Lost sheep and profile pictures

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TheAncientBahu
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Lost sheep and profile pictures

#1

Post by TheAncientBahu »

I apologize if this has been brought up before. I am the Ward Clerk and I'm in the process of finding inactive members who have moved without a forwarding address. In some cases I have located these individuals on Facebook. I have two questions:

How can I indicate a link to their Facebook profile in their membership record? The reason I ask this is because the photo guidelines say we can't post a member's picture without their permission and these members usually don't have a profile photo on their membership record, and it is extremely helpful to know what an individual looks like before visiting their home for the first time. Having a link to a Facebook page gives access to a publicly visible photo.

Having done all due diligence in finding a member, and having their Facebook or LinkedIn profile showing they reside in an area outside of the ward boundaries (e.g., a different city & state), what is the best way to transfer their membership record to that area without having it bounced back to our ward?

Thank you!
TheAncientBahu
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Re: Lost sheep and profile pictures

#2

Post by TheAncientBahu »

Bumping this post since I didn't receive any responses.
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jtwitchell
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Re: Lost sheep and profile pictures

#3

Post by jtwitchell »

Not sure if there is a way to link a social media site to a record of not. I will leave that to someone else to comment on. I do know for moving a record out of the ward you have to have a complete address, not just the city or state. If you have fulfilled all the other steps required (contacting known email, past leaders, etc...) then you can always ship the records out with an unknown address back to Salt Lake City.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
TheAncientBahu
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Re: Lost sheep and profile pictures

#4

Post by TheAncientBahu »

I just don't see the point in transferring out to an unknown address when I have an idea of their whereabouts. I had a lost sheep we tracked down via social media to Alaska (I'm in New Jersey), and contacted the local clerk of the ward the non-member wife's place of employment was located, and we were able to transfer the brother's record to that ward where they could work on tracking him down. And in cases where I have found the lost sheep's new address, it seems silly that there is no way to indicate additional information, such as a Facebook profile, that often takes a significant amount of time to locate. Even a field for "notes" would suffice.

I also know from experience that records sent out with address unknown usually just end up back in ward they were sent from. My favorite example (of many) is I have a member on our ward list who I tracked down to a city in Virginia via social media. I couldn't find any more information and sent the record out with address unknown but with a note of the city and state where I had located her. Three months, the record came back with her old address -- which I had removed because multiple visits by her home & visiting teachers proved she hadn't lived there for at least 5 years -- and nothing else. The hours that members put into trying to locate her basically would have all gone to waste and had to be repeated if I hadn't been keeping track of these things on a spreadsheet. It's very frustrating.
jtwitchell wrote:Not sure if there is a way to link a social media site to a record of not. I will leave that to someone else to comment on. I do know for moving a record out of the ward you have to have a complete address, not just the city or state. If you have fulfilled all the other steps required (contacting known email, past leaders, etc...) then you can always ship the records out with an unknown address back to Salt Lake City.
hollowaysw
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Joined: Sat Nov 25, 2023 4:22 pm

Re: Lost sheep and profile pictures

#5

Post by hollowaysw »

I am working on my ward list.
I plan on creating a Google form that will help me capture names and addresses.
Anyone have any experience with this?
rmrichesjr
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Re: Lost sheep and profile pictures

#6

Post by rmrichesjr »

TheAncientBahu wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2016 9:39 am I just don't see the point in transferring out to an unknown address when I have an idea of their whereabouts. ...
Even a field for "notes" would suffice.

...
Please see this thread: viewtopic.php?t=41866 The third (and currently last) post says to use the Help -> Contact Us option in LCR to create a case and send additional information regarding a record that you have moved or are moving to address unknown. We have used that option at least a couple of times. I don't know whether any action was taken by Church headquarters based on that additional information, but I hope it decreased the likelihood that the record would be blindly bounced back to us.
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