Church sued again over how it uses tithing contributions from members

[Calm]

39 minutes ago, Stormin' Mormon said:

Sorry, I don't know how to link to or quote from other threads

The three dots in the upper right hand of the post allow you to report, edit or share. Share puts up a box that links to that post directly…or used to.  For sometime it has been getting close to it, usually a few posts below for me, but on rare occasions above. That is annoying. 
 

The plus sign next to the quote option allows you to ‘save’ a post for later quoting and I believe it works for other threads as well as the original.

Edited November 16, 2023 by Calm

[Tacenda]

32 minutes ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Maybe this can help.

HEY @Teancum AND @Analytics: Please tell us a little about your thoughts regarding how the church should engage in more charitable works.

- To which charitable organizations should we donate?
- To which existing relief teams should we partner, (or increase partnership)?
- Every charity/relief org has financials.  They can be looked at in terms of % of each donated dollar taken by admin costs/salaries/operations/etc, and % of each donated dollar that actually reaches the target.  Do you have thoughts about, say, the church giving a billion dollars to a charitable organization that only spends perhaps 10% of it's income on it's target groups?

Speaking as a member of the peanut gallery, without hearing good answers from you both on such matters, whenever you suggest the church give 5%, you might as well be saying "Throw money at it".  Without some clear understanding about how you give a crap, I can't discern any substantial difference between the phrase, and what you are saying.

 

I know I'm not who this post is for, but if you don't mind me chiming in I think start with the members that donate.

1. Take care of the many starving children that are actually starving in the church. Maybe it's getting better.

2. Ease up on the senior missionaries' cost to serve missions. They aren't one lump sum, like the non senior missions are. Make them be the same amount, lower cost. 

3. Help with the homeless, I know they do many things. Maybe something super creative that no one has come up with yet. The church is incredible at doing things like this in organizing and planning and then putting into action. And their perpetual education plan is wonderful too. 

4. Donate to world hunger, I currently donate to World Food Program USA. It comes out of my bank account monthly. I do know the church donates often for world hunger. But maybe do more, since it can. 

The church does help everywhere, but like I've been a broken record on, it needs to do more with it's amount of wealth.

 

[Nofear]

55 minutes ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

To which existing relief teams should we partner, (or increase partnership)?

I'll help him out with a few options.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/collection/words-from-our-partners-latter-day-saint-charities?lang=eng

[Calm]

16 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Take care of the many starving children that are actually starving in the church. Maybe it's getting better.

This is anecdotal from quite a few years ago, so I can’t provide documentation, but even this task needs to be approached by studying the local economy and ensuring it doesn’t make things worse.  One small town where this was done in the past had such a sensitive balance that even going in and providing meals for the children of enough families in the town ended up destroying the local economy with the result that parents were out of jobs and even less able to provide their kids their needs.  I am not saying it is impossible, just that care needs to be done and research needs to happen first…hopefully something that wouldn’t take too long.  And perhaps a stopgap that provides some extra nutrition rather than replacement with better food could be used initially to help out while better solutions are provided.  It also needs to be done in a way that does not leave the family dependent on the Church in case supplies are interrupted, say by a pandemic….which means local supplies are best, though this may be very difficult in areas with poor food production, high corruption, etc.

[Calm]

31 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Ease up on the senior missionaries' cost to serve missions. They aren't one lump sum, like the non senior missions are. Make them be the same amount, lower cost. 

This seems like a relatively easy thing to do, though perhaps logistics are a problem?  Do senior missionaries have a choice of lodging, find their own or are they given it like the younger ones?  If the younger ones, rent is predictable.  Food needs of seniors can be dramatically different though and those who can prepare good quality meals on their own would be spending much less than those going out to eat, so that might be more difficult to coordinate.  Are senior missionaries allowed more leisure time and unlimited driving?  This might be something where restrictions get imposed to control costs if they aren’t already.

Needs of young men are pretty consistent and so costs can be easily calculated over time with a few anomalies absorbed in a cushion.  I don’t think they could be made the same amount and cover everything needed by seniors, but perhaps a subsidy tied to the local economy.  I wonder how much higher are senior costs than younger ones (need better quality rooms with better furniture, likely better quality of food consistently for example)

Edited November 16, 2023 by Calm

[smac97]

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

No it is not.  It is a straw man.  And now a lie. 

