If a female tried to get into the priesthood session of GC...

[Uncle Ted]

Another great point. The money for that billboard could have been easily used to alleviate hunger for many, many families. It's a shame they wasted it on this

Yes, and I wonder if women were running the church if it would be any different...

According to an official church Welfare Services fact sheet, the church gave $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid in more than 178 countries and territories during the 25 years between 1985 and 2010. A fact sheet from the previous year indicates that less than one-third of the sum was monetary assistance, while the rest was in the form of “material assistance.” All in all, if one were to evenly distribute that $1.3 billion over a quarter-century, it would mean that the church gave $52 million annually. A study co-written by Cragun and recently published in Free Inquiry estimates that the Mormon Church donates only about 0.7 percent of its annual income to charity; the United Methodist Church gives about 29 percent.

http://www.businessweek.com/printer/...ons-make-money

Maybe a bigger mall?

[All-American]

Yes, and I wonder if women were running the church if it would be any different...


http://www.businessweek.com/printer/...ons-make-money

Maybe a bigger mall?

That number is suspiciously low. Are they counting money given out at the ward and stake levels?

[Uncle Ted]

That number is suspiciously low. Are they counting money given out at the ward and stake levels?

Here is the Welfare Services fact sheet I believe was referenced by the article...

https://www.lds.org/bc/content/share...fact-sheet.pdf

Yes, it looks like the figure should have been $1.4B instead of $1.3B.

[woot]

In previous conversations on the topic, it was pointed out that the church leadership is receiving the criticism, and therefore anything donated by church membership rather than the church itself isn't really relevant. I don't know how much of the "material assistance" comes from the church vs its membership, so that $52m number might even be an overestimate.

[All-American]

Here is the Welfare Services fact sheet I believe was referenced by the article...

https://www.lds.org/bc/content/share...fact-sheet.pdf

Yes, it looks like the figure should have been $1.4B instead of $1.3B.

Ah. That makes much more sense.

Any ideas what that figure includes and what, if anything, it excludes?

[Jeff Lebowski]

In previous conversations on the topic, it was pointed out that the church leadership is receiving the criticism, and therefore anything donated by church membership rather than the church itself isn't really relevant. I don't know how much of the "material assistance" comes from the church vs its membership, so that $52m number might even be an overestimate.

That's funny. I thought we concluded that it does not include money used by members via fast offerings, etc. The document certainly is not clear.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Numbers in the Business Week article debunked here:

http://timesandseasons.org/index.php...itable-giving/

[Clark Addison]

I am not about to say that the church is above reproach, after all, I am a faithful follower of Sooner's Twitter feed, but The "$50 million a year" number is so obviously wrong when looking at total charitable spending that I can only conclude that those that parrot it either lack critical thinking skills or are being intentionally dishonest.

There are about 14K wards in the United States. If you divide the $50 million by these wards, you get about $3,700 in annual charitable spend, or about $300 per month. Anyone who has spent time in an average ward knows that fast offering assistance is generally significantly more than that. And that is only in the US, and just includes fast offerings.

That number is solely out there for people who have an axe to grind, and don't mind being dishonest about it.

[All-American]

Numbers in the Business Week article debunked here:

http://timesandseasons.org/index.php...itable-giving/

Thanks, the dude. That is what I suspected.

I would entertain the argument that even that number should be higher, but at least we know what it really represents.

[Uncle Ted]

Numbers in the Business Week article debunked here:

http://timesandseasons.org/index.php...itable-giving/

The church’s extensive network of food storehouses, employment assistance, Deseret Industries thrift stores, are not included in the tally — because they are not seen as church humanitarian assistance, but rather as church welfare assistance. (And even the broader church welfare numbers do not seem to include the extensive educational subsidies the church provides to students at BYU and other church universities.)


Given this crucial misunderstanding of the fact sheet, Cragun’s factual claim is incorrect and in fact very misleading on an important point, and so is Winter’s use of Cragun’s claim.


