DiscussMormonism.com

Ward clerk wrote:The ward I'm in has a budget of $5,000 for 2023. The ward donated over $600,000 in tithes and offerings in 2022.

I guess that's how you build an enormous fund like ensign peak and the church have. This ward has 160 regular attendance of members in 2022. So about 30 bucks for each members activities, materials, everything...for an entire year. Each member gave on average between $3,500-$4,000. That's how you build an enormous fund, steal from your members. Keep 119/120ths of donations and let the members have 1/120th for all the programs and activities that the church asks/requires of them. What a bunch of highway robbery BS. I know all this because even though I am completely against the church and don't believe, my family is TBM and they have me as finance clerk so I can see everything related to the ward numbers. And they are shockingly awful as demonstrated above. Any other clerks out there with good number revelations?

Young Men's President wrote:I think I had a budget of about $600/year when I was YM President. Yet, I was was expected to get all the boys to Scout camp, High Adventure, Aaronic Priesthood camp, temple trips multiple times a year, weekly activities, and all the other nonsense we were expected to do. That budget would barely cover a couple boys for Scout camp. So, we were expected ask neighbors for more money to fund the scouting activities, and seek additional donations of time from ward members whenever possible. Creativity can only get you so far, but to be honest I don’t think more money would have done much to get more kids out. Too many are seeing the BS.

Anyway, it dawned on me one day that my tithing donations alone would double the entire ward budget. From then on every crappy activity was one more item on the shelf.

Another Ward Clerk wrote:Can confirm. I saw similar numbers when I was clerk. In fact, it was one of the major factors that really opened my eyes. If the church really wanted to grow, they would use that money to create programs and activities that are meaningful to the local community.

Yet Another Ward Clerk wrote:We had $500k in tithing and usually had about a 6k-8k budget. It was horrible seeing how little went back to the ward. Less than 2%! Yeah the building cost some hit three wards were in there so a total of probably 1.5million to 2 million dollars of income. Our YW and YM had to do fundraisers every year to get any money for summer activities. My tithing alone was enough to cover all of our wards expenses and I was a recent grad with a wife and young kid. Real church?! You can’t spend more on the members. (Sorry, end of rant for one of my bigger issues.)

Relief Society Secretary wrote:When I was Relief Society secretary, our ward had specific protocol the members had to meet before getting food or monetary help. They had to hand over bank statements and were told to cut costs such as car payments and getting rid of subscriptions like Netflix. Then they had to make a two week menu for the Relief Society pres to review, so they could get the food. And an Relief Society member had to go to the house and inspect cabinets to make sure they needed food and to make sure they got enough. They also had to attend church and we're enrolled in the self-reliance course the church offered. This is of course after they were encouraged to ask family members for help first. It was a big and sometimes embarrassing ordeal to get help. It varies by bishop, but that was our ward.

When I was on my mission, a bishop loaded up the entire bed of a truck with food from the bishop's storehouse for a nonmember who just lost their husband/father. They were grateful, but a bit overwhelmed. It was really awkward though because they were not interested in our message, but the bishop created a situation where they felt like they had to pretend they were interested. It felt really manipulative.