Announcing Budget Projections that now reflect sacrament meeting attendance

11 December 2018

Dear Bishoprics and Branch Presidencies,

The numbers you’ve been waiting for to make 2019 budget projections will be sent to you shortly. 

As you know, ward/branch (and stake) budget allocations from SLC are based on sacrament meeting attendance.

We are now able to establish budgets for you that will reflect the variations in sacrament meeting attendance. We are doing that for several reasons. Hopefully it will...

1) help remind all of us of the importance of inviting others (members and neighbors) to come and worship with us;

2) give added attention to involving the ward council in planning spirit-filled sacrament meetings so more will be drawn to attend;

3) involve more ward leaders, specifically the ward or branch council, in monitoring attendance and generating ideas to improve sacrament meetings;

4) encourage clerks to ensure sacrament meeting attendance numbers are accurately and timely recorded and reported.

While it means your ward or branch budget allocation will fluctuate each quarter, we have calculated a recommended annual allocation you can safely budget against so you can assign annual budgets to your ward organizations.

In a subsequent email you will receive two documents with 2019 projections that should help you:

1) An overview of (a) your budget status for 2018 and (b) budget allocations, including a recommended amount to budget against in 2019, based on sacrament meeting attendance for the last 4 quarters; this document also shows you how your ward is trending in sacrament meeting attendance so you can anticipate an increase or reduction in allocation over the coming months if the trend continues;

2) Budget projection details that you can reference, if you want to see how we arrived at the numbers on the Budget Overview page.

Thank you for working with us in helping this budget process succeed so you can benefit from your efforts to improve sacrament meeting attendance. It also allows you to set up a ward or branch budget that won't fluctuate quarterly.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact our stake clerk Bud Koch, President Christiansen or President Lewis.

Gratefully,

The Stake Presidency