One of the nice thing about thread discussions such as this is that the reader can go back and review our conversation, what you have said, what I have said.  I think I have established that, regarding your 5% proposal, which AFAICS you have never qualified or conditioned the 5% proposal on any consideration of the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds.

"Just Throw Money At It!" is all you've got.  It's a facile and unreasonable position to take.

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

You insert this  constantly in your arguments.  It is something  neither of us have said.  You need to stop lying about it.

"Just Throw Money At It!" is a pithy restatement of your feckless 5% proposal.  It's a facile and unreasonable position to take.

You could, of course, rebut it by showing us where you have qualified or conditioned the 5% proposal on any consideration of the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds.

But at this point, it's pretty clear that you have not done this.  I know it.  You know it.  The readers of this thread know it.  So in the end, all you have an unadorned, unqualified declaration that the Church should should reflexively donate a percentage of its accumulated wealth, amounting to many billions of dollars, on an annualized basis, and it should do so with no regard for or consideration of the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds.

I think I now understand why you are refusing to address this.  Two reasons.  First, your 5% proposal really is as facile and unreasoned as it looks, which makes your advocacy of it look bad. 

Second, you can't qualify or condition or your 5% proposal because  as soon as you do, you are effectively conceding one of the points I have been making for quite a while, which is that responsible deployment of the Church's wealth in humanitarian efforts necessarily requires prudent and examination and "vetting" of projects, partners, and so on.  And as soon as you concede that, our positions only differ in degree. 

You are blithely and summarily throwing out silly declarations about how all the Church needs to do to successfully utilize many billions of dollars annually is to - in your words - "find the talent needed to accomplish such things in a proper and helpful way." 

How utterly uninformed and naive and simplistic this is.  That you can write such things and seriously mean them is, to me, quite surprising.  I think you have no idea as to the actual, boots-on-the-ground, in-real-life complexities and difficulties involved in administering the Church's humanitarian efforts on an international scale.

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

Quote

Me (responding to you earlier) : "Yes, we keep coming back to this.  The Church should reflexively donate a percentage of its accumulated wealth, amounting to many billions of dollars, on an annualized basis, and it should do so with no regard for or consideration of the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds."

Feel free to disprove my assessment in bold above.  It was based off my generalized recollection of your various and repeated references to the 5%-of-reserve-funds-per-year proposal, which I have characterized as "Just Throw Money At It!"   But I am certainly open to correction.  So where are you qualifying your 5% proposal on "consideration of the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds"? 

Chapter and verse, please.

No.  YOU SAY WE SAY THIS. When we never have. 

You really have said this.  You and Roger.  Over and over.  You have, AFAICS, never qualified or conditioned your 5% proposal.  

Teancum (summarizing Roger) : "Do 5% per year for humanitarian aid."

Also Teancum:

Quote

Your argument is really rather hollow and specious.  Essentially for you it is God's fault that the LDS leaders are continue to grow the wealth of the Church rather than say putting 5% of EPA funds towards relieving human suffering. 

Also Teancum (from January) :

Quote

Quote

Critics think that the Church ought to be distributing "more" of the funds generated from EPA's holdings.  How much "more" is seldom specified or explained.

How about 5% of ist assets per year?

Teancum (in response to my prior characterization) :

Quote

Quote

You have been advancing this "general rule of thumb" of "spend{ing} 5% of their principal on their philanthropic mission" for quite a while now.  I find it facile and unreasonable when you propose that it be deployed on the scale at which the Church and its finances operate....

As an example, let's compare the Church to Harvard University. Harvard University has about $72.7 Billion in financial assets, which might be about half of what the Church now has. Its total operating expenses are about $5.4 billion, which might be about a billion less than what the Church spends each year on its religious, educational, and philanthropic missions. 

