Recovery Board
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Recovery from Mormonism (RfM) discussion forum.
Periodically posts appear decrying how little of its income the Church spends on humanitarian aid especially when compared with other churches.
Well, I think it is far less than has been previously reported. I actually consider it is nil, zip, nada 0% of tithing.
Let's start with the generous viewpoint. On this (RFM) site there is an archived thread described as "Jan 2012 The Mormon Church's humanitarian aid now amounts to $6.73 per member per year - from an official Mormon publication. Humanitarian Aid"
Eric K provided this data for a 25 yer period
http://www.providentliving.org/welfare/pdf/WelfareFactSheet.pdf
Humanitarian assistance rendered (1985-2009)
Cash Donations $327.6 million
Value of Material Assistance $884.6 million
They are claiming to have given some $1.2 billion during a period when they received say $125 billion in tithes (at a steady $5 billion per annum). Only 1%
However, this is not true, the Church spent NONE of its tithing income on humanitarian aid if its "Gospel Principles" manual is to be believed.
This manual gives a breakdown of what tithing covers and what is funded by "other offerings"
Gospel Principles (2011)
Tithing
Tithing is used by the Church for many purposes. Some of these are to:
1. Build, maintain, and operate temples, meetinghouses, and other buildings.
2. Provide operating funds for stakes, wards, and other units of the Church. (These units use the funds to carry out the ecclesiastical programs of the Church, which include teaching the gospel and conducting social activities.)
3. Help the missionary program.
4. Educate young people in Church schools, seminaries, and institutes.
5. Print and distribute lesson materials.
6. Help in family history and temple work.
(N.B. No humanitarian aid included above)
Other Offerings
Fast Offerings. Church members fast each month by going without food and drink for two consecutive meals. They contribute at least the amount of money they would have spent for the meals. They may give as generously as they are able. This offering is called the fast offering. Bishops use these fast offerings to provide food, shelter, clothing, and medical care for the needy.
(N.B. No humanitarian aid included in fast offerings unless you take it as caring for the needy by the bishops. Even if that were true, the money doesn't come from tithing but additional offerings of the members through going without food.)
Other Donations.
Church members may donate to other efforts of the Church, such as missionary work, the Perpetual Education Fund, temple construction, and humanitarian aid.
At last, here it is in "Other Donations". Therefore the $1.2 billion claimed to be spent on humanitarian aid, over a 25 year period, came not from tithing but from additional donations by members. One can presumably, therefore, surmise that NIL came from the tithing funds.
One can, of course, be pernickity and say the administrative costs associated with these other donations and disbursements came out of tithing. If true, it would still be a very tiny amount indeed. Actually the Church "calls" humanitarian aid missionaries to administer these matters. Such missionaries serve at their own expense although the Church may pay for some office space, travel expenses and paper clips.
Bottom line, it is disgusting, as pointed out by Eric K, that the Church claims to spend so little on humanitarian aid compared with its tithing income. It is even more despicable that they don't even pay the little they claim. It is the poor faithful members who pick up the tab, on top of their tithing, generous fast offerings, missionary donations, perpetual education fund, temples etc. etc,
How clever they are - truthful they are not.
Well, I think it is far less than has been previously reported. I actually consider it is nil, zip, nada 0% of tithing.
Let's start with the generous viewpoint. On this (RFM) site there is an archived thread described as "Jan 2012 The Mormon Church's humanitarian aid now amounts to $6.73 per member per year - from an official Mormon publication. Humanitarian Aid"
Eric K provided this data for a 25 yer period
http://www.providentliving.org/welfare/pdf/WelfareFactSheet.pdf
Humanitarian assistance rendered (1985-2009)
Cash Donations $327.6 million
Value of Material Assistance $884.6 million
They are claiming to have given some $1.2 billion during a period when they received say $125 billion in tithes (at a steady $5 billion per annum). Only 1%
However, this is not true, the Church spent NONE of its tithing income on humanitarian aid if its "Gospel Principles" manual is to be believed.
