Brother Matt (copy to April Dobson and President Hansen),
In response to the latter part of your email, let me first clarify about FOS. Yes, it was fundraising, but it was a totally different type of fundraising than what the Handbook is talking about.
The FOS was more of an “offering” from families in support of Scouting. To President Monson it was an “investment” in all young men in America, most of whom were not members of the Church. That, of course, has ended.
The fundraising the Handbook addresses is where youth are raising money through Christmas tree sales, spaghetti dinners and other service-type projects. The Handbook repeatedly allows fundraising for one summer camp only as a last resort only after exhausting budget funds and family contributions.
There are several key principles the Church follows in regard to funding of summer camps and other activities:
1. Budget funds should cover all expenses for all activities, including summer camps, if possible.
2. Church-sponsored activities should be simple and not extravagant. All should have a priesthood purpose or Church-related objective.
3. Families should not be burdened with admission fees or fees of any sort to participate in activities (exception is one summer camp per year, families can be asked to contribute toward the cost of the camp).
4. Summer camp funding is to be by: (1) budget funds, (2) family contributions and, if still not enough, (3) fundraising.
One of the first things I noticed, soon after being called, was how much fundraising was going on while the stake was sitting on a huge surplus (understandably we saving up for a trek in 2013, but we had twice what we needed).
What bothered me most was that we had all of these youth leaders, who were leaving their families to teach other parents' children how to market products or services or, in some cases, how to “beg” for money. This is not the role of the Church to teach children how to be entrepreneurs or “money collectors.” Youth leaders and teachers are to focus on teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the parents’ responsibility to teach their children how to work and earn money.
So we immediately did the following:
1. Suspended all fundraising;
2. Took extra funding from SLC earmarked for youth (that most wards were just rolling into their annual budgets) and applied it to stake summer camps;
3. Standardized summer camp fees for families (similar to standardized missionary funding) at $100 per youth so families could plan and hopefully parents would teach their children how to raise the $100;
4. Took surplus ward budget funds at the end of each year and methodically, over the past 7 years, began to drive down the standardized summer camp fee from $100 to $50 per youth.
So what that means…
If the Stake YM Presidency feel they are going to be short of funds for the Stake AP Camp in July, we can raise additional funds simply by asking families to pay $75 each instead of $50. That will raise an additional $2,250 (90 YM @ $25 = $2,250). The $75 is what families will pay next year for the FSY experience.
However, before we raise the youth fee, we would need some budget projections and cost justification from the Stake YM and Stake YW presidencies as to why you both need extra funds than what’s already budgeted. We very much want to keep the financial burden on families at a minimum, if we can. All of you have youth in your home so I’m sure you can appreciate the blessing of a $50 fee instead of $75 per youth fee.
I hope this is helpful in understanding how we fund stake summer camps and the principles we try to follow. I’ll be happy to visit with all of you about this further. In the meantime, I’ll hold off on sending the letter announcing the summer camp fees until you and April have had a chance to discuss this further and make a new recommendation, if you feel it’s needed.
Thank you both for the wonderful work you are doing to bless the youth of our stake.
Gratefully,
President Lewis
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