How much was your weekly deposit. I was a financial clerk in a military ward in 1992. Our deposit was between $2000 and $3000 a week. $15000 to $20000 at the end of the year. A few higher ranked members paid annually.

Our financial support to the needy members was usually that or more, counting groceries at the local Food lion. The Store house was a couple hours away so the bishop gave a chit to the needy with a list of approved items to the family to get groceries.

It was along time ago and I sometimes wonder if they do it the same way in that part of the country (coastal North Carolina)

I was also in a Bishopric in Colorado that quite often gave out more than the weekly deposit (rural farm community).

I asked my wifes current Bishop the same question and he told me he quite often pays out more in support than the ward brings in.

Given my own personal experience. I would be impossible for the church to get rich from tithing.

I am wondering if this is a 1% of the Mormons, support the 99% type scenario.

Do any of you have different info for your wards? Are there wards that give millions?

I am only looking for direct personal knowledge. If All you are going to do is speculate, please don't.

If you want to debate the intricacies and such of the church finances, please start your own thread.I would be more that happy to join you there.

I was a finance clerk in a relatively well-off ward. We took in just over $1 million a year in donations and paid out significantly less than that. Most other wards in our stake were also net positive.

I was financial clerk from 2007 to 2010. We were in a modest ward in Canada, with a lot of lower middle class families, a lot of student families as we were by the university in our little city. But we did have about 6 or 7 well to do families too. We would bring in just under $500,000 for our unit. A bulk of our deposits at the end of the year Nov/Dec were usually $15,000 to $23,000 per week. For the other parts of the year it would vary between $5,000 to $12,000 generally per week. It always came in around the same at the end of the year though.

We shared the building with 3 other wards, so I assume it would be similar income for each ward, probably a total of 1 to 1.5 million for the combined total would be my best guess.

To add from earlier, our budget for the auxilaries was maybe 25,000 to 30,000 at the most.

so what does this thread all add up to?....excuse the pun

Really, what is this saying?

I was just a lowly peon when I was active.

Our ward is very middle class and our weekly deposit was around 10 grand, with an annual total of about 500,000. The annual budget credited back to the ward, for activites and supplies, was between 6-7000.

The amount 'paid out' to the needy through the fast offering account was generally less than $1000/month, which was usually more than was donated from the ward to fast offering. In other words, our ward was often "in the red" in our fast offering account, so we would depend on overflow from other wards in the Stake. It was about 10 years ago that the stake president said that for the first time ever the United States units, as a group, used more in fast offering than was donated. He was trying to make everyone feel guilty that we were depending on the fast offerings from Uganda and Bolivia to cover our shortfall.

I feel quite certain that when your wife's bishop is talking about paying out more to the needy than they take in, he must be referring specifically to the FAST OFFERING account. The individual ward doesn't have access to the tithing money; it is instantly gone to SLC. If there are welfare needs greater than fast offering donations, it has to come from F.O. overflow from other units. Every week my bishop would come in wringing his hands wanting to know how much F.O. was collected. He felt a lot of stress to not overspend what was donated.

I think it would be extremely unusual for a church unit to consistently pay out more in welfare help than they take in through tithing. You're right that TSCC wouldn't survive if that was the case.

I know how the money is shuffled and redistributed. My question to him was total deposit(tithing fast offerings , everything) versus pay out to the needy.

My ward would generally bring in between $500,000.00 to $750,000.00 a year in tithing, fast offerings, perpetual education, missionary, etc. Our ward received about $6500.00 a year from SLC to run programs. Our fast offering donations far exceeded what was paid out by our bishop. Salt Lake made a killing off our ward as near as I could tell.

I do not remember the amount we were collecting but I do remember we had 30% of families in the ward that were full-tithe payers.

I was a stake clerk and stake auditor for about 4 years and a ward finance clerk before that.

The stake brought in about 7 million a year with 8 wards and a Spanish branch. I had to write a memo to all the wards asking for them to send the excess missionary funds collected to the stake so they could be sent back to salt lake. Nobody was happy about it but all responded and sent funds. I wrote a check to the corporation of the presiding bishop or whatever it was called for 52k and mailed it to salt lake city.

Girls amp for the stake was really expensive. The chartered bus rides cost nearly 4k.

As the stake auditor I identified a lot of bishop storehouse food orders being changed by the recipient. The form is filled out with help from the relief society president. It has 3 carbon copies. The recipient keeps two which includes the copy the storehouse keeps once they are done shopping. The bishop keeps the third copy. The storehouse copy is then sent back to the bishop and compared. At least a dozen or so storehouse copies didn't match the bishop copy which indicated the recipient changed and increased their order. Bishops were suppose to question the member but rarely did anything about it.

I spent a lot of time training other clerks how to reconcile the bank account statements. It was really simple. Donations come in, get swept out to salt lake. Checks get written for reimbursements, funds transfer in to cover the check. Only fast offerings stayed at the local level and the dreaded "other" account which most had know idea what it consisted if other than some scout fundraising dollars.

The biggest donation I ever saw as an auditor was for 250K. The ward clerk I was auditing told me all about the guy who donated and how he sold his business for 2.5 million and paid tithing on it.

Girls camp got a chartered bus!?? Not in my wards. I WAS THE BUS. Nobody ever offered to pay me for gas either. I did deduct it off my tithing bill though.

The girls camps I went to cost next to nothing. There was never enough food. The camp sites were disgusting.

I was at one that was so bad I took the girls from our ward to my house on day 2. My back yard was way better, I had a bathroom with plumbing that worked, and they could take showers.

Girls Camp was pretty bad in my ward too.


All the money was directed to the BOYS, leaving the girls only the meager funds they could raise themselves in their single fundraiser.


The year I went to camp, they were relegated to a free spot in a state park that was so bad that the septic system was backing raw sewage up into the shower areas.


And the southern heat was magnified by the fact that they were forced to camp at the bottom of a bowl, where the sun could beam in without any interfereance, but no winds could reach them to help blow some of the heat out.


Kids were getting sick from the heat.

There is a similar thread from a couple of years ago archived in the 'short topics' section of the board.

http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon565.htm

Some of our financial wizards have looked into this and estimated the church takes in 5-8 billion a year in tithing alone.