In its 2022 financial report, Harvard University says "As a general rule, Harvard targets an annual endowment payout rate of 5.0 to 5.5% of market value."
...
Should the assets the Church has saved in Ensign Peak advisors be considered general reserves, or should they be considered an endowment? (If they are just "reserves", then a general rule of thumb is that they should be limited to about 1-2 years of expenses, e.g. they should be limited to about $10-15 billion. If they are endowment, then about 5% of the principal should be used to fund its mission on an annual basis.

And here (also Roger) :

Quote

To put this into perspective, a general rule of thumb is that on an annual basis, endowments should spend 5% of their principal on their philanthropic mission, and leave the remainder to grow with interest. To the extent investment returns average at least 5%, this level of giving will allow the endowment to last into perpetuity without another dime of new contributions.

And here (also Roger) :

Quote

I believe that EPA ought to be taxed as a private foundation. 

In short, the U.S. government expects foundations to use their assets to benefit society and it enforces this through section 4942 of the Internal Revenue Code, which requires private foundations to distribute 5% of the fair market value of their endowment each year for charitable purposes. 

And here (also Roger) :

Quote

What I would recommend they do is:

1. Come up with a plan to give away about 5% of the balance of their rainy day fund a year.
    
2. Comply with best practices of transparency so that the donating public tax payers (who are in fact subsidizing them) know what is going on and can make more informed decisions about donating and continuing tax-favored treatment.

And here (also Roger) :

Quote

It's wonderful that the Church donated $10 million to a charity. 

If they followed Harvard University's example and set the goal of giving away 5% of the principle in their endowment on an annual basis, they could give deserving causes $10 million a day, twice a day, every workday of the year, into perpetuity.

And here (also Roger) :

Quote

If a hedge-fund pretends it's a charity but doesn't do any charitable work, then it should be taxed as a hedge-fund, not a charity. If it wants to avoid taxes, just spend some of its money on something charitable. The law currently says 5%. Asking a "charity" with $100,000,000,000 in the bank and that makes $8,000,000,000 a year in income to spend a paltry $5,000,000,000 on doing some good in the world is a small ask in exchange for the tax-preferred status it somehow feels entitled to. 

And here (also Roger) :

Quote

The IRS doesn't want billionaires to dodge taxes by "donating" to private foundations that don't actually donate any money to charitable purposes. Because of that, there is a rule that says they must donate 5% of their principle to charity every year, otherwise it will be taxed on its investment income. 

If EPA doesn't want to donate 5% of its principal to charity purposes it doesn't have to, but it should be required to pay taxes on its income, just like any other hedge fund. 

And so on.

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

Your unmitigated persistence in attributing this to us is dishonest. 

Well, no.  Your stubborn refusal to concede what is by now a patently obvious point is problematic.

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

SO CFR to you that either of us have ever said or argued this. 

See above. 

• "Do 5% per year for humanitarian aid."
• "rather than say putting 5% of EPA funds..."
• "How about 5% of ist assets per year?"
• "then about 5% of the principal should be used to fund its mission on an annual basis"
• "a general rule of thumb is that on an annual basis, endowments should spend 5% of their principal on their philanthropic mission"
• "distribute 5% of the fair market value of their endowment each year for charitable purposes..."
• "a plan to give away about 5% of the balance of their rainy day fund a year."
• "set the goal of giving away 5% of the principle in their endowment on an annual basis..."
• "The law currently says 5%."
• "there is a rule that says they must donate 5% of their principle to charity every year..."
• "If EPA doesn't want to donate 5% of its principal to charity..."

You and Roger have, AFAICS, never qualified or conditioned your 5% proposal.  

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

In fact I have said the opposite of this.

Then quit being coy and provide some links.

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

I have argued that the church could set up a group of smart people to deploy its potentially larger humanitarian aid in a responsible and helpful way and in a way where it could have the most impact.

This is the functional equivalent of some politician saying "We should abolish the IRS and income tax!  We can do this by setting up a group of smart people to, um, figure it out!  And we can do this in a responsible and helpful way and in a way where it could have the most impact!"

