Church's 2023 Expenditures in Philanthropic/Humanitarian Relief

[smac97]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

You are being fundamentally unserious.

Says the guy who's essentially channeling Cartman.  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

There are two distinct issues you insist on conflating. The first issue is whether or not it is wise for endowments to have guidelines that balance spending and saving (i.e. "the 5% rule"). I've provided about a dozen references to superlatively respected endowments (e.g. Harvard University) and academic papers who use some version of the 5% rule.

Right.  Harvard spends $2.2 billion of its endowment on . . . Harvard.  

If you have data about how much Harvard spends on humanitarian initiatives, go ahead and share it.  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

If you insist these organizations and research papers are guilty of being utterly uninformed, absurdly simplistic, ridiculous, and unreasoned for having these guidelines, that is your prerogative.

I think your proposal that the Church should use a fixed percentage as a benchmark for international humanitarian expenditures is uninformed, absurdly simplistic, ridiculous, and unreasoned.  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

The second issue is whether I think funds ought to be allocated in an effective manner and whether I think doing so is easy. I think my position is that allocating resources effectively is very difficult. Nevertheless, resources ought to be allocated in an effective manner. The Church should make sure that it only donates money to charities where the money will be effectively put to use to make the world a better place. As far as I know, the Church does in fact do this and should be commended for that.

Oh, brother.  You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth.  The metric you use to fault the Church is that it does not use the 5% thing as a benchmark for humanitarian efforts.  But here you acknowledge that "allocating resources effectively is very difficult."

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

In contrast, you think my position is that I don't care about whether or not the money is used "efficiently and effectively contributing to the alleviation of human suffering." 

As long as you keep popping off about the 5% thing without any sort of explanation as to how the Church could do that and allocate resources effectively, you are being fundamentally unserious.  Just another armchair quarterback.

Teancum just airily refers to "smart" people who could do this.  That's it.  And I don't think you have even gone that far.

Armchair quarterbacking is the easiest thing in the world to do.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

It's odd that a Church that doesn't think money is a very effective mechanism for solving the world's problems wants to hoard so much of it.

It's odd that you say nonsense like this and then turn around and take exception to "Just Throw Money At It!" 

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Regardless, it looks like you agree with me that money should be donated to well-vetted organizations and used in effective ways, right?

Yes.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

If an organization uses the vast majority of its resources to increase the size of its for-profit business empire rather than doing good in the world, it wouldn't make sense to donate to such an organization, right?

"Just Throw Money At It!"  Over and over.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

In any event, the Church can do whatever it wants with its money. But if it is going to use most of its annual income in the way a hedge fund does instead of the way a church or a charity does, then it ought to be taxed like a hedge fund and not like a Church.

The Church is not enriching investors or its leaders.  The "hedge fund" analogy is not apt. 

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So just so I have this straight, if your church were to announce at general conference that they are slowly ramping up, with a target to hit 5% in 5 years, you would call that "feckless," "facile," "unreasonable," "utterly uninformed,", "naive," "absurdly simplistic," "blithe," " ridiculous," "unserious," and "unreasoned." Do I have that right?

No.

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

What if they said 3 or 4%? What do you have against setting a goal for how much of your budget you want to spend?

I think faultfinders and armchair quarterbacks aren't really well-situated to speak intelligently and competently about such matters.

Do I get to dictate to you what your humanitarian budget/goal is?  And do I get to publicly berate you if you do not comply with my expectations?

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

6 hours ago, Teancum said:

It is nice to see that your passive aggressive, now approaching just aggressive and hostile approach, is not reserved for critics.  But your ire is also directed at fellow believers who disagree with your viewpoint.

Asking questions about the particulars of the proposals being bandied about is not "aggressive."  If you are going to advance a proposal, then you should be prepared to explain it.  That you don't, that you endlessly dodge and deflect, rather suggests that you haven't given meaningful effort to examining the issues relevant here.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Quote

The EPA has been around since 1997.  It's existence is not a secret.  Its activities are not secret. 

Only because of whistleblowers and government action. Otherwise they’d still be very hidden. 

The Brethren have made public statements about the Church's investment strategy for a few decades now.

Thanks,

-Smac

[ZealouslyStriving]

Seeing the writings of our resident ex-Mo crowd, this Brigham quote is quite prophetic:

"As soon as you are overcome by the spirit of the world, you forget every good deed and kindness that has been extended to you, and you only remember the transpiring and infliction of what you deemed to be evil. You imagine a thousand things to be evil that would have resulted in good, had you done right. Can you believe that? “O, yes.” Those who have apostatized and left, cannot recollect a kindness that I have done them, but I can say to the praise of a few Gentiles, who have passed through here, they have recollected the kindnesses done to them by this people. Almost universally, after having received the greatest kindnesses they ever received, apostates and some Gentiles after they leave these valleys, vividly remember and proclaim, from Dan to Beersheba, Judg. 20:1 every fancied injury."

[Analytics]

36 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Even if the Church did up it to 5%, they wouldn't be satisfied. They would say, "Why not 10% like all the members are forced to pay?"

Why do you think that? The Church does lots of things right, and I consistently give it credit where credit is due. For example, earlier on this thread I said, "The Church should make sure that it only donates money to charities where the money will be effectively put to use to make the world a better place. As far as I know, the Church does in fact do this and should be commended for that."

I've done quite a bit of research on the general concept I'm calling "the 5% rule", and I also have significant amount of professional expertise in capital allocation in the real world. My position here is principle based. The assertion that this is all just arbitrary and I'd criticize the Church no matter what it did is a lazy way to avoid dealing with the actual arguments I've made. 

For your reference, here is what I posted on this a few months ago:

Quote

But as some background on how this came up, the Church originally described this money as a "reserve" or a "rainy day fund". The amount of reserves that is appropriate for any given church or charity depends on the specific circumstances, but general guidelines say, “A commonly used reserve goal is three to six months’ expenses. At the high end, reserves should not exceed the amount of two years’ budget.“ This implies the Church’s reserves should be between about $2 billion and $15 billion.

On December 20, 2019, BYU Professor Aaron Miller said the fund should be thought of as an endowment and not reserves in the traditional sense. He argued, “If the whistleblower numbers are correct, the Church of Jesus Christ is maintaining an endowment equal to about 16 times its annual budget, a ratio that is within typical practices for endowed 501(c)(3)s.”  

