How the Mormons Make Money | BusinessWeek.com

[_lulu]

For instance, the LDS church's ward houses and temples have to be financially justified as a source of donations.

But every time a corporation opens a new branch office or retail outlet, the building becomes a consumer of assets and a financial obligation that has to be met through worldwide customer payments. The ongoing maintenance and upkeep, utilities and use of the building can only be achieved as long as customers continue to support the business.

[_Cylon]

/PR spin

Translation: most of what your donations go to and money is spent on is overhead and administrative costs, including our vast payroll which we did not mention. Actual charity work that helps human beings is a small percentage of where the Church's money goes. Of the charity work that "the Church" does do, most of it is members volunteering their time, not things that the organization does. The Church exists primarily to try getting other people to join it. But we'll make sure to have our cake and eat it too by releasing figures about how much we claim to spend on humanitarian aid, and releasing figures about how much we have spent on a high-end retail mall, and then complaining when people compare and contrast our own stated figures.

You are more skilled at church PR-ese translation than I am. I'll keep practicing!

[_brade]

I've been saving up the Welfare Services Fact Sheets from previous years. I think I'm only missing a few. I think it's time they get posted all together. I need to dig them up again, though, and hopefully somebody can fill in the years that I'm missing and can't seem to google find.

[_Drifting]

Published numbers related to our humanitarian efforts include only dollars spent directly on humanitarian service.

Wait? What? For years the church published numbers related to humanitarian efforts specifically included dollars spent directly on humanitarian service (called "Cash donations") and a value given in dollars on what the church called "Material assistance".

By the late 2000s the fact sheets no longer reported those two categories and instead combined them into one value. But, that one value did not suddenly come to represent nothing more than dollars spent. This is trivial to check because the first year the numbers were combined into one category essentially adds up to the combination of the previous years' two categories. The new value is clearly a combination of two values - actual dollars spent and an estimation of the value of other assistance given.

The point here is that the published numbers related to the church's humanitarian efforts very clearly do not include only dollars spent directly on humanitarian service.

The statements misleads people to believe that the current numbers published (by the church, remember) represent nothing more than cash and that there's this whole other unaccounted for value floating around that would make the numbers look better than they look. But the numbers currently published already account for that.

President Newsroom goofed.

Great catch!

[_Stormy Waters]

As anyone could have predicted, the focus is now on the cover.

"Sadly, the cover is a reflection of the bias and speculative nature of the article itself. It is narrow and incomplete, omitting, for instance, a good deal of information given on how church resources are used.

"The article misses the mark and the cover is obviously meant to be offensive to many, including millions of Latter-day Saints."

Quite clearly, the cover was a blessing for the LDS church. They can now play the victim card and avoid discussing the content of the article.

[_Stormy Waters]

From the PR statement

At Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, where the Church cans goods for its distribution warehouses, some procedures would be more efficient if automated. Instead, the Church has opted for more labor-intensive production lines that provide opportunities for people to give service and for welfare recipients to work for what they get. This is not the pattern of a commercial business, but it is the pattern for helping people to help themselves. The Church aim is to help individuals to overcome temporal barriers as they pursue spiritual values.

I don't understand this. Why not automate the process, and have the people do some other kind of service that can't be done by machines?

[_brade]

The Businessweek cover is in such poor taste it is difficult to even find the words to comment on it.

For the sake of Michael Purdy's sensitivity, I hope he never stumbles upon the internet. Ammiright?

[_The Dude]

From the PR statement

At Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, where the Church cans goods for its distribution warehouses, some procedures would be more efficient if automated. Instead, the Church has opted for more labor-intensive production lines that provide opportunities for people to give service and for welfare recipients to work for what they get. This is not the pattern of a commercial business, but it is the pattern for helping people to help themselves. The Church aim is to help individuals to overcome temporal barriers as they pursue spiritual values.

I don't understand this. Why not automate the process, and have the people do some other kind of service that can't be done by machines?

Because the Church and its service is a means to an end. The end is not to better the life of non-members, which could be better achieved by spending more on direct humanitarian efforts or automating the canning system as you suggest. The end is to keep members "busy", as with bone-headed temple work, so they feel good and stay active and keep paying tithing. Follow the money and you follow the Lord.

[_cwald]

Damnit. You a-holes over here make too much sense. And I say that with the utmost respect.

[_Drifting]

Whine Me made the point that City Creek was about create employment opportunities.
From Deseret News...

The 20 retailers along with the previously announced anchor tenants comprise about 30 percent of the available retail space at City Creek. When the project opens, it will bring about 2,000 jobs to the local economy

So $5 billion dollars to create 2,000 jobs (not taking into account the jobs lost when stores in the surrounding areas close down due to loss of business). That's....

...$2.5 million per retail (low paid) job.

Is that a good rate of return on the expenditure of the widows mite?
How many jobs could have been created for that amount if money if used elsewhere?