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I have just been called as Membership Clerk and have found several years of paper member records in the files. Where can I find the guidelines for discarding these? I looked in the clerk wiki but couldn't find anything.

zaneclark wrote:I have just been called as Membership Clerk and have found several years of paper member records in the files. Where can I find the guidelines for discarding these? I looked in the clerk wiki but couldn't find anything.

This post has some helpful information, including references to the CHI and MLS Help File.

See this post for the official retention policy.

It mostly deals w/ financial issues, but there is some membership items in there as well.

Our practice is to immediately distribute to the member or shred any printed Individual Ordinance Summaries (IOS).

Except as noted in the previous links regarding printed membership records, we have adopted the practice of filing all the rest of the non-financial MLS printouts that result from the Send/Receive process with the financial records. That way we have something to go back to should we need it, but all the records are shredded after the financial records retention period for our area is exceeded.

At year end, we also print one copy of the complete ward directory with all the bells and whistles possible (i.e. with membership record numbers, complete birth dates for adults, etc.), and file it with these records so that we have something to go back to should the need arise.

We also keep hard copies of blessing and ordinance certificates and forms for the same period, filed in the same place and retained for the same time. We've had it happen more than once that a child got baptized or ordained and several months later the ordinance has disappeared out of MLS for one reason or another. Having the hardcopy to refer back to allows us to fix this without too much trouble.