Tracking Benevolence Assistance

[bobfree]

Our benevolence committee and staff have asked about being able to track assistance to individuals/families in Powerchurch. The purpose is to have background information on those receiving assistance, along with the capability of having the information available to all who have access to Powerchurch to assist in decision making. As it stands now we do not have a central repository of this information.
I do not see an upfront way of providing this service in Powerchurch. Am I missing something? Any ideas?
Thanks,
Bob Freeman

[bookkeeper-sheila]

We have a specific accounting fund number called Elders Benevolence fund, with an annual budget that the disbursements go against. When approved, I cut a check in Accounts Payable to an individual in the family, noting in the line-item field something like "benev-Smiths". This way I can pull an Account Activity report for that fund and see all the families we helped. Another way to track the families is through the 1099s, if we paid them more than $600 in a year.

For your info as an example:
Fund 55 - elders benevolence fund
55-4901-055 gifts to benevolence fund
55-6501-055 benevolence disbursements

As far as background information, we use an application of sorts that they have to fill out, and then our elders either review it and approve it, or the church secretary emails out the pertinent info and gets approvals that way. Then we have the papers that we file away. This is especially useful when the assistance is for rent or electric bills, because we don't cut the check to the family, but to the billing person (like the electric company); this way the family doesn't get a 1099 at the end of the year, and then we know the billing person actually gets the money and the family doesn't cash the check for "the cash". We also ask for identifying info like a social security number, address, needs (if they need money and food from the pantry), billing address and account number (for electric bills or rent), previous requests, how did you hear about the church (if a visitor is asking for assistance), and the circumstances that got them in this financial hardship....anything to help the elders make the right decision.

Hope this helps!

[NeilZ]

Our benevolence committee and staff have asked about being able to track assistance to individuals/families in Powerchurch. The purpose is to have background information on those receiving assistance, along with the capability of having the information available to all who have access to Powerchurch to assist in decision making. As it stands now we do not have a central repository of this information.
I do not see an upfront way of providing this service in Powerchurch. Am I missing something? Any ideas?
Thanks,
Bob Freeman

FWIW ... there isn't a way to track this information other than in Membership, and anyone who has access to membership can see the data. This may include people who should NOT have this information.

However, you can get around this by putting the family mailing list and family member information in Membership using a profile status that you can decide on, and then keeping any other information listed under the Ministry Services module, which can be setup to only provide access to those decision makers you want to see the info.

[bobfree]

Thanks to all for the information.
Neil, I had concluded that the basic information needed to be added to the membership database with a Profile status that would flag the person as having received assistance, but not being a member, to help track repeat requests. Your suggestion of using the Ministry Services Module to track detailed assistance information is just what I needed to make the operation complete. This same method would also allow for tracking benevolence assistance to members. Thanks much.
Bob

[NeilZ]

Thanks to all for the information.
Neil, I had concluded that the basic information needed to be added to the membership database with a Profile status that would flag the person as having received assistance, but not being a member, to help track repeat requests. Your suggestion of using the Ministry Services Module to track detailed assistance information is just what I needed to make the operation complete. This same method would also allow for tracking benevolence assistance to members. Thanks much.
Bob

No problem. I figured that you would need to store data that would need to be, what we used to call in the military, close hold. That is in this case, private data that should not be general knowledge. The ministry module works perfectly because it was designed for that.

All you need to do is set the permissions for that module for all the users, access/update/delete, or no access.