Calling Management for Wards and Stakes
Calling management is the work between deciding on a calling and the member being set apart: getting approval, meeting with the member, arranging the sustaining, remembering the set apart, and recording it. CallingHelper is calling management software that keeps that whole sequence in one place for a ward, a branch or a stake.
What calling management software has to do
Very little of managing a calling is deciding on it. Most of it is the follow-up, and follow-up is what a spreadsheet handles badly: a row cannot tell you that it has been waiting eleven days for a High Council vote, and it cannot email the person holding it up. A dedicated tool has to answer four questions at any moment:
- What has been proposed, and for whom?
- Which step is each proposal on right now?
- Who is it waiting on, and since when?
- What is ready to act on today?
Calling management for wards
In a ward or a branch, a proposal starts with bishopric approval. Once the bishopric has approved it, it moves straight to the interview. The High Council step sits in the stake workflow; a ward calling does not normally reach it. After the member accepts, the sustaining and the setting apart are tracked as their own steps, each with its own working list, so a calling cannot be quietly half-done.
Calling management for stakes
A stake proposal takes a longer path. It can go first to the bishop of the member's ward for consultation — the bishop knows things the stake presidency may not — and, where it applies, to the High Council for approval, with each member's vote recorded individually. From there it follows the same route: meet with the member, sustain, set apart. Wards and the stake work in the same system, and a stake can see how its own proposals are moving without asking each ward for an update.
Ward and stake workflows, side by side
| Step | Ward or branch | Stake |
|---|---|---|
| Who proposes | Bishopric | Stake presidency |
| Approval | Bishopric | Stake presidency |
| Bishop consultation | Not applicable — the bishopric approves its own proposals | Yes * — the bishop of the member's ward is consulted |
| High Council approval | Not part of the usual ward workflow * | Where the calling calls for it * |
| Meet with the member | Yes | Yes |
| Sustaining | Yes | Yes |
| Setting apart | Yes | Yes |
| Releases | Skip the approval and council steps and go straight to the interview * | |
* Bishop consultation applies to stake proposals, where the member belongs to a ward whose bishop should be asked first.
* High Council approval belongs to the stake workflow. Most ward callings never reach it — the bishopric approves them and they go straight on. The exception is a ward calling that requires stake approval, which follows the stake path. Even there the step is not automatic: it applies where the calling calls for it, and a stake that does not use individual council votes can turn it off entirely.
* Releases are handled as proposals too, but they have nothing to approve, so they go directly to the interview step.
Steps are not fixed in stone: a unit can adjust which steps its proposals pass through, so the sequence above is the common shape rather than the only one.
What gets recorded
Each step keeps an authorization: who it was assigned to, what they decided — yes, no, or hold — and when. A proposal can be put on hold with a date so it comes back on its own rather than being forgotten. Alongside the live proposals there are reports for vacant callings, calling history, a member's past callings and the archive, which is what makes a change of clerk survivable.
See the workflow in detail
The calling workflow page walks through each step, what a proposal waits on, and how reminder emails can be configured for the steps that tend to stall.