Rainy Day Fund

[Kyle]

So the Mormon Church has a 100 Billion dollar rainy day fund that it kept secret and has never tapped- not even during the last economic crash:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mormon ... 1581138011

So will it tap into it now to help people and relieve suffering, or will it continue to hoard its money for purposes that it won’t reveal?

[Stan]

Did you think this would be easy to make?:



Meanwhile, Utah led the nation in panic buying.

[Ronster]

no one really expects (the Inquisition) or them to do much relief work....

However on a positive note: "NC’s faith-based Samaritan’s Purse airlifts coronavirus supplies, doctors to Italy"

[Kyle]

But for real- at some point the hypocrisy of requiring Mormons to tithe 10% (and it's much more strict and expected in the LDS) so that the money can go to continuing to build this fund-- and not to people in real need. It's a bit too much to ask.

I remember listing to a WSJ podcast about this subject and they noted that the income generated off the fund is enough to fund all church operations (including global missions and all other operations) and STILL put a significant chunk back in to continue growing the fund.

I know it's easy to roll our eyes at this and say, "What do you expect?" But I don't think that's fair to your average Mormon who's been dutifully tithing and thought they were doing it to alleviate suffering and help charitable and worthy causes in addition to funding the church. I really think public pressure needs to be placed on the Mormon church to stop accumulating gross amounts of wealth (I believe Jesus had something to say about this- eye of a needle and all) and actually use it to do the Lord's work.

This is gross.

[Phoebe]

Bizarre. The LDS people have to keep food on hand and such, too. There's a whole mentality of hoarding and then sitting on this rainy day hoard forever.

This is an extreme case, of course, but other religions or supposedly beneficent organizations aren't radically different in theory. Where I live it's probably the Catholic Church with the greatest religious-organization wealth. They're not content with what they have, either - for years now they've been pushing to take taxpayer dollars to support their religious schools, by voucher or charter or whatever means necessary. Lots of other religious groups doing this too. They don't want their tax dollars going to godless public schools, but they want to seize other people's tax dollars to support their own version of religious education. So far they've failed, but the effort continues and may someday succeed.

But speaking of schools, some universities have an endowment big enough to do all kinds of generous things they choose not to do. It starts to seem like the main purpose of the endowment is to continue making more and more money and make the endowment bigger, rather than to have a material impact on the lives of students in need or other people.

[Stan]

It'd be nice if there was an accessible list of endowment size for nonprofits. Why should I bother donating to a place with a $30 billion endowment?