere listed for their
birthplace. A simple phone call
can remedy this in most cases.
If anyone is interested, let me know,
and I will post the scripts on how
produce such a list.
side-note: You can also produce a list of Birthplaces
with frequency so you can see how
many people were born where.
You will also be able to see how many
birthplaces follow the
City, County, State, Country
format that is shown as an example in the MLS help.
Anyone know how important it is to follow this
format exactly (i.e. some records use the state abbreviation instead of spelling it out, some omit the county, etc.) ?
So does anyone else have any experiences,
tips, or tricks they could share about membership audits ?
- Atticus Ewig
what tools and techniques that could be used to help spot
changes that need to be made to records.
In my stake, we tend to time the membership audit to occur
on the same Sunday as ward conference.
Generally, the stake clerk sits down with the ward clerk and
assistant clerk in charge of membership, and does the following:
1) Abbrev. Directory of Members in MLS - He pulls this up to see
if any phone numbers aren't in the preferred format for our stake
i.e. xxx-xxx-xxxx as opposed to (xxx) xxx-xxxx or xxx.xxx.xxxx
This is a quick check in most instances.
2) Action & Interview List - He goes through this with the clerk(s)
to see if anyone who is listed as not being baptized had been
baptized, but it just hadn't been recorded. He does the same
thing with the sections listing overdue priesthood ordinations.
3) He does a spot check check of the New Member Report
(formerly known as the Convert Checklist) to see that it is
up to date.
4) He asks if there are any babies that haven't been recorded
in MLS, and asks if anyone is in the ward that the ward
doesn't have records for, or if anyone has moved out of
the ward whose records the hasn't moved to their new unit.
That covers most of the membership issues.
Recently, however I've found a couple of checks that can
quickly help find inconsistencies in the records.
a) BIC check - If you run a custom report that checks to
see if members under 18 are listed as as
"not sealed to parents", you might find
that some children "Born in Covenant"
were not marked as such on their record.
b) Birth Place check - This is a bit more involved, but using
the file you can export from MLS
called PalmIndividual.csv and the
gnu utilities, you can list all the
members in the ward that do not
have anywhere listed for their
birthplace. A simple phone call
can remedy this in most cases.
If anyone is interested, let me know,
and I will post the scripts on how
produce such a list.
side-note: You can also produce a list of Birthplaces
with frequency so you can see how
many people were born where.
You will also be able to see how many
birthplaces follow the
City, County, State, Country
format that is shown as an example in the MLS help.
Anyone know how important it is to follow this
format exactly (i.e. some records use the state abbreviation instead of spelling it out, some omit the county, etc.) ?
So does anyone else have any experiences,
tips, or tricks they could share about membership audits ?
- Atticus Ewig