I am reminded of Vizzini in The Princess Bride as the boat he, Inigo, Fezzik and Buttercup are in is being pursued by the Man in Black in another boat:

Quote

INIGO: Look! He's right on top of us. I wonder if he is using the same wind we are using.
VIZZINI: Whoever he is, he's too late -- (pointing ahead of them) -- see?  The Cliffs of Insanity!
(In a wild race for the Cliffs and the Man In Black is closing faster than ever, but not fast enough, the lead was too great to overcome, and as Inigo sails with great precision straight at the Cliffs.)
Vizzini: Hurry up!  Move ... the thing!  And ... that other thing!

Your blithe and absurdly simplistic proposal is that the Church should reflexively and automatically donate a set percentage of its reserves - 5% - every year, amounting to many billions of dollars, and that it should do this by "set{ting} up a group of smart people" and "find{ing} the talent needed to accomplish such things in a proper and helpful way."  This is the functional equivalent of "Move ... the thing!  And ... that other thing!"

You have made an extraordinary and bombastic proposal, but you have nothing substantive or meaningful to say about how to implement it.  Just vague and airy references to "set up a group of smart people" and "find the talent needed to accomplish such things in a proper and helpful way."

However, i will nevertheless tweak my restatement of your position.  For you, it's "Just Throw Money At It!  Set up a group of smart people!  Find the talent needed to accomplish such things!  Do all this in a proper and helpful way!  Do . . . the thing!  And . . . that other thing!  You just don't care about human suffering!"

Yes, I am ridiculing your proposal, because what you have proposed, and how you have proposed it, is ridiculous.  Unserious.  Feckless.  Facile.  Unreasoned.

Moreover, your proposal presupposes that the Church is not trying to meaningfully utilize its wealth to alleviate human suffering, and that there are no actual complexities and difficulties involved in administering the Church's humanitarian efforts on an international scale. .  So your commentary is not only unreasoned and absurd, it's also mean-spirited and ignorant.

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

You are the one who thinks the church leaders and staff would be a bunch of imbeciles and unable to figure this out.

Yes, yes.

"Do . . . the thing!  And . . . that other thing!"

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

Good lord.  None of these demonstrate what that we have said what you are attempting to put in our mouths.  Arguing working towards using 5% of whatever the EPA fund is annually, like most large endowment funds to, is NOT arguing to just throw money at it.

Huh?  Where's this "working towards" stuff?  Where have you said that?

Just how many times do I need to quote this February 14, 2020 article (previously cited and quoted here, here, here, here, here)?

Quote

“The people who say we’re not doing our part, that is just not true,” Bishop Waddell said. “We’re talking close to $1 billion in that welfare/humanitarian area on an annual basis. Yes, we are using our resources to bless the poor and the needy as well as all of the other responsibilities we have as a church.”

The figure includes all humanitarian and welfare expenditures, including fast offering aid.

The budget for humanitarian work “has gone up dramatically,” Bishop Waddell said.

In fact, Bishop Caussé added, humanitarian expenditures have doubled in the past five years.

“And we believe they are going to increase fast,” he said.

• "We’re talking close to $1 billion in that welfare/humanitarian area on an annual basis."
• "The budget for humanitarian work 'has gone up dramatically.'"
• "{H}manitarian expenditures have doubled in the past five years."
• "And we believe they are going to increase fast."

This stuff came out nearly three four years ago, and yet here you are, in November 2023, speaking as if the Church is not "working towards" increasing its humanitarian efforts and expenditures.

Gadzooks, man.

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

It is arguing this is a reasonable sum to work towards and then doing it in a responsible way.  It is dishonest of you to take the 5% comments and extrapolate it into your straw man.  You need  to stop  it.

I hope someday you can view the Church through a less hostile and jaundiced lens.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited November 16, 2023 by smac97

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Maybe this can help.

HEY @Teancum AND @Analytics: Please tell us a little about your thoughts regarding how the church should engage in more charitable works.

- To which charitable organizations should we donate?
- To which existing relief teams should we partner, (or increase partnership)?
- Every charity/relief org has financials.  They can be looked at in terms of % of each donated dollar taken by admin costs/salaries/operations/etc, and % of each donated dollar that actually reaches the target.  Do you have thoughts about, say, the church giving a billion dollars to a charitable organization that only spends perhaps 10% of it's income on it's target groups?

