Why do the Young Women need to have a fundraiser?

[Not Buying It]

Tonight I went to the fundraiser dinner for the Young Women, who are trying to get money for camp. My adult daughter asked a very insightful question - everyone there had already given the Church thousands of dollars, why do they need to have a fundraiser for the girls to go to camp? I told her a Church that has billion dollar malls, tons of real estate in Florida, and all kinds of other holdings can probably afford to send its young women to camp without trying to squeeze even more money out of people who have already given them 10% of their income.

After I ate I went and vacuumed the chapel to fulfill my building cleaning "assignment".

Have to say, I am irate tonight that a Church that holds so much wealth and demands so much of my money is making its young women hold fund raisers and "assigning" me to clean its building.

[Spicy McHaggis]

They do it because they can. TBMs are willing to give anything the church asks of them. And more. Once members start asking for something in return, maybe the church will change.

[Mormorrisey]

Aaaargh. Just feeling your pain today. I still have to attend these kinds of activities too to support the family, and don't really want to, for similar reasons. It's great your daughter lobbed up the softball for you to smash it out of the park, though. It is so annoying to keep giving one's all for a large moneymaking corporation that gives so little in return, and at least you got to point that out.

[Give It Time]

The scouts in my area provide a flag service as a fundraiser for their camp. On eight major holidays a year, they put flags in their donor's lawn. It looks very Norman Rockwell around here on holidays. Our young women also do a fundraiser for camp. I see it as keeping things equal. These fundraisers develop a good work ethic, will give them experience in producing a project. Both of these will give them a leg up in the business world.

However, if the young men in your area don't have to do a fundraiser, I don't blame you one bit for your anger. The Taoist in me suggests going with this flow and taking that righteous anger and going to the leadership and suggesting the young men do a fundraiser, as well.

[Emower]

The scouts in my area provide a flag service as a fundraiser for their camp. On eight major holidays a year, they put flags in their donor's lawn. It looks very Norman Rockwell around here on holidays. Our young women also do a fundraiser for camp. I see it as keeping things equal. These fundraisers develop a good work ethic, will give them experience in producing a project. Both of these will give them a leg up in the business world.

However, if the young men in your area don't have to do a fundraiser, I don't blame you one bit for your anger. The Taoist in me suggests going with this flow and taking that righteous anger and going to the leadership and suggesting the young men do a fundraiser, as well.

I was in a ward in Idaho at one point that did this. I worked for a landscape company and that flag deal gave us quite a bit of business fixing holes punched in sprinkler pipes.

[Give It Time]

The scouts in my area provide a flag service as a fundraiser for their camp. On eight major holidays a year, they put flags in their donor's lawn. It looks very Norman Rockwell around here on holidays. Our young women also do a fundraiser for camp. I see it as keeping things equal. These fundraisers develop a good work ethic, will give them experience in producing a project. Both of these will give them a leg up in the business world.

However, if the young men in your area don't have to do a fundraiser, I don't blame you one bit for your anger. The Taoist in me suggests going with this flow and taking that righteous anger and going to the leadership and suggesting the young men do a fundraiser, as well.

I was in a ward in Idaho at one point that did this. I worked for a landscape company and that flag deal gave us quite a bit of business fixing holes punched in sprinkler pipes.

They do a pretty good job of not doing that, here.

[document]

Frustrating indeed.

Speculation about to follow!!!

It takes a lot of money to run a church. It doesn't cost as much as a moderate-sized and income ward takes in.

I take a look at my little church with its roughly $340K annual budget. If you take out money given to the poor and salaries of volunteer positions in the LDS church (priest, youth director, organist, choir director, secretary, janitor, and deacon), our budget would be around $160,000 per year. I'll additionally take out the money that pays for our diocese (cathedral, salaries, programs, etc.) at $74,800 per year. That leaves us about $85,000 to take care of the church. That pays for the building, repair funds, instrument tuning, restocking (hymnals, books, etc.), electric bills, exterior upkeep, youth programs, children programs, etc.

In my area, if I assume that 1/3 of Mormons are inactive and only 1/3 pay tithing and everyone makes $10,000 less than the median income (so in other words, I'm being super-conservative), we're talking around $550,000 per year in income.

