The [LDS] Church is a charity.
He then segues into a non sequitur of whether disaster aid, poverty relief, and food for the poor encompasses all of 'charity' (which is not the question).
Here's his entire nonsensical diatribe:...Engaging in those activities is not a requirement for being considered a charity under the laws of the United States...
[bolding added][please see the blog entry for his full commentary.]But I have a bit more to say about this:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is often attacked by critics for giving too little to charity. But this attack is fundamentally misconceived. The Church is a charity. Donations to it are tax-deductible in the United States, for example, under the charitable-giving rules of the Internal Revenue Service — as are donations to the American Red Cross, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Not all recognized charities provide disaster aid or poverty relief or food for the poor. Engaging in those activities is not a requirement for being considered a charity under the laws of the United States. Many 501(c)3 tax-exempt charities (e.g., the Sierra Club, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the National Audubon Society, the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation, Salt Lake City’s Ballet West, the Interpreter Foundation, the Barbershop Harmony Society [formerly the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, Inc. (SPEBSQSA)], the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance) don’t provide disaster aid or poverty relief or food for the poor. And it would be rather strange to fault them because they don’t. They’re doing what they were founded and created to do. Complaining about that is rather like complaining that a television isn’t turning out healthy vegetables, or that a fork hasn’t cured cancer...
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... cause.html
So, the LDS church is doing what it was created to do. Hoard money by funneling people's charitable contributions into their for-profit efforts.
You'll notice he also focuses on US law, bypassing the considerable issues the LDS church currently has in other countries, related to noncompliance with their laws re charitable contributions.
I am curious what the general response of the LDS church is on this question. This blog owner is admittedly an outlier, not only in the LDS church leadership but also in the LDS sanctioned apologetic world, so his opinion may be simply his own weird take, while not reflecting a concensus.
It would be interesting to hear from posters like Dr. Moore and Gadianton, among others, to see what the mainstream view is.