Managing Ward & Stake Consumable Supplies

[swigginton]

We’ve seen different ways of dealing with consumable supplies and are looking for best practices for these items:

• Material Center copier/printer paper and toner
• Sacrament cups
• Activity supplies - paper plates, cups, napkins, plasticware, etc.

Our meetinghouse supplies (bathroom, trash and cleaning products) are managed by stake building reps, so no issues there.
However, it seems every organization has a large stockpile of paper plates, cups, etc., filling their closets. I've heard some stake create and fund a central closet of paper goods for all organizations in each building. Does that work?
Our wards share the cost of copier toner and paper, which are purchased by the agent bishops and billed equally to each ward in the building. We’re seeing a significantly high number of copies made, even with the transition to digital ward bulletins. Some wards are complaining about bearing that cost when they make very few copies.
So, a couple of questions:

1. How does your stake handle costs for meetinghouse copiers (paper and toner)?
2. Do you configure copier accounts and have each ward log in to the copier to track usage? If so, are wards charged based on their usage or are the accounts simply to reduce excess use?
3. How do you manage paper goods (plates, cups, etc.) among the different organizations?

What seems to work best?
Thanks!

[davesudweeks]

It has been a few years, but here is what we did in our building (3 wards, not stake center). We were the agent ward every year for many years since the SP didn't want the responsibility to shift around:

1. Paper goods (cups, plates, etc): Each ward and each organization in each ward did their own thing. As the clerk I was not involved.

2. Sacrament cups: The agent ward would usually purchase, but any ward could if they saw a need. We would purchase the largest size box and invoice each other ward 1/3 cost. Note: I also kept about 2-3 weeks of cups in the clerk's office (for the regular event where the Teachers found out we were out of cups on a Sunday morning) so I could order more before we ran out). I encouraged the other unit clerks to do the same (one did and the other did not but we had enough stashed to bail them out if needed). Another way we tried was for each ward to purchase 1 box each for everyone to use but that was more difficult to manage.

3. Copier suppliers (toner/paper): Agent ward would order and invoice the other wards 1/3 the cost. Our copier was not designed to handle the load placed on it for all the bulletins and would go down regularly so we arranged an account at a local copy shop for large-qty copies to be made there (they provided a key and prepaid copier card at no extra cost that our bulletin person would use and we reloaded the card as needed). We encouraged the other units in our building to do the same but they didn't and we didn't feel it was worth fighting over extra copies they were making - they often had copier problems with their bulletins that we didn't experience. Our bishop at the time tried to eliminate the bulletins altogether but things got a bit ugly so he backed down and restarted the paper bulletins.

4. Cleaning supplies: Ordered as directed by the FM group and direct-billed to them so we just made sure the stock was kept up (FM group can provide a stocking list based on the number of units in the building if anyone needs that). I would inventory the cleaning supplies monthly and then order what was needed to keep a 3-month supply.

Hope this helps!

[swigginton]

Good info. Thanks! It would be interesting to know if this is the typical approach or if others have found better ways to handle it.

[greenwoodkl]

We have 4 wards in the Stake Center. As for paper goods, our ward has a single closet dedicated for all organizations to pull from. As for the library copier, I've heard we used to split the costs but our current agent ward hasn't charged our ward. Sacrament cups unsure? FM group handles all our cleaning supplies.

[davesudweeks]

FM group handles all our cleaning supplies.

Nice! Our FM group was in another state so we had to manage ordering/stocking ourselves (direct-billed to them).