The church recently released its 2021 Annual Report. The church’s Annual Reports detail its humanitarian and social safety-net endeavors.[fn1] These endeavors should come as no surprise: as in years past, the church has been tremendously active in providing food, clean water, education, and vaccinations, among other things. It engages in these activites on its own and it partners with other charitable organizations.
The aid it provides is unsurprising because it’s the same kinds of things the church has highlighted in previous Annual Reports.
But this year’s Annual Report differs from previous years in a notable way: it quantifies how much the church has spent on these activities. That’s right: in 2021, the church spent about $906 million providing various types of humanitarian and safety net aid.
That is a lot of money.[fn2]
And it’s worth highlighting and celebrating. It’s worth highlighting and celebrating in the first instance because it represents the church doing good in the world. Jesus didn’t limit Himself to raising people spiritually; He fed the hungry. He healed the sick.
But it’s also worth highlighting and celebrating because it represents they type of fiscal transparency that the church hasn’t really done in the last seventy years or so.
It’s not perfect disclosure, of course. But it gives us insight into where some of our donated dollars are going. It gives us insight into the scope of those donated dollars.[fn3]
So I applaud the church, both for the sheer value of the aid it has provided and for its openness with us about that amount. I hope that both church’s giving and its financial transparency continue.
And I hope that I can follow the church’s example and give generously to organizations that meet people’s fundamental needs.
[fn1] Colloquially, you’d probably call them the church’s charitable endeavors, which is fair. But I’m a tax and nonprofit professor, and the legal definition of “charitable” includes, among other things, religious activities. So I’m trying to be more specific here.
[fn2] I’ve been on the internet long enough to know that there’s already somebody plotting out their comment, ready to say that the church could spend even more on this type of aid. Which is, technically, true. That’s the cool thing about money: it’s fungible. It is literally true that any person and any institution could spend more on humanitarian aid than they do. But it’s also a deeply uninteresting assertion unless it’s broadly contextualized with a theory of how much is appropriate to spend. And that’s more work than any of us are going to do in a comment on a quick blog post.
[fn3] If, as the whistleblower asserted, the church brings in about $7 billion of tithing revenue annually, this represents and expenditure of about 13% of the church’s tithing revenue. And yes, I understand that the church has other revenue streams. Still, it gives us some sense of scope.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash