Tech Forum

Some wards and members in our area are beginning to use the Electronic Donations directly to Salt Lake option. I'm just curious what your experiences have been with this. What are the down sides to it? if any? Does it reduce work, paper work? at year's end, does the ward know, or care, about these donations? For example if a member sends his $400 monthly payment for his missionary in the field, directly to Salt Lake, does the ward know about this? how does the monthly financial statement and reconciliation deal with it?

I have found part of the answer to my own question. According to Help in MLS, Electronic Donations cannot be made for ward fast offerings or missionary support. So it looks like this works only for those items which are "swept" from the local accounts each week.

I am aware of one brother in our stake who made a contribution via Electronic Donation for the benefit of a nephew who was in the mission field. So this begs the question; how are "Missionary (General)" funds disposed of? and is there any connection between what this brother donated, and the missionary who he's contributing to?

You may find some information in the Donations Received bia Bill Payer Service thread.

There are extensive articles on the wiki that explain the procedures and limitations, and even provide the form for signing up:

• Electronic Donations
• Donations to Church Headquarters

rexgj wrote:I am aware of one brother in our stake who made a contribution via Electronic Donation for the benefit of a nephew who was in the mission field. So this begs the question; how are "Missionary (General)" funds disposed of? and is there any connection between what this brother donated, and the missionary who he's contributing to?

The General Missionary fund has no connection to the Ward Missionary fund. Any donations made to the General Missionary fund (electronically or to the ward) go to the general support of missionaries. Usually, only funds that are deposited in the ward's account can support a particular missionary.

If you review the wiki article Donations to Church Headquarters, you'll see that there is a provision for donations by check or wire to specify part of the donation to be credited to the ward fast offerings or to a ward missionary. But the instructions for Electronic Donations explicitly state that electronic donations cannot be credited to the ward missionary or fast offering funds. Those instructions came straight from the Church Donations department, by the way.

So I see three explanations for your scenario of someone using an "Electronic Donation for the benefit of a nephew who was in the mission field":

1. He donated to the General Missionary Fund, and it actually didn't support the missionary. The Ward Missionary fund was still charged each month for the missionary.
2. He actually donated by wire, and so had the opportunity to specify the missionary to be supported.
3. He made an electronic donation, and there is some other procedure that we have not been notified of that was used to credit the missionary's account.

So only if paid by check to Salt Lake, can a contribution be made to a specific missionary, or to the ward fast offering fund? Interesting, I will have to check to see how this brother paid his. I believe the clerk told me they had two lines on their ward's financial statement regarding his donations directly to Salt Lake. I presume this means he wrote a check.

rexgj wrote:So only if paid by check to Salt Lake, can a contribution be made to a specific missionary, or to the ward fast offering fund? Interesting, I will have to check to see how this brother paid his. I believe the clerk told me they had two lines on their ward's financial statement regarding his donations directly to Salt Lake. I presume this means he wrote a check.

Actually, not only payments by check, but also payments by wire and donations in kind all have the option of directing some of the donation to go back to the ward.

When this happens, the ward will see a line on the financial statement that shows the credit in the appropriate category.

Here in Italy, now(!), we can use Electronic Donations (ED).
This is as it works.
Member make ED, specifing each fund with an acronym, into Note Box and print the receipt. Then fill the donation sheet writing (between cash and check boxes) a new box (BON in italian) and include the receipt said above. That's all.
Church's Office, in Milano, put each ammount in the correct fund according with the acronym written in the NOTE box.

Looks like as a result of the new system that has been approved (http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/f ... -donations), this subject is being revisited in the documentation. The donations page now makes no mention of electronic payments and the previous instructions links appear to have been removed. The service still works- I just got a monthly statement (I set it up several years ago), but it appears it is no longer accepting new users.