Church Magazine Tracking Info

[amc79]

Does anybody have any solutions for tracking magazine subscriptions among members of the ward? A locally managed tool would be acceptable. Ideally, I would think, we could download the data from Church Distribution -- they have the addresses, the meetinghouse locator tool can parse the addresses to each ward, and then the Executive Secretary / Magazine Representative would have up-to-date information to track and encourage subscriptions in the ward.

Any suggestions?

[atticusewig]

Does anybody have any solutions for tracking magazine subscriptions among members of the ward? A locally managed tool would be acceptable. Ideally, I would think, we could download the data from Church Distribution -- they have the addresses, the meetinghouse locator tool can parse the addresses to each ward, and then the Executive Secretary / Magazine Representative would have up-to-date information to track and encourage subscriptions in the ward.

Any suggestions?

For my personal magazine subscriptions (not only church mags),
I would use a spreadsheet with dates of what would be the last issue.
With conditional formatting, and the function that returns the current date,
you can then have it highlight magazines whose subscriptions are about
to run out.

For a church magazine spreadsheet, you could login into your ward website
and download a csv of the members in your ward, open it, and add columns
for each of the Church Publications ( Ensign/Liahona, New Era, Friends, Church
News, etc.)

One thing you did mentioned above that I hadn't heard before was that you
could download data from Church Distribution - Do you mean that they allow
you to download subscription information of ward members ? Because I would
think that would be a privacy issue that the church would want to steer clear of.
But if so, it could greatly make it easier to track the magazines that's for sure.

- Atticus Ewig

[mkmurray]

One thing you did mentioned above that I hadn't heard before was that you
could download data from Church Distribution - Do you mean that they allow
you to download subscription information of ward members ? Because I would
think that would be a privacy issue that the church would want to steer clear of.
But if so, it could greatly make it easier to track the magazines that's for sure.

I was just informed that the local units do indeed have access to what Church magazine subscriptions members have. News to me.

[amc79]

For my personal magazine subscriptions (not only church mags),
I would use a spreadsheet with dates of what would be the last issue.
With conditional formatting, and the function that returns the current date,
you can then have it highlight magazines whose subscriptions are about
to run out.

For a church magazine spreadsheet, you could login into your ward website
and download a csv of the members in your ward, open it, and add columns
for each of the Church Publications ( Ensign/Liahona, New Era, Friends, Church
News, etc.)

Thank you for the suggestion.

One thing you did mentioned above that I hadn't heard before was that you
could download data from Church Distribution - Do you mean that they allow
you to download subscription information of ward members ? Because I would
think that would be a privacy issue that the church would want to steer clear of.
But if so, it could greatly make it easier to track the magazines that's for sure.

- Atticus Ewig

To my knowledge, the functionality doesn't exist. I was just wondering out loud about the possibility of reducing duplicate effort. If church distribution has the subscriber data for the ward, it seems redundant for magazine representatives to try to get ward members to periodically answer surveys regarding which magazines they subscribe to. That's all.

[amc79]

I was just informed that the local units do indeed have access to what Church magazine subscriptions members have. News to me.

Really? Where do we get this information?

[WelchTC]

Really? Where do we get this information?

I'm not sure that the distribution center provides this information and/or if it is even public. mkmurray was probably commenting on a PM I had with him about it where I was commenting that I'd seen a list in previous wards of subscribers. However that may have been generated at the local level and may not have been sent from the Church. I should have been more clear about the situation. Sorry.

Tom

[russellhltn]

I was commenting that I'd seen a list in previous wards of subscribers. However that may have been generated at the local level and may not have been sent from the Church.

It's been a very long time, but I seem to remember such a list and it was generated at the CHQ level and somehow it got into the hands of the Magazine Representative, probably by being mailed to the Bishop. I have no idea if they still do that, but I can't imaging trying to fulfill that calling without such a list.

[BensMeister]

I hope it is ok to revisit this topic. I have personally held our ward's subscription list, mailed from Salt Lake. It listed all of the households in the Unit who were subscribed to the church magazines. I last saw this list about 2 years ago, and I do not recall how up-to-date it was, but it did exist.

I was just asked by my RS president if it is possible to find out who was not receiving the Ensign, so that she could make sure the Temple Special Issue could be delivered to those sisters who do not have a subscription.

May I suggest that Bishopric members be able to access these data lists through new.lds.org > Tools > Leader & Clerk Resources.

[sraymond]

From the above discussion, it is still unclear if magazine subscription data for a specific unit is available.

Can we download member magazine subscription info from MLS, lds.org, or somehow get it from distribution services?

[BensMeister]

From the above discussion, it is still unclear if magazine subscription data for a specific unit is available.

Can we download member magazine subscription info from MLS, lds.org, or somehow get it from distribution services?

Yes. Call the distribution center hotline. Provide your unit information. They will mail your Bishop the list. I did this almost 1 year ago (about the same time I posted my previous comment) it should still be doable. I am unaware of any implementation into lds.org however.