The Mormon church is famously secretive (or confidential) with it’s financial disclosures. They say as little as possible about it and are even known to hide money from the IRS and SEC in filing the required tax forms illegally. They’ve been busted by a whistleblower recently and the SEC came looking – they were able to settle by paying a $5 Million fine, which when considering the amount of money they have lied about (over $100 Billion) the fine hardly seems worth it and little more than a public slap on the wrist. Though the church paid the settlement, they stopped short of claiming to have done much wrong. The church is at least upfront that they will do what they wish with donations.
Excuses and Lies
They have come up with many excuses though:
Christopher Waddell, presiding bishopric member even had a new rebuttal on a recent 60 minutes interview. The church doesn’t share information about money because they don’t want people telling them how to spend it.
Besides the excuses, they’ve had many denials and dismissals, like when Elder Ballard stated that there has been no attempt from church leaders to hide anything from anybody! He then followed this up by saying that the church is as transparent as it knows how to be… which really means they are not transparent because they claim to not know how perhaps?
Presiding Bishopric Christopher Waddell was asked about the estimated values the church has and while he neglected to confirm even a ballpark estimate, admits that the church has significant resources. These resources could and should be used to do so much good. That is the guise which members understood when they donated the money!
An Excuse The Church Has Yet to Use
They have lied and used weak excuses to explain why they do this, but surprisingly they haven’t come out with any excuses rooted in the scriptures. It was Jesus himself who said alms should be done in secret and that the Father sees the secret alms and will be generous with the reward. Though they do seem to live by this mantra of “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” fairly well already, it’s not been part of the response when people suggest transparency would be beneficial.
1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6:1-4
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/matt/6?id=p1-p4#p1
What does this mean? It means to give purely and not for the positive attention it may bring you. It means that reporting on every instance of good work you do via church news articles and PR announcements is detrimental to the actual giving. This is a loophole the church lawyers have surprisingly not thought of yet to explain why they are not disclosing their financial giving more transparently.
Jesus is really making a point here about our motives for giving. He says that we should never do our giving in order to be seen by, and subsequently, to be praised by others. In other words, we do not want to give because of what we might get from it—like others thinking more highly of us or paying us compliments, or to receive some special treatment because of our giving. Jesus is saying that if your motive for giving is to draw attention to yourself, then you are trading an eternal reward for a temporal one. It is not as important whether others know about your giving. It is important, however, to examine the motives behind why you made your giving known to others.
Letting Your Left Hand Know What Your Right Hand is Doing
https://www.taylor.edu/news/letting-your-left-hand-know-what-your-right-hand-is-doing
Reward
These verses bring up another interesting point about rewards for doing good. Is it really doing good if it’s done with the reward in mind? The public reward from men or even the private reward from God? These are enticements to choose the right, but if we’re doing the right thing only because we will be rewarded, is it doing right?
The church is fairly loud about the charity it does. Are they looking for a reward from the world? They are looking to increase the notoriety and enhance the reputation and name of the church. This puts into question the charity work it actually does do. It’s not something they do because its the right thing to do and they have the resources to do it. They do these things for the glory and attention it generates. Every charitable project they are involved with becomes another news story for the church newsroom site, the deseret news as well as content for the special programs they run between conference sessions for members to feel good about the church and about the tithing and extra donations are given to the church.
They have even been creating special reports annually called Caring for Those in Need which summarize all the charitable work they do in order to offer proof that they are indeed a non-profit organization and do vast good in the community and even the world. This must be tied to their continued efforts to remain a tax-exempt organization and also a tax-deductible charity for donors.
Caring for Those in Need Reports
Tooting their own horn a bit? These reports lack any clear data on where these numbers come from and lack sources. The fact that the church finances lack any transparency means when they do these reports they have nothing to reference for where they came up with these numbers. The reports only show the grand totals and toot the horn that they are incredibly charitable and giving. The devil is in the details, however.
Widows Mite Report
A more accurate report is the non-affiliated Widows Mite Report, it is created with publicly available information though, so it is fairly accurate. It is also keyed into how these financial reports should be presented, and they explain all the ways the church cuts corners and omits details.
Some details from the report about the church’s report:
The report states that the church’s “Reported expenditures & volunteer hours remain confusingly commingled.” They are not clear in their reports what was a volunteer hour vs an actual expense and they wrap it all up quickly to provide a large impressive number. But with these types of reports, it is just as important to show the math and the numbers behind the totals as it is to show the totals. They omit all their details and provide only high-level data to members and the world. This high-level data then is hard to rely on or understand, because it is not clear how they arrived at these numbers.
Just as David Nielsen stated in his 60 minutes interview, “It’s easy to manage if you don’t have to be accountable”.
The church has no checks or balances in place to verify that the data they are providing is accurate. And the question remains if they have nothing to hide, why not be more transparent? The fact that they are not transparent suggests that they are hiding things. It’s not a simple matter of confidentiality because they are sharing some numbers and data today, but still not showing their work it’s easy to expect that the numbers are inflated.
Ways these numbers are inflated to larger than reality is the church often claims member donations as church donations. For example, in their reports, they display fast offerings as church charity. But these funds come directly from members and are managed by the bishops to serve those who struggle. The church may facilitate or manage the program, but it’s really made possible with hours of time from volunteer bishops and the money is given by members. For them to claim these as “church donations” is not accurate or honest.
“$40 Million which is entirely pass-through money coming from Fast Offerings. “The church” doesn’t contribute shit. The members contribute to 100% of all welfare.”
This goes along in every category. Disaster relief efforts are provided by church members, but the church will total up the man-hours provided and total it up as a church donation as well. They church helps to organize the effort via the administration and leadership it has already set up, but the real donations come from members willing to give their time. This isn’t hours of time that belong to the church that they can claim originates with them. They could claim the donation if they were to pay members or support them, but these members are doing this as a service for the victims of the disaster, not as a service to the church to get positive PR (at least for the most part). The members transport themselves and pay for their own gas and hotel (if they’re lucky), or sleep on the floor of the church. Some of the expenses might be reimbursed, but that’s not the norm or the expectation. For the church to claim this service as “church donated” man-hours is again not accurate or honest.
The “Just Serve” website was set up to enable more service from members but also non-members. How much tracking do they do through this site? Are they also claiming all the man-hours from volunteers through this site as part of their own humanitarian and charitable footprint? There are pages of data available in the Widows Mite report that discuss the Just Serve data too.
There are reports available online that shows us the church is familiar with what it is doing to inflate the data. They have been doing it for as long as they have been doing charity. They count every volunteer hour, for bishop storehouse assignments, and disaster relief, and count it as part of the total charitable offering from the church:
- 2009
- 2011
- 2012
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- A summary and analysis of reported humanitarian giving, covering LDSC reports from 2011 to 2021.
More reading:
- https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/matt/6?lang=eng&id=p1-p4#p1
- https://www.taylor.edu/news/letting-your-left-hand-know-what-your-right-hand-is-doing
- https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/serve/caring-for-those-in-need
- https://widowsmitereport.wordpress.com/caring-2022/
- http://www.mormonthink.com/tithing.htm
- https://www.justserve.org/
- https://www.smh.com.au/national/mormon-church-invests-billions-of-dollars-while-grossly-overstating-its-charitable-giving-20220927-p5blbc.html
- https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/shared/content/english/pdf/welfare/2011-welfare-services-fact-sheet.pdf