If the money is to be thought of as an endowment, then clearly the 3-month to 2-year rule doesn't apply (although some people do in fact argue "How big should your orginzation's endowment be? It's simple. It should be two times the amount of your annual budget. If your annual budget is $2 million dollars, your endowment should be $4 million). So putting aside the issue of how big the endowment should be, we can address the question of how much endowments should distribute.

The 5% Rule

Here are some sources that address that question.

Investopia says "Some endowment funds have guidelines stating how much of each year's investment income can be spent. For many universities, this amount is approximately 5% of the endowment's total asset value." 

BYU Professor Aaron Miller says in Meridian Magazine  "Many private foundations annually distribute the minimum 5% of their total assets, making endowments equal to 20 times an annual budget very common."

Of course sophisticated financial people like to adjust the rules to fit their specific circumstances, and some examples of organizations that distribute something other than 5% include:

University of Colorado: "On July 1 each year, 4 percent of the endowment’s fair market value as of the prior December 31 is distributed for spending in support that scholarship program."

Harvard: "As a general rule, Harvard targets an annual endowment payout rate of 5.0 to 5.5% of market value." 

Cal Poly Pomona: The Absolute Objective of the Endowment Fund is to seek an average total annual return of 4.0% plus the percentage change in the greater Los Angeles area CPI.  

Pensions & Investments magazine has a really good article on endowment payouts. Mark Dixon, the partner leading institutional investment consulting at Plante Moran Financial Advisors says: "For decades, most endowments and foundations have lived by the 5% payout rule, safe in knowing that such prudent spending safeguarded their financial health. However, with markets changing, many endowments find adhering to a government rule that demands how much of a portfolio must be spent annually to maintain tax-exempt status no longer makes sense.

"The 5% payout guideline was instituted in 1981 by the IRS. While it applies only to private foundations, it was broadly adopted by most non-profit organizations as a sensible baseline for spending. Now, it is the most widely used spending percentage by institutional investors today, setting the return they must exceed annually to ensure the endowment grows.

"Employing a 5% spending policy means an organization must achieve a return of 5% plus the rate of inflation to preserve the portfolio's purchasing power and support the organization in perpetuity. Over much of the past 90 years, this has not typically been an issue."

The investment firm Manning & Napier wrote a white paper about this. They say nonprofits should craft "a carefully defined spending rule" to help endowments and foundations "meet their goals of balancing stability of returns with their need for long-term capital growth."  They list several possible spending rules and try to sell the value of more complicated ones because after all, they are consultants trying to be sophisticated. But one of the rules they suggest is the "simple market value approach" which they describe as, "the idea is to merely spend a pre-specified percentage of the previous year-end market value (e.g., 5% of market value)." More sophisticated ones include the "Yale Rule" which says, "Spending for a given year is generally composed of two parts: 1) a moving market value component, and 2) an inflation-adjusted component."

A widely cited working paper by Sandeep Dahiya of Georgetown University and David Yermack of New York University did a comprehensive study of 35,755 endowments.  They say, "For the largest endowments, those with asset values above $100 million, distributions occur almost every year, with mean and median distribution rates near 4.5%, which appears to have become a heuristic that enjoys wide acceptance in the non-profit sector without much theoretical justification."

Finally, why 5% as the mean all these numbers hover around? Is that really realistic in the long-term? Dave Ramsey used to talk about how a decent mutual fund could be expected to give you 11% over the long run, so why not use that? Or why use something as high as 5%, given that bond rates were lower than that for a few years until recently. In his seminal book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty says "For the sake of concreteness, let us note, too, that the average rate of return on land in rural societies is typically on the order of 4–5 percent. In the novels of Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac, the fact that land (like government bonds) yields roughly 5 percent of the amount of capital invested (or, equivalently, that the value of capital corresponds to roughly twenty years of annual rent) is so taken for granted that it often goes unmentioned. Contemporary readers were well aware that it took capital on the order of 1 million francs to produce an annual rent of 50,000 francs. For nineteenth-century novelists and their readers, the relation between capital and annual rent was self-evident, and the two measuring scales were used interchangeably, as if rent and capital were synonymous, or perfect equivalents in two different languages." Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 53-54). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Conclusion 

As I hope you can tell, I've spent a few hours researching this. I'll go on record as saying that I'd find any spending rule that is broadly in harmony with any of these rules to be perfectly commendable by the Church. I've suggested the simple "5% payout guideline" because of its simplicity and coherence. 

However, in all of these readings, there were a few of things I couldn't find:

1. I couldn't find anything that said anything remotely like Hinckley's "basic and fixed" principle that "a fixed percentage of the income will be set aside to build reserves against what might be called a possible rainy day."
2. I couldn't find anything that explicitly said that effective deploying money for the endowment's objectives is "quite difficult" and therefore spending rules shouldn't exist or should be full of qualifications about how the rule could be ignored if spending according to the rule turned out to be challenging.
3. I couldn't find anything that said the "5% spending policy" was "feckless," "facile," "unreasonable," "utterly uninformed,", "naive," "absurdly simplistic," "blithe," " ridiculous," "unserious," and "unreasoned."
4. I couldn't find anything that said the "5% spending policy" was something invented out of thin air by @Teancum and me.

Now it's possible that the 5% spending policy really is feckless, facile, unreasonable, utterly uninformed, naive, absurdly simplistic, blithe, ridiculous, unserious and unreasoned. We can argue about that, but I hope after this post the reader will see that the burden of proof is now on @smac97.

But what should now be settled is that this rule isn't my rule. Neither is it Teancum's. The guideline was instituted by the IRS in 1981, and "is a heuristic that enjoys wide acceptance in the non-profit sector."

 

[rodheadlee]

On 3/22/2024 at 5:06 PM, smac97 said:

Good points, these. 

I have repeatedly pointed to California's feckless "Just Throw Money At It!" approach to homelessness as a cautionary tale for the Church.  California has created perverse incentives for NGOs, whose existence will be obviated if they make inroads in reducing homelessness.  NGOs are organizations made up of flesh-and-blood people, people who can start with noble intentions but end up having their decisions being governed by greed, with helping their fellow man as a nice virtue-signaling pretext.