This manual gives a breakdown of what tithing covers and what is funded by "other offerings"
Gospel Principles (2011)
Tithing
Tithing is used by the Church for many purposes. Some of these are to:
1. Build, maintain, and operate temples, meetinghouses, and other buildings.
2. Provide operating funds for stakes, wards, and other units of the Church. (These units use the funds to carry out the ecclesiastical programs of the Church, which include teaching the gospel and conducting social activities.)
3. Help the missionary program.
4. Educate young people in Church schools, seminaries, and institutes.
5. Print and distribute lesson materials.
6. Help in family history and temple work.
(N.B. No humanitarian aid included above)
Other Offerings
Fast Offerings. Church members fast each month by going without food and drink for two consecutive meals. They contribute at least the amount of money they would have spent for the meals. They may give as generously as they are able. This offering is called the fast offering. Bishops use these fast offerings to provide food, shelter, clothing, and medical care for the needy.
(N.B. No humanitarian aid included in fast offerings unless you take it as caring for the needy by the bishops. Even if that were true, the money doesn't come from tithing but additional offerings of the members through going without food.)
Other Donations.
Church members may donate to other efforts of the Church, such as missionary work, the Perpetual Education Fund, temple construction, and humanitarian aid.
At last, here it is in "Other Donations". Therefore the $1.2 billion claimed to be spent on humanitarian aid, over a 25 year period, came not from tithing but from additional donations by members. One can presumably, therefore, surmise that NIL came from the tithing funds.
One can, of course, be pernickity and say the administrative costs associated with these other donations and disbursements came out of tithing. If true, it would still be a very tiny amount indeed. Actually the Church "calls" humanitarian aid missionaries to administer these matters. Such missionaries serve at their own expense although the Church may pay for some office space, travel expenses and paper clips.
Bottom line, it is disgusting, as pointed out by Eric K, that the Church claims to spend so little on humanitarian aid compared with its tithing income. It is even more despicable that they don't even pay the little they claim. It is the poor faithful members who pick up the tab, on top of their tithing, generous fast offerings, missionary donations, perpetual education fund, temples etc. etc,
How clever they are - truthful they are not.
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,553124,553145#msg-553145
The greatest amount listed there is from material assistance. Much of that was probably donated via D.I. or produced through free labor on church property. Some of the brands are their own brands produced by TSCC. At the storehouse I have seen weird brands. I wouldn't be surprised if they were bought on clearance or for a cheap price. Also, TSCC has a foundation that collects donations. These can be from anyone thinking they are giving to a good cause, and tithing is not involved. I really doubt a lot of tithing goes towards the purchase of those material things. Remember when they have had special fasts for famine in Ethiopia or other disasters? They ask for special donations, which are small in comparison to the monthly tithing funds from members.
I wrote the above, and then found this article where they acknowledge much of the same:
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/58748/Fast-for-Ethiopia-accelerated-work.html
"With only a few major exceptions — fasts for Ethiopian hunger relief in 1985 and the Churchwide fast for Southeast Asia tsunami victims in 2005 — fast offering donations are generally used for assisting members of the Church with welfare needs, said Dennis Lifferth, managing director of Church Welfare Services. Humanitarian assistance, on the other hand, is for people of all faiths and is generally funded by humanitarian donations.
The 1985 fast marked the first time the Church collected large funds exclusively for humanitarian work.
But after that event, people across the globe continued to trust the Church with their humanitarian dollars. As a result, the First Presidency suggested in December 1991 that members wanting to specifically give to humanitarian work performed by the Church could designate it on the "other" line of their donation slip.
Five years later, in 1996, the slip was modified to include a specific line for humanitarian donations.
Today, in addition to the slip, members may provide support for humanitarian work by donating online, donating through LDS Philanthropies, by giving items to the Deseret Industries or by serving at some of the hundreds of established Church welfare facilities located around the world."
The greatest amount listed there is from material assistance. Much of that was probably donated via D.I. or produced through free labor on church property. Some of the brands are their own brands produced by TSCC. At the storehouse I have seen weird brands. I wouldn't be surprised if they were bought on clearance or for a cheap price. Also, TSCC has a foundation that collects donations. These can be from anyone thinking they are giving to a good cause, and tithing is not involved. I really doubt a lot of tithing goes towards the purchase of those material things. Remember when they have had special fasts for famine in Ethiopia or other disasters? They ask for special donations, which are small in comparison to the monthly tithing funds from members.
