As DCP himself has lamented, the church’s detailed financial reports are not available. That is a very important distinction between the church and the charities he compares it to. But the “widow’s mite” report uses publicly available data to try and infer the truth.“DCP” wrote: some cynical critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may (and do) sniff at a mere $1.36B in 2023 humanitarian aid as too little, too cheap, even pathetic and disgraceful. But I doubt that the American National Red Cross ($1.05B) or the United States Fund for UNICEF ($959M) would be so dismissive.
The truth is that out of this 1.3 billion in “humanitarian aid” approximately 850 million was paid out to members only in the form of fast offering assistance. Only $450 million would be considered humanitarian aid, the kind given out to anyone without regard to membership or religious affiliation.
Noteworthy is DCP’s silence about the church being essentially shamed into giving a significant percentage to the non-Mormon world. In 2021, only an estimated 100 million of the 900 million was given out as humanitarian aid to non-members. This change comes on the heels of a flood of bad publicity pointing out just how much money the church was hoarding and just how little it was spending.
The widow’s mite predicts real humanitarian aid may eventually surpass the church’s welfare spending, which would be a much welcomed step in the church becoming a true top 10 contender with the likes of the organizations DCP pointed to.
However, to put the current numbers into perspective, for every 1 dollar in humanitarian aid that the church spends, it spends 5 dollars in church welfare, and 99 dollars into church investments.
For more details and analysis, I strongly recommend the Widow’s mite report:
https://widowsmitereport.wordpress.com/caring-2023/
The church would do well to present their financial information themselves, rather than have others do it for them. If they want to be seen as a charity the way DCP would like them to be seen, that is.