International humanitarian aid is likewise riddled with such perverse incentives, and corruptions, and incompetencies, and unintended harmful consequences.  The Church is wise to insist that its humanitarian efforts be predicated on "core principles of personal responsibility, community support, self-reliance and sustainability."

I would hope that, too.  But this is a painstaking process, and one heavily reliant on the character of individual flesh-and-blood actors.  An NGO might have a stellar track record, but then the old director retires and a new guy comes in and messes the whole thing up.  It's not an intractable issue, just a time-and-resource-consuming one.  The Church will need to constantly vet and re-vet NGOs and individual projects, and monitor them afterwards.

I would happily cheer on competent and efficient NGOs move forward in this way.  But the overarching track record of these folks does little to create confidence that this will happen in large scale measures.  So I think we may be stuck with what we've got, which is the Church trying hard to partner with competent and efficient NGOs on worthwhile humanitarian projects, but with such partnerships being limited by the necessity of substantial vetting and oversight.

Thanks,

-Smac

FYI Los Angeles is going to be audited by an outside group for their spending on the homeless. I hope it's just not a white wash.

[Calm]

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

As long as you keep popping off about the 5% thing without any sort of explanation as to how the Church could do that and allocate resources effectively, you are being fundamentally unserious. 

What is wrong with the Church doing the same that it has been doing, only casting a wider net, vetting more opportunities?  There are likely an infinite number of opportunities out there and highly likely they could find a way to spend several billion more in the same way.  They would likely have to expand their humanitarian department, expand their outreach, possibly increase their own presence in areas where there are gaps.  But if they put a 1000 people to work where they only had 100 in vetting and overseeing efforts to identifying opportunities to help using the same process, why couldn’t they reach that goal?

Edited March 25 by Calm

[SeekingUnderstanding]

8 hours ago, smac97 said:

No.

lol

8 hours ago, smac97 said:

I think faultfinders and armchair quarterbacks aren't really well-situated to speak intelligently and competently about such matters.

Do I get to dictate to you what your humanitarian budget/goal is?  And do I get to publicly berate you if you do not comply with my expectations?

Thanks,

-Smac

Absolutely you can. Remember when you gave me 100’s of thousands of dollars? And remember how I’m a tax exempt organization? Utterly ridiculous. 

[Analytics]

 

9 hours ago, smac97 said:

Right.  Harvard spends $2.2 billion of its endowment on . . . Harvard.  

Likewise, Ensign Peak Advisors spends something like $8 billion a year on the Church's religious, educational, and humanitarian missions increasing the size of Ensign Peak Advisors investment portfolio. (By the way, do you think effectively spending $2.2 billion on a research and educational institution is easy? Do you have any references to where they say their goal is to spend 5% to 5.5% of the principle of their endowment on Harvard because doing so effectively is easy, and if allocating money were to someday become difficult they would stop making distributions?)

9 hours ago, smac97 said:

I think your proposal that the Church should use a fixed percentage as a benchmark for international humanitarian expenditures is uninformed, absurdly simplistic, ridiculous, and unreasoned.  

I never said the Church should use fixed percentage as a benchmark for international humanitarian expenditures. Stop lying.

What I have done is explained in detail based upon my own professional expertise why a $150 billion "rainy day fund" is obscenely too big for a rainy day fund. Your rants about how spending even 5% of that in a single year proves my point.

Professor Aaron Miller who teaches nonprofit management and ethics at BYU agrees with me on that point and in an article in Public Square, argues that the EPA fund should be thought of as an endowment, not as rainy day fund. Dr. Miller is one of the dozen or so academic resources I've pointed to that explains the prevalence of and justification for the 5% rule. In his words, "Many private foundations annually distribute a minimum of 5% of their total assets." 

My patient explanation of this are among the most meticulously reasoned things ever made on this forum. In theory I could be wrong, but when you say it is unreasoned you are projecting. I'm doing the opposite of that.

9 hours ago, smac97 said:

Oh, brother.  You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth. 

No I'm not.

9 hours ago, smac97 said:

The metric you use to fault the Church is that it does not use the 5% thing as a benchmark for humanitarian efforts.

More specifically, what I have done is summarized, with references, the different ways the vast majority of endowments deal with the issue of achieving a balance of savings and spending. I then said, "I'll go on record as saying that I'd find any spending rule that is broadly in harmony with any of these rules to be perfectly commendable by the Church."

9 hours ago, smac97 said:

But here you acknowledge that "allocating resources effectively is very difficult."

Please don't insinuate I ever denied that. I work in the world of finance. Allocating resources is very difficult. Superlatively so.

9 hours ago, smac97 said:

As long as you keep popping off about the 5% thing without any sort of explanation as to how the Church could do that and allocate resources effectively, you are being fundamentally unserious.  Just another armchair quarterback. 

How much the Church ought to spend and how it ought to spend it are two different questions.  On this narrow topic I'm appropriately addressing one of the questions and not the other.

Let's take a step back and remember how we got here. Critics, including a former EPA senior portfolio manager, have accused the Church of hoarding money. They are right, which is why I agree with them. People then asked me to explain why it is saving too much money. What is my basis for saying that? How much should it spend or save? People ignorant of how finance works suspected that the senior portfolio manager was being arbitrary in his criticism that the Church is saving too much.

To explain why his position (and mine) is the polar opposite of being arbitrary, I cited multiple references that support what BYU Professor Aaron Miller said, "Many private foundations annually distribute a minimum of 5% of their total assets." I went into great detail, supported by academic references, about why they did that. I also listed several variations of the 5% rule, all of which are well thought out. I then said, "I'll go on record as saying that I'd find any spending rule that is broadly in harmony with any of these rules to be perfectly commendable by the Church."

That's my answer to the question of "how much should the spend?"

If you honestly think the Church couldn't possibly spend 5% of Ensign Peak's assets on an annual basis on its religious, educational, and humanitarian mission, that proves my original point: the Church has too much money.

9 hours ago, smac97 said:

Teancum just airily refers to "smart" people who could do this.  That's it.  And I don't think you have even gone that far.

That is true.

I have considerable expertise in determining how much large organizations should save vs. spend. Multi-billion dollar insurance companies routinely pay me $550 an hour to help them answer that question in the context of insurance. On this topic, I know what I'm talking about in the same way you know what you are talking about when discussing Utah real estate law.

