Additional Guidance

• Discover needs and opportunities. Stake leaders counsel together and determine the needs of members and the community. Consider including community leaders in this discussion. Focus on unmet needs or on needs the Church is uniquely positioned to fill.

• Evaluate resource capacity. Determine the capacity of the stake(s) to provide resources that could effectively help meet the needs or opportunities identified. Consider how often these resources could be provided and when. Contact your local welfare and self-reliance manager for support. (See Doctrine and Covenants 82:18–19; General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 22.2.1, 22.13, ChurchofJesusChrist.org.)

• Determine approach. Choose an approach that best suits the circumstances. For example, your approach may be as simple as members inviting friends to existing opportunities. Or the approach might include opening a center (virtual or physical), expanding the resources provided, and promoting it to the community.

• Intellectual property. Many of the Church’s resources are protected by copyright law and should not be modified without permission.

• Success measures. Stakes determine what success looks like in sharing Church resources and may include the number of people who have gained employment, learned English, completed a degree or certificate, found family names, and so on.

• Staffing. Call coordinators from the stake or stakes involved. These would ideally be welfare and self-reliance specialists. Class or group facilitators or teachers should also be called from the stake(s). Senior service missionaries can be called to coordinate if the efforts cross multiple stake boundaries and will need to be staffed from the supporting stakes.

• Scheduling. Coordinators help facilitate the scheduling of center activities to avoid conflict with regularly scheduled Church activities.

• Awareness. Promotional materials are available through your local welfare and self-reliance manager. Materials may be modified by local areas following standard, approved processes. Communication channels such as ministering sisters and brothers, missionaries, social media options, QR codes, and a central landing page can be used where authorized and funded by the local unit(s).

• Registration. Consider how to best register participants in available courses or groups. Local welfare and self-reliance specialists can assist with some options. To maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the participants, a registration system is discouraged for addiction recovery groups.

• Funding. Stakes support this effort with existing budget. If funding is needed, stake presidents follow the approved process to request funding.

• Building Use. See General Handbook, chapter 35.