So, let's assume that half of that goes to maintain the building, right? That's actually pretty conservative, because realistically it would be about 3/4ths of that. Maintaining a church building is expensive (I'm shocked when I look over the numbers of other churches). But, let's assume that it's only $40,000 to maintain the building. So, $40,000 of a ward is building, and $45,000 is the programs (yeah, right).

But there's more! A ward shares the resources of the building with at least one other ward! That distributes the cost significantly! Between the three wards, you are raising $1,650,000 in revenue, and are spending (again, with insanely high numbers) $175,000 in programs and maintenance ($40,000 building, $135,000 in programs).

So, in my speculative example, the wards are raising $1.475 million dollars to be sent to Salt Lake. About 11% of that stays there.

Now, this is based on insanely high numbers. The last time I saw a ward budget was in 2006 and our annual budget was about $12,000 that we received from Salt Lake. Our large parties had budgets between $100 - $300. Most of the money went to youth and primary.

So...yes, it is crazy to have yet another fundraiser. You've already raised enough money to fund the girls camp, if the giving to Salt Lake were not so, well, greedy, people wouldn't have to be digging into their pockets more so than 10% of their income and fast offerings.

[RubinHighlander]

I would add to this the significant imbalance there is between the YW and YM programs in support, both financially and in the quality of the activities, at least in all the wards and stakes I was in over 40+ years. The YW were always scrambling for funds or making quilts while the YM went off on a boating trip. Friends of Scouting collection was a mandatory event every year that was akin to the Sheriff of Nottingham tax collection. This was a big item on the shelf for my XW and DW.

[Not Buying It]

Why does the Church have such an obsession with organizational wealth accumulation when none of the billions of dollars ever benefits the members? We're talking billions of dollars in malls, real estate, and other means of wealth generation, and the Young Women in my ward are putting on a dinner to raise funds so they can go to camp. How does that make any sense? The Church isn't making that money for the purpose of benefiting the members - the auxiliaries all have shoestring budgets, youth have fundraisers to participate in Church sponsored activities, geez 14 year old teachers even have to take turns bringing the freakin' Sacrament bread every week. All this while BILLIONS are being thrown around at projects designed to MAKE MORE MONEY that isn't going to benefit the members in any visible way.

So if the purpose of making all of that money with the Church's "financial arm" isn't to use the money for the benefit of the members, what exactly is the purpose of making all of that money?

[Give It Time]

Why does the Church have such an obsession with organizational wealth accumulation when none of the billions of dollars ever benefits the members? We're talking billions of dollars in malls, real estate, and other means of wealth generation, and the Young Women in my ward are putting on a dinner to raise funds so they can go to camp. How does that make any sense? The Church isn't making that money for the purpose of benefiting the members - the auxiliaries all have shoestring budgets, youth have fundraisers to participate in Church sponsored activities, geez 14 year old teachers even have to take turns bringing the freakin' Sacrament bread every week. All this while BILLIONS are being thrown around at projects designed to MAKE MORE MONEY that isn't going to benefit the members in any visible way.

So if the purpose of making all of that money with the Church's "financial arm" isn't to use the money for the benefit of the members, what exactly is the purpose of making all of that money?

Well said. I get it. I do. I agree.

To answer your final question.

I don't know.

NBI. I'm hurting you're hurting. I have no answers.

[Culper Jr.]

Why does the Church have such an obsession with organizational wealth accumulation when none of the billions of dollars ever benefits the members? We're talking billions of dollars in malls, real estate, and other means of wealth generation, and the Young Women in my ward are putting on a dinner to raise funds so they can go to camp. How does that make any sense? The Church isn't making that money for the purpose of benefiting the members - the auxiliaries all have shoestring budgets, youth have fundraisers to participate in Church sponsored activities, geez 14 year old teachers even have to take turns bringing the freakin' Sacrament bread every week. All this while BILLIONS are being thrown around at projects designed to MAKE MORE MONEY that isn't going to benefit the members in any visible way.

So if the purpose of making all of that money with the Church's "financial arm" isn't to use the money for the benefit of the members, what exactly is the purpose of making all of that money?

