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Perhaps this discussion on the exmormon.org BBS may shed some light ...
Subject: Charity
Date: 2000-09-03 14:57
Author: mckay
Yesterday, GBH in the press conference gave the figure of $55.2 million as the amount that the church spent on welfare projects last year. He claims close to 11 million members, so for you without calculators handy, this is about $5.00/year/member or about 42 cents/month. Now I know that there can be several corrections to this figure such as there is not really that many members and the donated time is probably not added. However before retiring, I donated more than twenty times this amount to the United Fund alone, yearly. The average family must pay four or five thousand dollars/year in tithing and etc, for temples and GA salaries. So less than a hundred dollars/year/family for charity is not overwhelming. I have no interest in complaining of the good the Church does, they do a lot of good, but let's keep it in prospective. Also lets keep in mind the vast amount of taxes that is not collected by the Federal and State governments because most money rolling into the Church is tax deductible. If I need to be corrected anywhere I would love to know about it.
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Subject: and Goodwill...
Date: 2000-09-03 20:55
Author: Cezoram
As I may have mentioned before, part of my work in Japan for the past 20 years has been setting up and overseeing "study abroad" programs that include "homestays" -- finding a family who will let a student stay in their home during the study period, which can be anything from a month to a school year. Interestingly, the most popular places -- places that have the greatest number of families that provide the best environment for an overseas student -- are suburbs of large cities (Sacramento, Phoenix, Denver), or smaller, out-of-the-way towns like Merced and San Luis Obispo, CA. (Sorry, the bulk of my experience is with the western states, but I've heard good things about Kentucky and Indiana, too.) You'd think that the Mormons -- those "family specialists" -- would provide the ideal home. They don't. Overall, Utah is not a popular spot for finding student sponsors. Too many rules, not enough time to contribute to the "cultural exchange" aspect, and the tendency to want to convert everyone around them put them near the bottom of the list. "Cheap and mean" is how one of my students described her experience with her LDS host mom in St. George (UT) last summer. The only other similar problems we've had have been with Born Again Christians. If these folks didn't have those "convert the world" urges they'd have much more enjoyable homes. Goodwill . . . with an agenda.
Page Modified March 10, 2000