NOM

Hello all,

So just today I was tipped off by a friend who is a wardclerk about a new system which is used now in Europe as a result of several cases of financial malpractice. Well, I have talked about one such case on the old NOM extensively.

Here are the details:
Per Oktober 23rd.
1. Bishops can no longer spend from the wardbudget at will.
2. Bishops can no longer use fast-offerings to help members directly.
3. Stakepresidents must sign off on every single expenditure.

How does this work in the real world.
A bishop has a member in need, normally he would send out the RSP with the member to buy groceries, and the receipts would be reimbursed to the RSP.
Or a bishop would pay from the ward-account the needy members rent/utilities/ect directly.
But a primary-president who pays in advance for goodies for the nursery also has to ho via the Bishop for re-imbursement, obviously.

All of these have been made impossible. The bishop needs to send a payment-request to the Area Financial Office in Milan.
There the payment-requests are collated weekly and sent to the Stakepresident.
The Stakepresident needs to sign off on these, after that OK has been sent to Milan the payments-requests will be processed.
If the SP has questions he can contact the bishop.

Needless to say that Milan is currently being swamped with payment-requests, with backlogs increasing every single day, and people not being served in time.

Some thoughts I have:
When the wardbudget for primary is gone and you have some expenses, no money will get refunded.
When your utilities must get paid immediately, the bishop has to pay out of his own pocket, without being certain he will get it refunded.

Well, I wonder what you think about it.

Sounds like it is doomed to fail through an Orwellian bureaucracy and will ultimately cause members to leave the Church in frustration.

This is a genius move by the Church. Make a ton more rules to provide help, people will quickly stop asking for help when it becomes too cumbersome and slow. Then the church is still the hero for offering help. It's not the church's fault they didn't come back a 2nd time requesting assistance (when the first time took 2 weeks and the kids were hungry)

Oh, I forgot to mention, per January 1st next year you must pay tithing through what you´d call billpay.
And if you want to pay cash, you must pay for the privilege.
EUR 1,00 I believe, for the hassle.

Back when I lived in Denmark, tithing was done like that, but paying cash was still an option.

Meilingkie wrote:Oh, I forgot to mention, per January 1st next year you must pay tithing through what you´d call billpay.
And if you want to pay cash, you must pay for the privilege.
EUR 1,00 I believe, for the hassle.

Cash is bitter sweet.
The good: No paper trail
The bad: No paper trail

Some bishops will probably tell the ward members to just pay cash to the Bishop for tithing and Fast offerings, and he will keep the money on hand. Tithing and Fast offering contributions will drop, but the Bishop will be able to help the people.
Some people may go shopping for a different church, too.

I wonder if this is an underhanded attempt to save money by the church. By having such heavy bureaucracy, they can increase the likely hood that a payment request will be rejected. They can use the excuse of improper paperwork or something, but in the end, the can limit how much money goes out. If they are already "struggling" financially this way they can control better how much money goes to the local wards, how much goes to the poor and needy so they can make sure they have enough available for the next real estate development project.