Been thinking a lot about this lately. The church is obsessed with its image, especially to other religions. It wants to be seen as growing, thriving and wealthy. Beautiful temples and a world class university, Salt Lake, mormonism's stronghold, being a beautiful thriving city with first class amenities. It wants so badly to be respected by other religions and seen by them as more than just a fringe cult. The majority of the tithing money is used to keep up this appearance, which ironically is something the church preaches against. The church wants to answer the question, "which church is true" with the answer: the one with the beautiful buildings and first class city. It's the way they hope an outsider will see the church.

Meanwhile, the question today that is increasingly being asked is not "which church is true", but "why do I need church at all?" When you experience mormonism at the local level, with its programs being little more than an underfunded pitiful joke run by disinterested leaders, the answer that comes through is that you really don't need church. The church is truly hastening the work... of bringing about its decreasing relevancy.

[wtfluff]

Been thinking a lot about this lately. The church is obsessed with its image, especially to other religions. It wants to be seen as growing, thriving and wealthy. Beautiful temples and a world class university, Salt Lake, mormonism's stronghold, being a beautiful thriving city with first class amenities. It wants so badly to be respected by other religions and seen by them as more than just a fringe cult. The majority of the tithing money is used to keep up this appearance, which ironically is something the church preaches against. The church wants to answer the question, "which church is true" with the answer: the one with the beautiful buildings and first class city. It's the way they hope an outsider will see the church.

Thinking about the LDS Corporation this way is truly eye-opening. It's literally the epitome of "Keeping up with the Jones' " on a huge, massive, corporate level.

Literally nothing to do with helping their "members" or humankind in general, just "keeping up appearances".

[2bizE]

I would add to this the significant imbalance there is between the YW and YM programs in support, both financially and in the quality of the activities, at least in all the wards and stakes I was in over 40+ years. The YW were always scrambling for funds or making quilts while the YM went off on a boating trip. Friends of Scouting collection was a mandatory event every year that was akin to the Sheriff of Nottingham tax collection. This was a big item on the shelf for my XW and DW.

My understanding is all of the money for friends of scouting goes to run the scout district and not individual charters.

[FiveFingerMnemonic]

I would add to this the significant imbalance there is between the YW and YM programs in support, both financially and in the quality of the activities, at least in all the wards and stakes I was in over 40+ years. The YW were always scrambling for funds or making quilts while the YM went off on a boating trip. Friends of Scouting collection was a mandatory event every year that was akin to the Sheriff of Nottingham tax collection. This was a big item on the shelf for my XW and DW.

My understanding is all of the money for friends of scouting goes to run the scout district and not individual charters.

This is correct, and the bulk of it goes to full-time salaries, not all to camps and infrastructure like is advertised on the donation phamplets.

https://www.change.org/p/wwwtakescoutin ... hriftiness

[RubinHighlander]

I agree the money collected for FoS is not directly benefiting the local ward/stake, but it does indirectly benefit it. The point I was trying to make is that the church dedicates a great deal of resource to supporting the scouting program, but there is nothing equivalent for the YW, like Friends of Girscouts. This is very much a cultural misogamy issue as it is an LDS one, but the church continues to propagate it via their priesthood authority.

[Can of Worms]

it has been three years since I was active in church and didn't realize that the YW are now fundraising. My experience is very different.

Nearly 30 years ago when I was in YW it irked me to no end that the YM would have these elaborate camps and the YW went to the same dumpy camp and went snipe hunting every year. As a Laurel I ended up at a correlation meeting and had the nerve to ask about the discrepancy. The YM leader told me that the YM fundraise to support their activities. Great I said - there will be enough time for the YW to fundraise for camp next summer. No one at correlation thought that it was appropriate for the YW to fundraise BUT the bishop agreed that the YW should have better opportunities and experiences so they significantly increased the budget for the YW. The next summer the YW went white water rafting - I passed because I wasn't interested in the activity I was only interested in being treated fairly. The increased budget for the YW lasted for years - my much younger sister and her cohort also had great camp experiences. Once the girls had the budget it was awfully hard to take it away from them.

[2bizE]

Fellow NOMs have likely read this already, but it paints a pretty good picture...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kiwimormon ... wn-wealth/