I wrote the above, and then found this article where they acknowledge much of the same:
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/58748/Fast-for-Ethiopia-accelerated-work.html
"With only a few major exceptions — fasts for Ethiopian hunger relief in 1985 and the Churchwide fast for Southeast Asia tsunami victims in 2005 — fast offering donations are generally used for assisting members of the Church with welfare needs, said Dennis Lifferth, managing director of Church Welfare Services. Humanitarian assistance, on the other hand, is for people of all faiths and is generally funded by humanitarian donations.
The 1985 fast marked the first time the Church collected large funds exclusively for humanitarian work.
But after that event, people across the globe continued to trust the Church with their humanitarian dollars. As a result, the First Presidency suggested in December 1991 that members wanting to specifically give to humanitarian work performed by the Church could designate it on the "other" line of their donation slip.
Five years later, in 1996, the slip was modified to include a specific line for humanitarian donations.
Today, in addition to the slip, members may provide support for humanitarian work by donating online, donating through LDS Philanthropies, by giving items to the Deseret Industries or by serving at some of the hundreds of established Church welfare facilities located around the world."
Maybe Annointed One (or perhaps a knowledgeable Canadian) can corroborate, but one of the things I found the most offensive was that hidden in the claims and totals about "charitable donations" were the service hours of members just doing their callings.
Rank and file clerks and choristers are added into the numbers to pump up the image of the cult. Disgusting.
Rank and file clerks and choristers are added into the numbers to pump up the image of the cult. Disgusting.
You are right rodolfo. They pad the numbers wherever they can.
Posts by atheist&happy and Cynthia also confirm this.
Posts by atheist&happy and Cynthia also confirm this.
I would agree with this assessment. Recently I have been looking at the churchs UK accounts for 2011 (the most recent available). Of all the tithing money spent, NONE appears to be spent on anything charitable. Only the money donated specifically for Fast Offering or Humanitarian aid goes somewhere charitable and that's untraceable as it goes back to HQ first. We only have their word that's where it goes.
Material assistance also comes from donations to DI that DI can't/doesn't sell. The value of these items is arbitraily set by the church. So the value of material assistance is a made up number too, just like most things mormon are made up.
It reminds me of INGSOC in 1984--Winston, the main character, knows that the numbers have nothing to do with reality (so productivity looks high, but doesn't reflect reality; 50 million shoes produced last quarter but half of the population doesn't have shoes...).
The Emperor really doesn't have any clothes.
The Emperor really doesn't have any clothes.
basic tithing math shows a lot of money disappearing
Just look at the total collected since 1985, somewhere north of 100 Billion $$
most analysts value the total churches assets somewhere around 30 billion
I had a friend once tell me I don't care how they spend my tithing. I said good cause they are flushing 2/3 rds of it down the crapper.
Just look at the total collected since 1985, somewhere north of 100 Billion $$
most analysts value the total churches assets somewhere around 30 billion
I had a friend once tell me I don't care how they spend my tithing. I said good cause they are flushing 2/3 rds of it down the crapper.
Nice observation. I hadn't thought of it this way before. Wow!!
Unless it's somewhere else on the site, the amount of humanitarian aid has been deleted from lds.org.
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/
Here is the 2009 welfare fact sheet. I archived it.
http://archive.org/download/LdsWelfareFactSheet2009/LDS_Church_2009_WelfareFactSheet.pdf
It validates the breakdown that the church used to put out. Once it circulated and was cause for criticism, they pulled it. I believe the 2010 year had the breakdown too, but I failed to nab it before it was gone. Every year there after did not break out the division of cash/services.
When I was a very young tbm at university, for more than five years I worked with bishops as financial clerk in a congregation. I know what the income was and what we spent helping the poor. The income to help ratio was about 15:1. The bulk of the income was sent to HQ coffers in Salt Lake City by wire transfer.