Speaking as a member of the peanut gallery, without hearing good answers from you both on such matters, whenever you suggest the church give 5%, you might as well be saying "Throw money at it".  Without some clear understanding about how you give a crap, I can't discern any substantial difference between the phrase, and what you are saying.

 

Respectfully, this problem didn’t arise over night. The church has had the fund for 2 decades? Start small. If an organization doesn’t exist that will spend the money to your standards build one. You want to give money to an organization that spends half its income accumulating wealth? That’s fine. But how about some transparency for the rest of us. The last fast offering I gave the church was right before this fund was leaked to the press. I want my donations to go to serve the needs of the living. 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

18 minutes ago, smac97 said:

and it should do so with no regard for or consideration of the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds.

You are one of a kind SMAC! 😂

[SeekingUnderstanding]

If the church is not capable of spending its hoard of money responsibly, it has no business having it in the first place. My two cents. It’s hilarious to me to see the apologetics at work here. Spend 5%!? Impossible to do responsibly. How dare you suggest it! You want the church to spend irresponsibly. 
 

Also the church needs all this money for a future unspecified purpose. And when they need it they will magically be able to spend it without waste? If so, why couldn’t they now?

[bluebell]

19 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Respectfully, this problem didn’t arise over night. The church has had the fund for 2 decades? Start small. If an organization doesn’t exist that will spend the money to your standards build one. You want to give money to an organization that spends half its income accumulating wealth? That’s fine. But how about some transparency for the rest of us. The last fast offering I gave the church was right before this fund was leaked to the press. I want my donations to go to serve the needs of the living. 

For the bold, do we have a reference for this 50% figure?

[smac97]

15 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Quote

and it should do so with no regard for or consideration of the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds.

You are one of a kind SMAC! 😂

Okay.  So the Church should use its wealth with regard and consideration for the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds.  It looks like we are in agreement on that.

But then . . . the Church is already doing this, and yet Roger and Teancum are proposing an alternative metric, namely, that the Church should spend 5% of its reserve funds.  They are proposing that the Church base its humanitarian expenditures not on "the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds," but on a fixed percentage of its reserves on an annual basis.

Do you see any actual or potential tension between these two items?  What if the Church is encountering the sorts of practical and logistical limitations on humanitarian giving that other "mega-wealthy" donors are facing?  What if there is more money available for humanitarian efforts than there are competent and effective programs and organizations to which this money can be responsibly distributed?

Teancum has nothing but vague allusions to "set{ting} up a group of smart people" and "find{ing} the talent needed to accomplish such things in a proper and helpful way."  Do you have anything more substantive and meaningful to contribute?  Or is more armchair quarterbacking and faultfinding all you've got?

Thanks,

-Smac

[SeekingUnderstanding]

9 minutes ago, bluebell said:

For the bold, do we have a reference for this 50% figure?

The whistle blower report. Takes into account earnings on investment which is all put back into growing the fund. If you have better numbers I’m all ears. 

[smac97]

32 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

If the church is not capable of spending its hoard of money responsibly, it has no business having it in the first place.

How very totalitarian of you.

32 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

My two cents.

Yes, your commentary is worth about that.  

32 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

It’s hilarious to me to see the apologetics at work here. Spend 5%!? Impossible to do responsibly. How dare you suggest it! You want the church to spend irresponsibly. 

All we are seeing is a bunch of armchair quarterbacks, anonymously and conveniently ensconced at their laptops, tossing out absurdly simplistic things like we've seen in this thread (5%!  Many billions!  Every year!  Just move . . . the thing!  And . . . that other thing!), with no regard for the massive logistical challenges involved except for vague and airy declarations about "set{ting} up a group of smart people" and "find{ing} the talent needed to accomplish such things in a proper and helpful way."

We are also seeing a persistent and determined refusal to acknowledge this February 14, 2020 article (previously cited and quoted here, here, here, here, here) :

Quote

“The people who say we’re not doing our part, that is just not true,” Bishop Waddell said. “We’re talking close to $1 billion in that welfare/humanitarian area on an annual basis. Yes, we are using our resources to bless the poor and the needy as well as all of the other responsibilities we have as a church.”