As an example, in insurance there is a detailed calculation called "Risk Based Capital" which is basically a formulaic determination of the minimum required level of an insurance company's surplus (i.e. it's rainy day fund). I'm currently working with a company that has reasonably determined that out of an abundance of caution, it wants its surplus level to be 450% of the minimum RBC level. That is an eminently reasonable and conservative target level of surplus. However, this particular company has a surplus level closer to 900% of RBC. The company's senior management agrees with me--its rainy day fund is too large. The question of what to do about it is a related but different issue. The company could use the money to try and grow. It could try to acquire new businesses. It could give its executives obscene bonuses. It could return the money to stockholders in the form of dividends. There are lots of things the company could do with the money, and making those decisions in an effective manner is very, very, hard. The fact that this particular company hasn't figured out the answer of what to do with its excess surplus doesn't change the fact that it has too much money.

The point is that I can tell this company that it has excess capital (something that I am qualified to determine), without knowing how it should deploy the excess capital. 

These. Are. Two. Different. Questions.

9 hours ago, smac97 said:

The Church is not enriching investors or its leaders. 

The Church is enriching itself. Unless its mission is to hoard money as an end in and of itself, it has too much money.

Making money for the purpose of making money is exactly what hedge funds do.

 

Edited March 25 by Analytics

[Stormin' Mormon]

19 minutes ago, Analytics said:

 

Likewise, Ensign Peak Advisors spends something like $8 billion a year on the Church's religious, educational, and humanitarian missions increasing the size of Ensign Peak Advisors investment portfolio.

Absolutely and unequivocally wrong. If it were true, that $8 billion would no longer be available for future uses. But it is available; it is still sitting in the EP accounts. It is manifestly and obviously NOT being spent. 

You can't have it both ways. Ensign Peak is either hoarding money or it is spending money to increase the size of its portfolio. 

As one poster recently said to another: stop lying!

[Analytics]

3 minutes ago, Stormin' Mormon said:

Ensign Peak is either hoarding money or it is spending money to increase the size of its portfolio. 

Yea, those are two totally different things and it has to be one or the other. You got me.

[Stormin' Mormon]

16 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Yea, those are two totally different things and it has to be one or the other. You got me.

Two totally different things.  Spending money to increase the size of its portfolio would include, I don't know, contracting with a third party to enlarged the Church's money bins or hiring additional teams of treasure hunters.  In those cases the money is spent, it is removed from the ownership and control of the Church and moves to the ownership and control of someone else. 

On the other hand, hoarding money requires not spending it.  And if one is spending the money on anything, then it is, by definition, not hoarding.  Even spending money on oneself, like Harvard is doing, is not hoarding, because the money is passing out of control from one owner and into control of another.  In the case of Harvard, they are buying lab equipment (money going to the manufacturers of such equipment), or retrofitting buildings (money goes to a construction company).

Hoarding and spending are mutually exclusive.  Pick one critique and stick with it.  Your argument will be all the stronger for it.

[Analytics]

26 minutes ago, Stormin' Mormon said:

Two totally different things.  Spending money to increase the size of its portfolio would include, I don't know, contracting with a third party to enlarged the Church's money bins or hiring additional teams of treasure hunters.  In those cases the money is spent, it is removed from the ownership and control of the Church and moves to the ownership and control of someone else. 

On the other hand, hoarding money requires not spending it.  And if one is spending the money on anything, then it is, by definition, not hoarding.  Even spending money on oneself, like Harvard is doing, is not hoarding, because the money is passing out of control from one owner and into control of another.  In the case of Harvard, they are buying lab equipment (money going to the manufacturers of such equipment), or retrofitting buildings (money goes to a construction company).

Hoarding and spending are mutually exclusive.  Pick one critique and stick with it.  Your argument will be all the stronger for it.

When I said the Church "spends" $8 billion a year to increase the size of its investment portfolio, I didn't mean to imply that it had $8 billion of investment expenses. Rather, I meant to imply that it allocates $8 billion a year to its investment portfolio. I used the word "spend" for rhetorical purposes. 

Edited March 25 by Analytics

[smac97]

On 3/23/2024 at 10:53 AM, Teancum said:

You excel and arguing for all the reasons why the Church cannot do more to bless the lives of humans beings.

And you excel at ignoring the substantial issues and challenges inherent in facilitating international humanitarian aid.  

"Do more to bless the lives of human beings" is merely code for "Just Throw Money At It!"

Thanks,

-Smac

[ZealouslyStriving]

I LOVE this quote from John Taylor:

"You come from these dens of infamy, reeking with corruption and rottenness, steeped in crime and bloodshed and you will come here, will you, and teach morality to us? Go home, attend to your own business, cleanse yourselves from your corruptions, for they are a stink in the nostrils of Jehovah, and of all honest men, and don't come to set us right in regard to things that God has given us to do, and which with the help of the Lord we will carry out.” (Pres. John Taylor JD 21:19)

[Teancum]

10 hours ago, smac97 said:

Asking questions about the particulars of the proposals being bandied about is not "aggressive."  If you are going to advance a proposal, then you should be prepared to explain it.  That you don't, that you endlessly dodge and deflect, rather suggests that you haven't given meaningful effort to examining the issues relevant here.  

Thanks,

-Smac

I don't dodge at all.  You simply misrepresent me and are using a straw man argument.  If you don't think your cross examination approach towards your fellow believer, @pogiI can't help you. But it seems disdainful enough to Pogi that he does not want to dialogue with you because you are not doing it in good faith.

[Teancum]

16 minutes ago, smac97 said:

And you excel at ignoring the substantial issues and challenges inherent in facilitating international humanitarian aid.  

No I don't.  I have acknowledged this repeatedly.

16 minutes ago, smac97 said:

"Do more to bless the lives of human beings" is merely code for "Just Throw Money At It!"

Thanks,

-Smac

No, that is your disingenuous spin and lie. 

[Rain]

2 hours ago, Analytics said:

 

Likewise, Ensign Peak Advisors spends something like $8 billion a year on the Church's religious, educational, and humanitarian missions increasing the size of Ensign Peak Advisors investment portfolio. (By the way, do you think effectively spending $2.2 billion on a research and educational institution is easy? Do you have any references to where they say their goal is to spend 5% to 5.5% of the principle of their endowment on Harvard because doing so effectively is easy, and if allocating money were to someday become difficult they would stop making distributions?)