In mid 2012, Elder Holland, top LDS official, had this to say:
( http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/61847/BYU-Hawaii-Ground-broken-for-campus-expansion-project.html )
Holland: "There is no money in our church except what the members offer."
I believe Holland is keeping separate the corporate doings from the church when he speaks on the financial operations. So...all the money for church actions comes from the members, and the church spends about $50M a yr on Humanitarian aid, and it spends $3 billion on a mall in a few years (2008-2012), where are its priorities?
Tithing collected from $14,000,000 members, where say 2 million at best are temple going, full tithed, active US workers, puts the estimate at ($50,000/yr avg US salary X 10% X 2M members = ) $10 Billion per year in tithing collection.
Over 25 years, that would easily make up $60 Billion, if not considerably more. Out of that, in 25 years, they gave $1.3 billion to the poor (well, actual cash was $0.3B). That’s barely 2% of their interest to the poor. Isn't helping the poor one of the main missions of a charity & church? Clearly not.
How do normal, non-religious consumer-oriented corporations do in their giving?
Taking a look at these:
http://philanthropy.com/article/Interactive-Tracking-Big/128359/
http://philanthropy.com/article/Chart-Companies-That-in-2010/128358/
We can see that for-profit corporations give more than the LDS church. If you look at the net profit before taxes, some companies that earn 1/20th what the LDS church gets in tithing each year, and they pay MORE in donations that does the LDS church, which is supposed to be a charity in the first place.
I would do better to buy groceries at Target, Safeway or Smiths, donate the groceries to poor families in Provo and feel safe that more than 2% of the profits they earn from me are also going to the poor.
Until the LDS church provides us with more transparency on their financial operations, donations and expenditures, no one should justifiably be secure in giving to them.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2013 08:23AM by Jesus Smith.
http://archive.org/download/LdsWelfareFactSheet2009/LDS_Church_2009_WelfareFactSheet.pdf
It validates the breakdown that the church used to put out. Once it circulated and was cause for criticism, they pulled it. I believe the 2010 year had the breakdown too, but I failed to nab it before it was gone. Every year there after did not break out the division of cash/services.
When I was a very young tbm at university, for more than five years I worked with bishops as financial clerk in a congregation. I know what the income was and what we spent helping the poor. The income to help ratio was about 15:1. The bulk of the income was sent to HQ coffers in Salt Lake City by wire transfer.
In mid 2012, Elder Holland, top LDS official, had this to say:
( http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/61847/BYU-Hawaii-Ground-broken-for-campus-expansion-project.html )
Holland: "There is no money in our church except what the members offer."
I believe Holland is keeping separate the corporate doings from the church when he speaks on the financial operations. So...all the money for church actions comes from the members, and the church spends about $50M a yr on Humanitarian aid, and it spends $3 billion on a mall in a few years (2008-2012), where are its priorities?
Tithing collected from $14,000,000 members, where say 2 million at best are temple going, full tithed, active US workers, puts the estimate at ($50,000/yr avg US salary X 10% X 2M members = ) $10 Billion per year in tithing collection.
Over 25 years, that would easily make up $60 Billion, if not considerably more. Out of that, in 25 years, they gave $1.3 billion to the poor (well, actual cash was $0.3B). That’s barely 2% of their interest to the poor. Isn't helping the poor one of the main missions of a charity & church? Clearly not.
How do normal, non-religious consumer-oriented corporations do in their giving?
Taking a look at these:
http://philanthropy.com/article/Interactive-Tracking-Big/128359/
http://philanthropy.com/article/Chart-Companies-That-in-2010/128358/
We can see that for-profit corporations give more than the LDS church. If you look at the net profit before taxes, some companies that earn 1/20th what the LDS church gets in tithing each year, and they pay MORE in donations that does the LDS church, which is supposed to be a charity in the first place.
I would do better to buy groceries at Target, Safeway or Smiths, donate the groceries to poor families in Provo and feel safe that more than 2% of the profits they earn from me are also going to the poor.
Until the LDS church provides us with more transparency on their financial operations, donations and expenditures, no one should justifiably be secure in giving to them.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2013 08:23AM by Jesus Smith.