The figure includes all humanitarian and welfare expenditures, including fast offering aid.

The budget for humanitarian work “has gone up dramatically,” Bishop Waddell said.

In fact, Bishop Caussé added, humanitarian expenditures have doubled in the past five years.

“And we believe they are going to increase fast,” he said.

 

• "We’re talking close to $1 billion in that welfare/humanitarian area on an annual basis."
• "The budget for humanitarian work 'has gone up dramatically.'"
• "{H}manitarian expenditures have doubled in the past five years."
• "And we believe they are going to increase fast."

This came out nearly four years ago, and to my recollection, Teancum and Roger have never substantively addressed this.  Nor have you. 

Threads like this make me want to support and help the Church even more.  When its most determined and hostile critics are reduced to such unseriousness, I think the Church is on the right track.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited November 16, 2023 by smac97

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 minute ago, smac97 said:

They are proposing that the Church base its humanitarian expenditures not on "the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds," but on a fixed percentage of its reserves on an annual basis.

Do you see any actual or potential tension between these two items? 

Long term tension? No. No tension at all. In the short term ramping up spending? Sure. But if the church had been doing all along? No problem. 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

2 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Yes, your commentary is worth about that.  

29 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

It’s hilarious to me to see the apologetics at work here. Spend 5%!? Impossible to do responsibly. How dare you suggest it! You want the church to spend irresponsibly. 

All we are seeing is a bunch of armchair quarterbacks, anonymously and conveniently ensconced at their laptops, tossing out absurdly simplistic things like we've seen in this thread

If the church practiced any kind of informed consent you wouldn’t see threads like this. You see these threads because the church did everything possible including lying on government forms to keep people in the dark. 

[bluebell]

34 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

The whistle blower report. Takes into account earnings on investment which is all put back into growing the fund. If you have better numbers I’m all ears. 

I don't have numbers.  I see that Analytics stated in the past the church spent 90% of its money on running itself but I don't know where his numbers came from either.  So the whistleblower report actually says that 50% of the church's income goes back into investing?  Or was it 50% of the earnings from investing went back in?

[Tacenda]

@bluebell and others, here's a widow's mite report that you need to click for each slide that will probably answer a lot. 

https://widowsmitereport.wordpress.com/caring-2022/

[SeekingUnderstanding]

8 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I don't have numbers.  I see that Analytics stated in the past the church spent 90% of its money on running itself but I don't know where his numbers came from either.  So the whistleblower report actually says that 50% of the church's income goes back into investing?  Or was it 50% of the earnings from investing went back in?

According to the report, the church never dipped into the fund except for expenditures on the city creek mall and bailing out beneficial life (speaking from memory). So from the report essentially 100 percent of EPA’s earnings (or the Chruch’s earnings on investment) went back into the fund. Additionally the church (according to the report) invested an additional billion from church tithes - over 10 percent of tithing revenue in EPA.   So over 10 percent of new tithing revenue goes in the fund. 100 percent of earned investment income goes into the fund. All per the now dated report. And all quoted from memory so apologies if I have some fine detail wrong, but order of magnitude this is correct. 

Edited November 16, 2023 by SeekingUnderstanding

[smac97]

9 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

If the church practiced any kind of informed consent you wouldn’t see threads like this.

Yes, we would.  You and yours are implacable.  Nothing the Church does will ever be good enough.  You just shift the goalposts and demand more, and more after that, ad infinitum.

The Church has been increasingly forthcoming in giving notice of its humanitarian efforts, yet you and yours won't budge an inch or give the Church a lick of credit for its efforts.

9 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

You see these threads because the church did everything possible including lying on government forms to keep people in the dark. 

Yawn.

Daniel Peterson has an ongoing feature on his blog, ironically titled the "Christopher Hitchens Memorial 'How Religion Poisons Everything' Files," in which he periodically posts links to things that the Church is doing around the world, very often including humanitarian efforts.  It's quite a pleasure to review these dozens, even hundreds, of published news items about the good work the Church is doing.  And these are just the news items DCP has found, and I think the Church is doing a lot of things that do not get written up and published.