I never said the Church should use fixed percentage as a benchmark for international humanitarian expenditures. Stop lying.

What I have done is explained in detail based upon my own professional expertise why a $150 billion "rainy day fund" is obscenely too big for a rainy day fund. Your rants about how spending even 5% of that in a single year proves my point.

Professor Aaron Miller who teaches nonprofit management and ethics at BYU agrees with me on that point and in an article in Public Square, argues that the EPA fund should be thought of as an endowment, not as rainy day fund. Dr. Miller is one of the dozen or so academic resources I've pointed to that explains the prevalence of and justification for the 5% rule. In his words, "Many private foundations annually distribute a minimum of 5% of their total assets." 

My patient explanation of this are among the most meticulously reasoned things ever made on this forum. In theory I could be wrong, but when you say it is unreasoned you are projecting. I'm doing the opposite of that.

No I'm not.

More specifically, what I have done is summarized, with references, the different ways the vast majority of endowments deal with the issue of achieving a balance of savings and spending. I then said, "I'll go on record as saying that I'd find any spending rule that is broadly in harmony with any of these rules to be perfectly commendable by the Church."

Please don't insinuate I ever denied that. I work in the world of finance. Allocating resources is very difficult. Superlatively so.

How much the Church ought to spend and how it ought to spend it are two different questions.  On this narrow topic I'm appropriately addressing one of the questions and not the other.

Let's take a step back and remember how we got here. Critics, including a former EPA senior portfolio manager, have accused the Church of hoarding money. They are right, which is why I agree with them. People then asked me to explain why it is saving too much money. What is my basis for saying that? How much should it spend or save? People ignorant of how finance works suspected that the senior portfolio manager was being arbitrary in his criticism that the Church is saving too much.

To explain why his position (and mine) is the polar opposite of being arbitrary, I cited multiple references that support what BYU Professor Aaron Miller said, "Many private foundations annually distribute a minimum of 5% of their total assets." I went into great detail, supported by academic references, about why they did that. I also listed several variations of the 5% rule, all of which are well thought out. I then said, "I'll go on record as saying that I'd find any spending rule that is broadly in harmony with any of these rules to be perfectly commendable by the Church."

That's my answer to the question of "how much should the spend?"

If you honestly think the Church couldn't possibly spend 5% of Ensign Peak's assets on an annual basis on its religious, educational, and humanitarian mission, that proves my original point: the Church has too much money.

That is true.

I have considerable expertise in determining how much large organizations should save vs. spend. Multi-billion dollar insurance companies routinely pay me $550 an hour to help them answer that question in the context of insurance. On this topic, I know what I'm talking about in the same way you know what you are talking about when discussing Utah real estate law.

As an example, in insurance there is a detailed calculation called "Risk Based Capital" which is basically a formulaic determination of the minimum required level of an insurance company's surplus (i.e. it's rainy day fund). I'm currently working with a company that has reasonably determined that out of an abundance of caution, it wants its surplus level to be 450% of the minimum RBC level. That is an eminently reasonable and conservative target level of surplus. However, this particular company has a surplus level closer to 900% of RBC. The company's senior management agrees with me--its rainy day fund is too large. The question of what to do about it is a related but different issue. The company could use the money to try and grow. It could try to acquire new businesses. It could give its executives obscene bonuses. It could return the money to stockholders in the form of dividends. There are lots of things the company could do with the money, and making those decisions in an effective manner is very, very, hard. The fact that this particular company hasn't figured out the answer of what to do with its excess surplus doesn't change the fact that it has too much money.

The point is that I can tell this company that it has excess capital (something that I am qualified to determine), without knowing how it should deploy the excess capital. 

These. Are. Two. Different. Questions.

The Church is enriching itself. Unless its mission is to hoard money as an end in and of itself, it has too much money.

Making money for the purpose of making money is exactly what hedge funds do.

 

You make me even more interested to see whatever it is they want to do with it. 

[ZealouslyStriving]

4 minutes ago, Rain said:

You make me even more interested to see whatever it is they want to do with it. 

Seeing as Temples cost between $7 and $70 million to build depending on size and location and the Church only seems to be ramping up Temple building....

So, average cost $30 million x (will say) 200 (at present)= $7 billion

With about 25-30 new Temples announced each year.

 

I'm guessing that's where some of the money will go.

[smac97]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

What is wrong with the Church doing the same that it has been doing, only casting a wider net, vetting more opportunities?  

In the abstract, nothing.  But we have no evidence that the Church is not actively "casting a wider net," and some real indications that it has been making this effort for some years now.

7 hours ago, Calm said:

There are likely an infinite number of opportunities out there and highly likely they could find a way to spend several billion more in the same way.

Right.  We've seen that play out in California.  Without substantial vetting and oversight, these efforts would end up very poorly.

The objective ought to be for the Church to provide humanitarian aid in effective and efficient ways, and should do so in conformity with "the core principles of personal responsibility, community support, self-reliance and sustainability."  This is why I think focusing on money ("Just Throw Money At It!") is so ill-advised.  

7 hours ago, Calm said:

They would likely have to expand their humanitarian department, expand their outreach, possibly increase their own presence in areas where there are gaps.

Faultfinding critics will likely never be placated with the Church's efforts. 

And they have nothing meaningful for substantive to say about the challenges inherent in international humanitarian work, including the attendant "bottleneck" effect that is the natural and foreseeable consequence of the Church's vetting and monitoring efforts. 

And rather than credit the Church for these efforts, they accuse it of being greedy. 

And they just gloss over and ignore relevant examples of corruption, graft, malfeasance, etc. that arise due to insufficient focus on effectiveness and over-emphasis on money (several examples have been noted, notably including WFP debacles and the mess in California). 

And they have nothing substantive to day about, and instead just blithely gloss over and ignore, the real and extensive unintended harms caused by unwise humanitarian efforts.  

And they are endlessly cagey and evasive about their proposals, which I think is indicative of their intent to never be satisfied, never give the Church due credit, and instead endlessly find fault, endlessly move the goalposts, and endlessly demand that the Church do "more."  Their objective is not to improve the Church, but to denigrate it and impugn it, its leaders and its members no matter what we do.

And I see their antagonism being more about their antipathy toward the Church than about genuine concern for the welfare of their fellow man.

For these and other reasons, I don't give much credence to their proposals or their critiques.  I do not think they are presented in good faith.

