Surplus missionary funds

Discuss questions around local unit policies for budgeting, reconciling, etc. This forum should not contain specific financial or membership information.
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dajoker
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Location: Utah, USA

#11

Post by dajoker »

lajackson wrote:In my opinion it would be far better to allow the family to have the excess missionary contribution transferred to tithing or fast offering. This would still allow the family to benefit from the extra contribution, without involving other members in the process.

How would that work with the example above where somebody else contributed to the missionary? Surely the missionary's family does not deserve that tax benefit, and if the donation is from outside the ward (grandparents, friends, etc.) there is no way to credit them. Even if this transfer were to be attributed to no individual person (avoiding complexities mentioned previously) would MLS and the CUBS side of things move the money into the bank account to be cleaned out the next day (most donations need to be deposited and then removed this way) or would it all just magically happen in CUBS? Any official guidance in the handbook or other policy on excess missionary funds? This page does not state explicitly, but it may be implied that transfers should only happen within the Ward Missionary category (and subcategories):

https://tech.lds.org/wiki/CUBS#Subcategories
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aebrown
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#12

Post by aebrown »

dajoker wrote:How would that work with the example above where somebody else contributed to the missionary? Surely the missionary's family does not deserve that tax benefit, and if the donation is from outside the ward (grandparents, friends, etc.) there is no way to credit them.

It is irrelevant whether someone else contributed to the missionary. A member can request that his or her donation be recategorized. If someone other than the parents donated on behalf of a missionary, they get the tax statement that shows they made a payment, which is unaffected by this recategorization. And for the missionary's parents, since we're only talking about a recategorization, there's no change in the donation totals for them either.

The only impact other people's contributions would make is that the resulting surplus would enable the missionary's parents to recategorize a missionary donation as tithing (for example) and still have the mission costs fully funded.
dajoker wrote:Even if this transfer were to be attributed to no individual person (avoiding complexities mentioned previously) would MLS and the CUBS side of things move the money into the bank account to be cleaned out the next day (most donations need to be deposited and then removed this way) or would it all just magically happen in CUBS?

As with all changes in category, it all happens automatically. In the case of a ward missionary donation being recategorized as tithing, money would be removed from the ward missionary account and credited to tithing. Those tithing funds would then be treated as all tithing funds, and be automatically swept to CHQ.
dajoker wrote:Any official guidance in the handbook or other policy on excess missionary funds? This page does not state explicitly, but it may be implied that transfers should only happen within the Ward Missionary category (and subcategories):

https://tech.lds.org/wiki/CUBS#Subcategories

The financial clerk makes no transfer -- this is simply a change in categories. MLS and CUBS may make transfers behind the scenes, but the change is made by adjusting the donation, not by using the Enter Transfer feature.
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lajackson
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#13

Post by lajackson »

dajoker wrote:How would that work with the example above . . .

It does not work with somebody else's contributions, only with my own. If I contribute to the Missionary Fund and it is determined that the contribution was not necessary, I might ask that the contribution be recategorized to tithing or fast offering. I am not given a refund or credit for someone else's contribution. It was my contribution and is still my contribution. I have merely asked that it be credited to a different category.

This has no effect on someone else who contributes.

This is just an example. In my particular circumstance, I would probably just leave the contribution in the ward missionary fund to be used as needed there. But I understood the original question to concern a family who contributed more than needed to the missionary fund.
funaddict
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#14

Post by funaddict »

lajackson wrote:In my opinion it would be far better to allow the family to have the excess missionary contribution transferred to tithing or fast offering. This would still allow the family to benefit from the extra contribution, without involving other members in the process.

I agree that this would be a much more elegant solution than my earlier suggestion, and wouldn't involve any other parties. I hadn't thought about being able to re-categorize a missionary donation as tithing or Fast offering. That's one of the many benefits of participating in this forum. Thank you.
WorthingtonRP
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Re: Surplus missionary funds

#15

Post by WorthingtonRP »

I realize that this discussion topic is from a few years ago, but thought that others might benefit from this information.

Our ward has started using Online Donations. We had a released missionary still showing up in the Ward Mission drop down of the online donations.

The Church support person I talked to said the following is required to have this account disappear, from the online donations missionary donation list:
  • Missionary is released from their mission
  • The Ward Mission account for this missionary needs to have a $0 balance for 60 days
We moved the missionary's balance to the General Ward Mission fund. Now we need to wait the 60 days for this account to disappear from online donations.

By-the-way, once your ward has been approved, your ward members can make online donations here: https://www.lds.org/donations
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