We see threads like this one because the critics of the Church are so bent on characterizing it in the worst ways possible that they care incapable of giving it any credit when due, and even going so far as to blithely characterize the Church in ways like this: "It just is plainly apparent that relieving human suffering is pretty low on its list."

Our resident crew of anonymous armchair quarterbacks will do their thing, but I'm quite happy to see the Church working hard to improve the lives of people around the world.  I am grateful to it.

Thanks,

-Smac

[SeekingUnderstanding]

Just now, smac97 said:

You and yours are implacable.  Nothing the Church does will ever be good enough.  You just shift the goalposts and demand more, and more after that, ad infinitum.

lol. You are nothing if not predictable. Have a great day living in your particular flavor of fantasy land! 😂

[Calm]

52 minutes ago, smac97 said:

But then . . . the Church is already doing this, and yet Roger and Teancum are proposing an alternative metric, namely, that the Church should spend 5% of its reserve funds.  They are proposing that the Church base its humanitarian expenditures not on "the actual efficacy of such disbursements, or the competency and integrity of the recipients of such funds," but on a fixed percentage of its reserves on an annual basis.

It is not one or the other thing though.  One can have a target of spending 5% while finding ways to do so responsibly. 

[Calm]

3 minutes ago, smac97 said:

es, we would.  You and yours are implacable. 

I think you are mindreading and into the future even.  You won’t deal with what if questions yourself for what you would do, why are you answering them for others?

 And seeking has said plenty of positives in the past.

I don’t like it when nonmembers and critics stereotype members and I assume you don’t either…

I think you are doing it here to those involved in the thread.  Seeking, Teancum, and Analytics are very different people.  Assuming they would respond the same in complicated situations (which large amounts of charitable giving is) is assuming too much imo.

[bluebell]

9 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

According to the report, the church never dipped into the fund except for expenditures on the city creek mall and bailing out beneficial life (speaking from memory). So from the report essentially 100 percent of EPA’s earnings (or the Chruch’s earnings on investment) went back into the fund. Additionally the church (according to the report) invested an additional billion from church tithes - over 10 percent of tithing revenue in EPA.   So over 10 percent of new tithing revenue goes in the fund. 100 percent of earned investment income goes into the fund. All per the now dated report. And all quoted from memory so apologies if I have some fine detail wrong, but order of magnitude this is correct. 

Ok, that makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying.  And maybe that's where Analytics got the 90% of its income is used to support itself figure.  We reinvest 100% of our investment earnings and about 1% of our income as well (my husband is hoping to up that eventually but who knows) so that doesn't seem scandalous to me.

But I get people who think it's immoral for the church to do to not donate anymore money to it.  That position isn't nefarious either.  

Did the report mention what happens to the humanitarian donations?  Neither one of those would be covered in tithing or investment revenue.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 minute ago, bluebell said:

Ok, that makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying.  And maybe that's where Analytics got the 90% of its income is used to support itself figure.  We reinvest 100% of our investment earnings and about 1% of our income as well (my husband is hoping to up that eventually but who knows) so that doesn't seem scandalous to me.

But I get people who think it's immoral for the church to do to not donate anymore money to it.  That position isn't nefarious either.  

Did the report mention what happens to the humanitarian donations?  Neither one of those would be covered in tithing or investment revenue.

Not per my recollection. I would assume that they are used for the purpose stated on the donation slip. Same with fast offerings. It’s all just guess work though 🤷‍♂️

[bluebell]

Just now, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Not per my recollection. I would assume that they are used for the purpose stated on the donation slip. Same with fast offerings. It’s all just guess work though 🤷‍♂️

So likely 100% of those kinds of donations are used according to purpose probably.

For those who no longer donate to the church because of the whistleblower report, has it been difficult to find other places to donate to that claim 100% of it goes to helping?  I've never tried to look into that but I assume that there are other organizations than just the church that do something similar.  I've looked into some of the well known ones but wasn't impressed with their percentages.  I'd love to know of other organizations that I could also donate to that does as good as the church does on that front.