Last night I decided to do a comparison of the LDS church’s contribution to charity with Doctors Without Borders. I intended to illustrate the ridiculous gap between LDS inc and a real charity. I had no idea how wide the chasm would be but let me rehash a few of the numbers. In 2011 they spent 180 million on charity programs and support, in 2010 they spent 264 million. In the same years LDS inc spent 100 million on charitable causes. DWB in their annual report states that they spend about 15% of their budget on fundraising and administrative costs. While the LDS church refuses to publish an annual report we can extrapolate from various sources that the LDS church spends 99.4% on fund raising and administrative costs. (8 billion in tithing revenue, and 50 million contributed to charitable causes)

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/ar/MSF%202011%20Annual%20Report.pdf
http://exmormon.org/d6/drupal/Mormon-Church-and-Humanitarian-Aid
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money

While some may say this isn’t an apple to apple comparison it does highlight certain glaring issues. First and most importantly the LDS church is not a charitable organization. Second if they were they would be the worst run charity in the history of charities. Last, they don’t publish financial reports, something that would be useful if they were interested in clearing the issue up.

Taking this into consideration I thought it would be useful to compare LDS inc to a church and to a business to see how they did. I decided to use Catholic Charities USA as a comparison to LDS inc. CCU uses 15% of their budget on fund raising and administrative costs. They spend more on admin costs than DWB and a lot less on fund raising. I assume primarily since they have less need to fund raise since they have a built in contribution base. It does show that a church charity is likely to be overburdened in the administrative area.

http://www.bbb.org/charity-reviews/national/human-services/catholic-charities-usa-in-alexandria-va-1049/all

For a business I wasn't interested in slogging through a bunch of annual reports to get a percentage of revenue to charity donations so I will let Forbes do it for me. LDS inc is a sub par contributor to charity by any definition and I don’t see how they can’t be embarrassed by this.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/10/19/american-companies-that-give-back-the-most-2012/

What's funny is I grew up my whole life hearing how inefficient charities were, and why that meant we should give all our extra money to the cult and its "charities."