The scope and extent of the Church's humanitarian efforts will always be a judgment call.  In the end, though, we must remember what Elder Bednar observed here:

Quote

The following address was given {By Elder David Bednar} at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, May 26, 2022. 

...

I have highlighted many aspects of our humanitarian outreach efforts around the world. Please remember, however, that we are not primarily a humanitarian organization. We are the Church of Jesus Christ, reestablished or restored upon the earth in the latter days in preparation for the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We do all of these things because as His disciples we love Him and want to follow His example in our lives.

I conclude by returning to where I began. The basic purpose of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to help people learn about the nature and attributes of God, to love God, to become disciples of His Son Jesus Christ, and to love and serve our brothers and sisters. We believe God can change our hearts and make more of us from the inside out than we can ever make of ourselves. And we also believe that change many times is required from the outside in.

This bears emphasis and repetition: The Church is not primarily a humanitarian organization. 

The Church is also not primarily a provider of healthcare.  

Nor is it primarily a provider of education.  

Nor is it primarily a provider of banking services.

Nor is it primarily a store to sell clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, housewares, etc.

The Church was previously involved in all of these things, and has since either totally or partially withdrawn from them:

• Healthcare: LDS Hospital, Primary Children's, etc.
• Education: Church College of New Zealand, schools in Mexico and the South Pacific, etc.
• Banking Services: Zions Bank
• Store: ZCMI

I commented on this last March (responding to Pogi) :

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We only have a 4 fold mission.  It is one of them.  It is also one of the primary purposes of tithing stated in the D&C. 

"It" being the Church having a primary function, as an institution, of financially bankrolling efforts in ways similar to the Gates Foundation, or even the Red Cross?

No, that is not "one of" the Church's missions.  "Caring for the poor and needy" is the mission.  You seem to equate that with the Church having a primary role, as an institution, of financially bankrolling efforts in ways similar to the Gates Foundation, or even the Red Cross.  I don't.  Again, from this 2020 article:

Quote

Bishop Caussé said caring for those in need across the globe is at the heart of the mission of the Church. It is not “an appendage to the mission,” but instead is intermingled in everything the Church does. “We are all sons and daughters of God upon the earth, and we are committed to take care of one another,” he said. “And this is one of the ways that, as disciples of Lord Jesus Christ, we care for those in need.”

I really like this.
...

You are apparently not recognizing that careful stewardship of "the widow's mite" is an important consideration.

Either that, or you are not accounting for the substantial "rot," in terms of waste, corruption, graft, mismanagement, etc., that exists across broad swaths of the "international humanitarian" arena.

Either that, or you are substantially underestimating the challenges in properly vetting "humanitarian projects and partners."  

Or all three of these.
...
I respectfully submit that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an important role to play, but that role is not primarily about it, as an institution, financially bankrolling efforts in ways similar to the Gates Foundation, or even the Red Cross.  I think such matters are necessarily outside the province of the institutional Church.  Should its members be involved in governmental and philanthropic efforts to improve the condition of the world and its inhabitants?  Certainly.  As individuals.  Should the institutional Church assist in such efforts?  Yes, but not as a Power Player (like Bill Gates), and not as an organization that is straying from its intended and appropriate mandates (as it would by trying to be like the Red Cross).  

There is nothing new in this.  The members of the Church are supposed to "be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness."

There are certainly ways in which the Church and and should (and does) help with humanitarian efforts, but again, not as a Power Player, and not insofar as to stray from its intended mandates.

The Church has the capacity to, as an institution, direct efforts to "perfect the Saints" (priesthood leadership, administering ordinances, weekly services, General Conference, seminaries & institutes, youth programs, and on and on an don), and to "proclaim the Gospel" (the missionary program, senior missionaries, "every member a missionary," and so on), and to "redeem the dead" (family history work, temple work, etc.).  The Church moves heaven and earth on this, and I am happy about that.

Regarding the fourth mission, to "care for the poor and needy," the Church has, as of 2020, doubled its humanitarian spending over the past five years, and now spends $1 billion/year on humanitarian aid (which expenditures the Church anticipates "are going to increase fast"), and spends $1.5 billion in subsidizing the education of 90,000 students, and operates 27 wheat storage facilities and more than 100 bishops’ storehouses, and funds nine refugee resettlement agencies in the United States, and manages many worthwhile programs ("food programs, vision care, maternal and newborn care, clean water and sanitation, immunizations, wheelchairs, and help for refugees"), and more.

Can the Church do more?  Sure.  But I think folks like you have not thought things through, and are jumping to unwarranted conclusions.  Again from the 2020 article:

Quote

In addition to responding to disasters across the globe, Church humanitarian funds have been used to provide food programs, vision care, maternal and newborn care, clean water and sanitation, immunizations, wheelchairs, and help for refugees.

However, reaching out and helping those in need is “a very complex endeavor,” he said.

The Church can’t just send out cash and checks to people, he said. “It has to be done in an organized way, and with follow up, with training, a lot of expertise and good partners. Otherwise, you just don’t get any results.”

Bishop Davies said the Church is careful to select humanitarian projects and partners that will make the best use of the Church’s funds. “We are very careful with the widow’s mite,” referring to the biblical parable by the Savior.

“We recognize that this comes from the faith of Church members and we want to make certain that they have the trust and confidence that their donations are being managed in a careful and thoughtful and very safe way for them and for the Church,” said Bishop Davies.

Leaders often ask themselves “what else can we do, where else can we go, who else can we work with,” said Bishop Waddell.  

Every time the Church reaches out, the objective is to bless both the giver and the receiver, added Bishop Caussé. So in addition to selecting good humanitarian projects, Church leaders are always mindful of providing service opportunities for Church members. “It’s not just a matter of money,” he said. It’s also done as members “devote time and resources and efforts to help others.”

...

If the Church were to alter course and start investing tens of billions of dollars in ways similar to Bill Gates, it would be susceptible to many of the same criticisms Bill Gates has received.  And many of those criticisms would be justified.  Mr. Gates is not an elected official.  He is making huge decisions for many, many people, and not due to any particular expertise or wisdom, but rather by dint of his having tremendous wealth and a willingness to spend it in ways he thinks best.  I think the rule and function of the Church is predominantly to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Candidly, I don't know that the Lord would bless the Church if it were to take on this sort of Social Crusader-style role.  That is not the intended purpose of the institution.  It can and must help its members and neighbors.  But it must also be a good and wise steward of its finances.  And it must also refrain from accruing to itself unseemly power or "influence."  But large-scale spending of tens of billions of dollars would necessarily result in the Church doing just that.

