Posted on 12/12/2011 7:26:49 AM PST by Saundra Duffy
They may seem drastically different: a nonprofit that helps children build lemonade stands, an organization that encourages character building through sports and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But they all have the same underlying goal: to promote economic self-reliance.
The LDS Church Thursday was the last stop on a nationwide tour highlighting best practices in economic self-reliance. During a two day conference sponsored by The Philanthropy Roundtable, representatives from charitable foundations across the country took a tour through Welfare Square, the LDS Humanitarian Center and the Bishop's Central Storehouse.
(Excerpt) Read more at deseretnews.com ...
All I know is that Oath Keepers says that they followed up on the report and talked to the LDS Cannery Manager and they confirmed with him that the report was true that men saying that they where government agents questioned him about obtaining copies of their records.
No, you do not “get it”. HH is not a church group.
Charity is charity.
HH is a private non profit group, they can run their business anyway they want.
If churches/wards are offing something called charity, it is not charity if repayment is required.
Why yes it is, I know this because I did well in college higher level mathematics.
However, I did not do well in interpretation of cryptic replies.
Sad comentary on how things are when such rumors can even be considered true.
But self reliant folks are now considered ‘dangerous’ and possible terrorist by their own government.
If you don't like it, don't donate to them.
Of course some of these non-profits have no problem with reaching into the taxpayer's pockets for forced donations. The Mormon church deserves credit for not being one of them.
The cannery manager is denying that this happened.
But... of course the first thing that popped into my paranoid mind was that “someone got to him”.
Really?
Ok, there is no point in discussion here, if you are either unwilling or unable to know the difference between a group that is a church and a business.
Churches give charity without expectation of repayment.
Wards apparently expect repayment, well then maybe you are correct lds is a business. Sorry I miss understood your point.
“I think the LDS Church has a better idea when it comes to actually helping people. Whew!!”
It results in a better long term solution, but its not really the LDS plan although they are using it. Its Biblical.
Is that the post dotcom version of the story?
The witness probably didn’t expect the story to go national. I can understand them wanting to stay out of the limelight.
Sorry what did you say? Your voice is all muffled like you’re in an enclosed space or something.
This is the religion forum and you should familiarize yourself with its posting rules on acceptable language.
You’re right Godzilla, I just have not been able to find the rules which state nothing positive about LDS should be posted and that anything, no matter how vile or personal, can be thrown at someone posting it.
Thank you RM for your actions. Personal attacks are no substitute for sound arguments drift.
Second, you throw down the gauntlet then whine when the response you engendered appears.
Third...LDS inc. is dirty.
Following The Money In The United Kingdom
The Church is registered as both a charity and a company, and as such it is required to be registered with the Charity Commission and Companies House. It is also obliged to publish year-end accounts of it's activities. Interestingly the Church was one of a number of charities that was censured for late returns of it's accounts for 2004. As each charity has 10 months from the end of the year to submit its report we will have to wait until 31st October to find out how the church faired in 2005.
The Church has three charities that are currently registered;
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Great Britain) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Welfare) LDS Family Services (UK) Ltd.
Each of these organisations is wholly owned by two parent companies; The Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka Gordon "The Hammer" Hinckley) and The Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka David "The Bruiser" Burton), both of Salt Lake City, Utah.
If you scroll down each of these links you will see a further link where you can view the yearly reports for each organisation. The COJCOLD (Welfare) also owns three additional, separate companies (not charities). These are;
AgReserves Ltd Farmspeed (Southery Anchor) Ltd Hallwsworth (Farmland Trust) Ltd
You can search for basic details of these companies here. You also have the option of paying £1 per document to look at their annual returns. I looked at a sample and will post info on this at a later date. Each of these companies are farming enterprises, and grow the wheat that we all get to buy, pack and add to our food storage.
Some of the basic info that i picked up from the accounts of the 'main' church charity include;
Surplus income over expenditure was £2,042,000, assisted by a £5m donation from the boys in SLC, leaving a balance in their HSBC account of £20,891,000.
For a church that has no paid ministry we managed to spend £7,752,000 on staff costs, in fact it was the largest single expenditure.
As well as this £856,000 was spent on 'travel', £2,301,000 on 'General administration', £265,000 on 'Materials and supplies' and £855,000 on equipment.
Despite members donating £252,000 to the Humanitarian Aid Fund the church only spent £51,000 of it. More on this another time because this sort of thing really really ticks me off.
In 2004 the number of employees earning between £70-£80k was 1; £60-£70k was 7 and £50-£60k was 12. Nice work if you can get it.
Assets in the course of construction, land and buildings, equipment and motor vehicles came to a value of £299,227,000. Depreciation of these assets was reckoned to be £52,502,000 which gives the church a net worth in terms of tangible assets of £246,725,000, a little under £0.25bn. And that doesn't include the cash in the bank.
There is an outstanding 'loan' from the parent company ("The Hammer") of £228,358,000. I used the word loan loosely as it stipulates there is no interest charge and no fixed repayment terms. More on this later as i need time to decipher the jargon; looks like large sums being channelled back to SLC but will check.
"The Church's active membership continues to grow" - yeah right. At year end there were 45 stakes, 1 District, 278 Wards and 85 Branches in Great Britain and Ireland. Compared to the end of 2003 there have been no additional Stakes, no additional Districts, 4 additional Wards, and 10 fewer Branches.