This is not to say that there are no potentially valid critiques of church finances or of church charitable giving. I would love to see more transparency here. In addition, I think valid questions can be raised about how to weigh church welfare. In particular, one could certainly argue that church welfare is “not really charitable” if it distributed in ways that tend to limit it to certain subsets of people. There are also complicated questions about how to value the volunteer hours involved. And so a variety of nuanced claims and arguments could be made about the efficacy and ultimate societal benefit of church welfare programs. But Cragun’s claim does not engage at this level. Cragun simply accepts at face value (but misunderstands) the initial church statement about humanitarian aid. In doing so, he inadvertently makes a highly misleading factual claim. Winter’s uncritical reliance on Cragun’s erroneous fact claim then perpetuates the error.


I don’t want to overstate this conclusion, because I think Winters’ article is part of an important conversation, and that observers can certainly still make critiques of church financial practices. Such critiques, however, should be based on accurate statements of fact.

I am not sure this is that full of a debunking but the author raises a valid point... there is a good lack of transparency here.

[woot]

I am not about to say that the church is above reproach, after all, I am a faithful follower of Sooner's Twitter feed, but The "$50 million a year" number is so obviously wrong when looking at total charitable spending that I can only conclude that those that parrot it either lack critical thinking skills or are being intentionally dishonest.

There are about 14K wards in the United States. If you divide the $50 million by these wards, you get about $3,700 in annual charitable spend, or about $300 per month. Anyone who has spent time in an average ward knows that fast offering assistance is generally significantly more than that. And that is only in the US, and just includes fast offerings.

That number is solely out there for people who have an axe to grind, and don't mind being dishonest about it.

The point is that the church is not the source of those funds -- individual members are. If the idea is to measure the amount of discretionary spending that the church admin allocates toward charitable giving, then fast offerings aren't germane.

[Clark Addison]

The point is that the church is not the source of those funds -- individual members are. If the idea is to measure the amount of discretionary spending that the church admin allocates toward charitable giving, then fast offerings aren't germane.

Like Bruce McKonkie, I mean this in the most loving and affectionate way, but that's a bunch of bull, Woot, for several reasons. First, I have heard this figure quoted MANY times in many places (Reddit loves this one), and I have never heard anyone use the "discretionary" qualifier. The point is always to show how little the church spends on charity in total.

And I don't even know what you mean by "discretionary", anyway. You say that individual members are the source of these funds. How is that any different than tithing? Individual members are the source of those funds as well. Tithing and fast offerings are given using the exact same donation process, using the same form, often at the same time and on the same check. When received by the church, both are deposited into "church" accounts (if you are thinking that the difference is that tithing goes to SLC and some corporate account, while fast offerings stay local in the individual Ward account, that isn't true. They all go to the church's accounts). If fast offerings aren't discretionary, why is tithing? Church members give tithing knowing that it is earmarked for the physical operations of the church. If you can't count fast offerings because it is not discretionary, why can you count tithing?

I would be fine with this statement if it was put forward in this way: "Out of the money donated to run the church, The church only spends $50 million a year on charity. This does not include the $1 billion spent each year that has been specifically earmarked for charity". But of course no one will say that, for two reasons. Most importantly, the goal of the original statement is to make the church look bad, and this version doesn't do that. Second, and here is a valid criticism of the church, we don't know what that number is. It may be a billion, it may be $500 million. The church doesn't open its books and let us know.

[Moliere]

The point is that the church is not the source of those funds -- individual members are. If the idea is to measure the amount of discretionary spending that the church admin allocates toward charitable giving, then fast offerings aren't germane.

I'd argue that this is a weird distinction to make. The church is the reason those funds are donated. Without the church those funds are not donated and never used for charity. I'd even say that many millions of dollars of donated hours for charity related to fast offerings are also not counted by the church, which hours would be counted by any other charitable organization on their financial statements.

[ERCougar]

Say you had a very wealthy family going back 200 years, and this family's wealth was tied to a trust system that redistributed money in a way such that no descendant ever went hungry. Would you consider that redistribution of wealth "charitable giving"? Or more simply, if I give my cousin some money to help him out, does my grandfather's family get credit for charitable giving?

The author makes a valid point about uncounted volunteer hours, but to call wealth redistribution among members "charitable giving" is a stretch.

[Jeff Lebowski]

This is getting funny.