So I don't think the Church can, or ought, to "go big or go home."  It needs to take a prudent and cautious and self-determined path, one which involves both extensive humanitarian outreach and good financial decisions, and which decisions will need to be based on reasoning, evidence, "vetting," and so on, and which decisions should resist substantial social pressure to just throw money around because a bunch of self-appointed critics and faultfinders are demanding it.
...

By design, the Church does not have secular governmental authority.  And it does not endorse particular candidates or political parties or platforms.  

I don't think the Church is supposed to be a Power Player, as the unelected Mr. Gates has been.  Elected officials ought to set policies, rules, regulations, etc.  And scientists and other experts in various disciplines can formulate strategies for addressing humanitarian needs.  And various NGOs can be created so as to tackle this or that aspect of needs in this or that area of the globe.

The Church is not situated to set policy, which is the role of the State.

The Church has some areas of expertise in terms of food production, water wells, disaster relief, and so on. But it lacks any particular skill or resources relative to large-scale medical needs, vaccines, and so on.  And the Church's skills (in, say, industrial food production) may not be adaptable or suitable to the humanitarian needs of a given area.  This is where scientists and other experts can come into play.

The Church often lacks the requisite means and resources to deploy its means and skills.  The Church therefore partners with folks who do have expertise (and experience, and familiarity with local laws/customs, etc.).

All of these things require a lot of time and attention.  A lot of vetting.  "The Church can’t just send out cash and checks to people, he said. 'It has to be done in an organized way, and with follow up, with training, a lot of expertise and good partners. Otherwise, you just don’t get any results.'"
...
In terms of humanitarian efforts, I think there needs to be a high level of scrupulosity.  The Gates Foundation seems to attach all sorts of strings to their efforts, and may have some ulterior motives as well.  The Red Cross has materially botched any number of humanitarian efforts, and have diverted or mismanaged or wasted substantial financial and other resources.  The solution, I think, is to do . . . what the Presiding Bishopric has been doing for a while now.
...

The Church has grown quite a bit in the last 50 years, yet it has not opened up new schools, or hospitals, or banks, etc.  To the contrary, it has downsized.  The Church can only have so many fingers in so many pies.  Early on, the Church had to create infrastructure for its people, hence we got ZCMI, Zions Bank, LDS Hospital, schools, and so on.  As society great and became capable of providing these resources, the Church has scaled them back and downsized.  That seems sensible.

The Church is not supposed to be all things to all people.  And I think that sentiment extends to humanitarian efforts.  I don't think the Church wants to be a one-stop shop, and more to the point, I don't think it can be, or ought to be.  The solution, then, is to A) utilize the Church's substantive resources (foodstuffs, local units helping in disaster relief, clean water wells dug by BYU engineering students, and so on), and B) partner with governments, NGOs, etc. for large-scale efforts and matters that are outside the Church's skills or reach.
...
Those who are speaking out of anger, who are ignoring relevant explanations and information the Church has provided (such as from the Presiding Bishopric), etc., perhaps ought to take a step back, take a breather, give the Brethren both a bit of time and the benefit of the doubt, and meanwhile work as an individual to "be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness."
...
 

Quote

Quote

I honestly question if folks like you have thought through the ramifications of what you are espousing.  

Please enlighten me.  What are the ramifications?  Criticism?  Hard work? Expense?  Potential waste? Getting taken advantage of?  Failures along the way?  Anything else?  On the flip, are you considering the benefits vs the risks and the potential to learn from mistakes along the way?  If we don't start somewhere, no good gets done.

Straying from the Church's mandated purposes.

Failing to be wide stewards of the Church's resources.

Focusing on humanitarian outreach as principally a function of the institutional Church giving billions away.

Putting the Church into an ill-advised "Power Player" position.

Failing to sufficiently vet and monitor humanitarian projects and partners.

Facilitating greed and corruption.

I think the leaders of the Church, particularly the Presiding Bishopric (who have the primary responsibilities in this area) just might be as concerned for their fellow man, and as willing and desirous to help, as you are.  But perhaps the administering of billions of dollars in an arena (international outreach) which is well known for graft, corruption, malfeasance, etc., requires a bit more time and effort than bystanders realize.  Perhaps there are bottlenecks and other constraints.  Perhaps the unverified media reports about the Church are overstated or inaccurate.  Perhaps the totality of the Church's humanitarian efforts are understated ("Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them" and all that).  
...
I am espousing A) listening to what the Brethren have said, B) acknowledging the past, present and ongoing efforts of the Church, C) consider the real-world "wise stewardship" considerations the Church must take into account, D) qualify comparisons of the Church to other groups/entities, E) give the Brethren a bit of grace and patience (and quit speaking evil of them), F) pray for them rather than publicly speak against them, and G) look to our own individual abilities and opportunities to help in humanitarian efforts.

Sadly, not much has changed.  From Stormin' Mormon:

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Quote

Nobody says deploying large resources is easy. It is not.  But it is doable and the church has the resources both financially and intellectually to make great progress to do more to relieve human suffering.  But keep making excuses.

This is why critics of the Church's charitable giving earn the reputation of never being satisfied.  The Church IS making great progress in relieving human suffering.  It's charitable donations went from $900 million in 2021 to $1 billion in 2022 to $1.3 billion in 2023. We know that deploying large resources is doable because the CHURCH ACTUALLY HAS BEEN DEPLOYING LARGE RESOURCES AT AN EVER INCREASING RATE.  

And yet faultfinders are still endlessly unhappy and unsatisfied (the natural and foreseeable consequence of that noxious behavior).

7 hours ago, Calm said:

But if they put a 1000 people to work where they only had 100 in vetting and overseeing efforts to identifying opportunities to help using the same process, why couldn’t they reach that goal?

Again, whatever "goal" the Church sets will always be a judgment call.  And because of that, our current crop of faultfinders, as with our past crops, will never be satisfied because there is no agreed-upon metric.  As we have seen in this and many other threads, anything the Church does can be disregarded, minimized, disparaged as not "enough" to faultfinders endless demands for a nebulous-and-never-defined "more."

