Tech Forum

When ward members, like several in my unit, donate directly through church headquarters (usually with stocks or bonds), I currently see no provision for those type of donations to filter down to the member's own ward donation listings on MLS.
This void creates several problems:
1. The Ward missionary account. A member of my ward last month donated $500 toward another family in the same ward's missionary fund through church headquarters. Such donations never show up on MLS and this means this particular missionary's fund will always be in the red. This never used to be a problem, but for some unknown reason to myself, my stake presidency is now regularly monitoring each individual missionary's account balance in MLS and wants ALL of these accounts to be in the black monthly. If I do as my stake says and transfer from the ward's overall missionary fund to cover such deficits, then essentially the member who donated through church headquarters in essence only made a donation to the overall church's general missionary fund and not the individual missionary or even the ward. Since church headquarter's adds the name of new departing missionaries to ward MLS lists, it seems adding church headquarter donations could be added too.
2. Fast offering funds. Most stake presidents seem to want their bishops and wards to be as much in the black as possible with fast offering expenditures. But when church headquarter donations are NOT added to ward MLS lists, then the overall income for such funds are obviously less. Example: last year (2012), my ward was only a few hundred dollars in the red for fast offering expenditures. Since the donations of several members though church headquarters never filter down to the ward level, then my ward's chance at being in the black was effectively negated. Bishops seem to worry a lot about fast offering expenditures being in the black and so finding a way to add church headquarter donations to individual ward fast offering listings would help ease some of that.
-Obviously other donated funds (tithing, etc.) through church headquarters do not have the same impact on wards as do fast offering or missionary funds.

LynnArave wrote:Most stake presidents seem to want their bishops and wards to be as much in the black as possible with fast offering expenditures. But when church headquarter donations are NOT added to ward MLS lists, then the overall income for such funds are obviously less. .... Bishops seem to worry a lot about fast offering expenditures being in the black and so finding a way to add church headquarter donations to individual ward fast offering listings would help ease some of that.

Being "in the red" on Fast Offerings may draw some scrutiny, but it is not a requirement to be in the black. As long as the bishop is doing the right thing, he should have no reason to be concerned about it.

LynnArave wrote:1. The Ward missionary account. A member of my ward last month donated $500 toward another family in the same ward's missionary fund through church headquarters. Such donations never show up on MLS and this means this particular missionary's fund will always be in the red.

Have you checked to see if the donation was put in the Ward Missionary Account. I had a member do a missionary donation through an IRA distribution the funds was put in the ward account and I had to change it to the individual missionaries account.

If you donate directly to church HQ for a specific missionary's fund, the local unit should see it as income on the income and expense report in MLS. However, if that $500 donation was not applied to that missionary's fund, but instead applied to the general missionary fund, the local unit will have not record of that donation, and that missionary will show $500 short. So, you may have to call the finance department at church HQ to see if they can verify what fund it was applied to, and if it was indeed put in the general missionary fund, then see if they can change it to that missionary's fund.