Humanitarian Aid, Organization And Our Church And Others

[Duncan]

I recently heard that no other Churches give out more humanitarian aid and no other organization, church, Government etc. is better organized then our Church in giving out said aid. Does anyone know if that is even true?

[altersteve]

There are Catholic, Islamic, and secular humanitarian organizations that the Church frequently partners with, so I know other groups are equally as charitable as the LDS Church is. LDS organization and government, however, from what I've seen at least, is unmatched.

[KevinG]

I know we work hand in hand with Catholic Charities at times because their distribution network is great and their overhead is slim.

I'm not comfortable saying any one is the best. Suffice it to say there are many good ones. Large or small humanitarian aid efforts are a great part of any religious group.

[why me]

There are Catholic, Islamic, and secular humanitarian organizations that the Church frequently partners with, so I know other groups are equally as charitable as the LDS Church is. LDS organization and government, however, from what I've seen at least, is unmatched.

And yet, when we hear some of the critics the lds church is not doing much. One reason for this is that the lds church does not make much ado about the aid that it is giving. This can lead to some confusion with exmormons who critique the lds church's humanitarian aid and believe the hype from other exmormons.

Edited October 28, 2011 by why me

[Ariarates]

I don't know about other churches but I found this analysis in Ostling & Ostling's "Mormon America" (just typing a few excerpts here, the authors do a pretty broad analysis, including fast offerings, which are often left out of the equation but constitute aid nonetheless):

"With its emphasis on self-reliance and meticulous attention to detail, there may be no charitable organization on earth to match the Mormon Church, pound for pound, volunteer for volunteer."

(...)

"All churches, of course, perform charity and mercy work, but it is difficult to compare those efforts with LDS humanitarian programs. In 1997 U.S. congregations of the similarly sized Evangelical Lutheran Church in America raised $11.8 million in cash donations for worldwide hunger. The same year it raised $3.64 million for domestic and international disaster response, for a one-year humanitarian cash total of $15.44 million, more than half the amount the LDS provided over fourteen years."

(...)

" Nevertheless, in their commodity production and welfare systems, the Latter-Day Saints have created and maintained a remarkably massive and efficient mechanism for meeting human needs of their own members. No other religious denomination has attempted to follow in their path."

I personally feel the church (as an institution) uses its humanitarian efforts primarily as a PR-tool. If you subscribe to the LDS Newsroom, e.g., you won´t get many feeds until a natural disaster (or general conference) strikes. Then a token, usually one-time effort is made (some clothes or food stuffs are shipped from inventory), which is then milked to the max with press releases like "we are going to help", "we have started helping", "we are helping", "we have helped", "people were glad we helped", "other media have noticed us helping" and so on.

Contrary to what you migh think, though, I have no particularly strong feelings about this. It is hard to put the church's humanitarian efforts in perspective because we don't know anything about the church's finances. In absolute numbers we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars which mean the world to those who receive hellp, but in relative terms this may constitute only 1 or 2 percent of the total annual church revenue. I doubt that it is much more but, like everybody else, I don't know for sure.

The question is: does a church need to be involved in humanitarian aid at all, beyond taking care of its own?

Edited October 28, 2011 by Ariarates