Again, I am espousing

• A) listening to what the Brethren have said,
• B) acknowledging the past, present and ongoing efforts of the Church,
• C) consider the real-world "wise stewardship" considerations the Church must take into account,
• D) qualify comparisons of the Church to other groups/entities,
• E) give the Brethren a bit of grace and patience (and quit speaking evil of them),
• F) pray for them rather than publicly speak against them, and
• G) look to our own individual abilities and opportunities to help in humanitarian efforts.

Faultfinders and armchair quarterbacks will refuse to do most or all of this, but I hope the Latter-day Saints will choose to hew closer to their covenants and the Church than to faultfinders, gainsayers and armchair quarterbacks.

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

29 minutes ago, Teancum said:

I don't dodge at all. 

I'll let each reader review this thread, and the links in it, and draw their own conclusions.

29 minutes ago, Teancum said:

You simply misrepresent me and are using a straw man argument.  If you don't think your cross examination approach towards your fellow believer, @pogiI can't help you.

Neither he nor you are willing to answer basic questions about your demands of the Church.

I don't know @pogi personally, nor you.  Neither of you seem to think much of the Church and its leaders.  Your antipathy toward the Church is a matter of public record.  Anyone can spend a while going through your posting history and ask themselves "What does this guy think of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?  Does he like it?  Does he hold it in regard and respect (even though he does not subscribe to its unique tenets)?  Or is he indifferent to and apathetic about it?  Or is he hostile and critical of it, even overtly and persistently so?"

@pogi, meanwhile, publicly disparages the Church's leaders.

I hope both of you reconsider your antipathies and overall postures toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Meanwhile, however, I will defend it against people like you.

29 minutes ago, Teancum said:

But it seems disdainful enough to Pogi that he does not want to dialogue with you because you are not doing it in good faith.

Here are the questions I asked:

Quote

We've been having this discussion for quite a while.  You and Teancum and Analytics constantly berate the Church for not doing "more," with "more" never actually being defined.  The only metric for it is an arbitrary number - 5% of the Church's reserve funds.  That's it.  No explanation as to where this money would go, or what controls ought to be applied, or what due diligence the Church should perform (if any any at all).

If you have some sort of coherent proposal for the Church to do "more," let's have it. 

What dollar amount do you propose will be sufficiently "more" in terms of the Church's humanitarian efforts? 

How did you arrive at it?  Where should this money go?  Which groups?  And should these donations be essentially perennial? 

If so, why? 

If not, why not? 

What distinguishes your proposal of what the Church should do from what the Church is presently doing? 

Should the Church be concerned about contributing to unintentionally adverse consequences (such as those I previously noted in relation to the WFP)?  If not, why not? 

If so, what vetting standards, benchmarks, etc. should the Church use?  Should it use any?

What data do you have to support any of this?

What experience/background do you have in facilitating international humanitarian efforts?  Put another way, are you situated to competently adjudicate the Church's efforts? 

You guys have disliked my "Just Throw Money At It!" characterization of your position, but then you turn around and refuse to explain or answer basic questions about that position.  You can deploy whatever Lèse-majesté-style expressions of indignation you like, but in the end I don't think you want to answer simple questions about your position because you can't.  Because as soon as you do, the merit and wisdom of the Church's circumspect and methodical approach will become more and more manifest. 

"Armchair quarterbacking" is tempting and seductive because it's just so easy to, metaphorically speaking, sit on a couch, thousands of miles away from the game, and denigrate and second-guess the actual quarterback, his coaches, the team, etc.

Your posture in this and other threads on this topic reminds me of this quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

Quote

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I am also reminded of 1 Nephi 8:

Quote

26 And I also cast my eyes round about, and beheld, on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth.
27 And it was filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.
28 And after they had tasted of the fruit they were ashamed, because of those that were scoffing at them; and they fell away into forbidden paths and were lost.
29 And now I, Nephi, do not speak all the words of my father.
30 But, to be short in writing, behold, he saw other multitudes pressing forward; and they came and caught hold of the end of the rod of iron; and they did press their way forward, continually holding fast to the rod of iron, until they came forth and fell down and partook of the fruit of the tree.
31 And he also saw other multitudes feeling their way towards that great and spacious building.
32 And it came to pass that many were drowned in the depths of the fountain; and many were lost from his view, wandering in strange roads.
33 And great was the multitude that did enter into that strange building. And after they did enter into that building they did point the finger of scorn at me and those that were partaking of the fruit also; but we heeded them not.

The Brethren, and the good and decent and quietly observant and faithful Latter-day Saints who support them, are really trying to obey and honor God, keep their covenants, work hard, take care of their families, be good citizens, serve others, and in ways large and small make the world a better place.

I choose to give less credence to "the critic ... who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better."

I choose to give less credence to the bystanders "in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers," those who "point the finger of scorn."

I think the Church is a wonderful institution.  It is, of course, not without its flaws.  Its leaders make mistakes large and small.  And while such errors and missteps need to be addressed and corrected where possible, I find far more value in supporting the efforts of the Church and its leaders and members than in listening to those intent on disparaging and finding fault with those efforts.  That is, I think, what the Lord wants us to do.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Teancum]

19 hours ago, smac97 said:

I am saying that, in the the billions-per-year level at which the Church is or could be operating, a rote percentage - 5% - as a guideline is "feckless," "facile," "unreasonable," "utterly uninformed,", "naive," "absurdly simplistic," "blithe," " ridiculous," "unserious," and "unreasoned."

So 5% is feckless.  Right? Though it is a number that is routinely used as a best practice.  And it is a statutory number that Private Charity Foundations are required to pay out to charities to maintain their tax exempt status.  But it is feckless and facile and so in just because SMAC thinks it is.  Doo your think your silly, ludicrous, disingenuous, specious hyperbole is convining?

[Teancum]

13 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Even if the Church did up it to 5%, they wouldn't be satisfied. They would say, "Why not 10% like all the members are forced to pay?"

Not so.

[Rain]

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Seeing as Temples cost between $7 and $70 million to build depending on size and location and the Church only seems to be ramping up Temple building....

So, average cost $30 million x (will say) 200 (at present)= $7 billion

With about 25-30 new Temples announced each year.

 

I'm guessing that's where some of the money will go.

Guessing is the key word there.  I don't doubt it, but we can't know it either.