The stone that isn't rolling forth.
Following The Money In The Uk - Part 2
Last time i focussed on the workings of the main church organisation in the UK, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Great Britain) ; this post is about it's sister 'charity', The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Welfare) Limited.
The objectives of the charity are to promote the religious and other charitable work of the church here in the UK and to relieve members of the church and others who are in conditions of need, hardship, sickness or distress. In order to do this the charity;
Invests in farms which it rents out to its subsidiary companies; any profits are returned to the charity under covenant.
Acquires land and builds purpose built meeting houses in which members can worship and receive instruction. Assists individuals suffering through hardship, sickness and distress as needed. Provides advice and guidance to church members on the church's worldwide welfare and humanitarian aid programmes.
From reading the 363s Annual Return that each company is required to submit it appears that LDS (Welfare) decided to free up some cash through issuing more shares. LDS (Welfare) previously had an Issued Share Capital of 100 Ordinary shares valued at £1 each, giving an aggregate nominal value of issued shares of £100. In 2004 they upped this considerably, increasing this to £10,000,000. All shares are held by the Corporation of the Presdiding Bishop. On 31st March 2005 the Presiding Bishop became the sole owner of the charity/company and 50 shares previously held by the Corporation of the President of the Church were transferred over. On 2nd June 2005 the company's status was changed to a private limited company.
(NB On closer examination it appears that LDS (Great Britain) also released a further £10m through issuing shares and was also transferred to the sole ownership of the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop)
Some more highlights include;
The Group (Welfare plus subsidiary companies) had a surplus of £147,000. Helped by a donation from it's sister charity LDS (Great Britain). This money went into the reserves, which now total £9,207,000.
'Direct Charitable Expenditure' for the year was £7,243,000. This is all well and good until you learn what counts as 'charity'; £5,279,000 was 'construction' costs' (remember, one of the purposes of this charity is to build meeting houses for the church) £37k was depreciation, £663k was on 'physical facilities', £322k on 'operating costs' and £50k on 'professional fees' (probably the auditors from PwC) which left £892,000 for 'charitable contributions'.
2004 was a tough year down on the farm. The trustees report that due to a wet harvest that prolonged the season there was a drop in both yield and quality, which hit profits. They indicate a 12% drop from the previous year. Yet in the accounts 'profits covenanted from farm activities' was £472,000 this year, compared with £855,000 last year. So profits might have fallen by 12% but what was passed on to the charity fell by nearly half.
Staff costs were high, accounting for £1,142,000 over the year. There is 1 employee earning between £60-70k and 2 earning between £50-60k.
As with LDS (Great Britain) there is an outstanding loan to the boys in Salt Lake, the amount outstanding on this one is £52,077,000. It appears on the accounts but there is no interest charge and no fixed repayment conditions.
The last 2 pages of the submission don't seem to have been posted on the charity commission's website, i have emailed them requesting them as this generally provides a neat summary of the year.
Taking into account all of the income and expenditure of the church in the UK i have managed to make the following calculations;
The church (GB) received £23,488,000 in 'unrestricted funds' (tithing) and £2,663,000 in 'restricted funds' (Fast, Humanitarian Aid, Missionary Support etc etc). Together with interest, profits from selling assets their total income was £27,077,000.
LDS (Welfare) received £7,433,000 (£500k of which was from LDS (GB). Taking that into account the total amount of money, from all sources, coming in to the church in this country was £34,010,000. (NB The £5m from SLC i mentioned in the previous post wasn't a donation as such, but rather a cancelled loan re-payment. No actual money changed hands)
Money that was made available to those in need by way of 'grants', 'humanitatian aid' and 'charitable contributions' by both organisations was £1,077,000. (NB I have not included the £500k transfer from one to the other, even though LDS (GB) counted this as a charitable donation, as i included it in the above calculation).
The cost of staff, travel, admin, supplies, equipment, auditing, money lost exchanging currencies, physical facilities and operating costs came to £15,507,000. That doesn't include building new meeting houses, depreciation etc.
In other words the church spent 14 times more money administering itself than it spent on the 'needy'; or calculated another way the church spent a little over 3% of it's incoming money on the needy.
Fast Offering and Humanitarian Aid Fund contributions came to £1,571,000, so even if we calculate that money church members donated specifically for the needy, the church only spent 70% of that on what the members had in mind when they donated it.
This is interesting because every now and then there is talk in church of maybe supporting a charity involved in the developing world, or that specifically helps the homeless or whoever.
There is always someone who sticks their hand up and cautions that alot of these charities spend money on their overheads, but you know that if you donate through the church that every single penny will find it's way through to those in need.
I think this has demonstrated that assertion to be unsupported by the evidence.
source - http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_missionaries_section2.html
“Thank you RM for your actions. Personal attacks are no substitute for sound arguments drift.”
Unless its bashing of someone posting something which happens to show a positive side of LDS. Instead of focusing on the content of the thread which is an alternate method of helping people to help themselves.
Nope, its post after post bashing LDS and the OP.
This method of charity happens to be Biblical and effective. Why not focus on that?
I’m not a Mormon, but I have always liked their preparedness mentality. It would behoove everyone else to do this.
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