LDS Church Spends About $40 Million a Year on Welfare and Humanitarian Efforts, Apostle Says

In a lecture at the University of Oxford, Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spends about $40 million a year on welfare, humanitarian and other church-sponsored projects around the world, a level he said it has maintained for more than 30 years. The Deseret News calculated that this would total approximately $1.2 billion over that period. Elder Oaks also said Latter-day Saint volunteers devoted 25 million hours of labor in the most recent year.

Elder Oaks described the church’s work in 2015. “In the year 2015 we had 177 emergency response projects in 56 countries,” he said. He added that “hundreds of projects that impacted more than 1 million people” were carried out in seven other categories of assistance, including clean water, immunization and vision care.

The article also noted a seven-minute report on the PBS program “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly” about the church’s welfare system. According to reporter Lucky Severson, the system includes 115 bishops’ storehouses in the United States and “holds enough provisions to meet the projected demands of members and nonmembers in the United States and Canada for two years.” A church spokesperson later clarified to the Deseret News that the storehouses in the United States and Canada hold enough provisions to meet the projected needs of church members requiring food assistance for two years.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve also gave figures for the church’s humanitarian work in an address to a gathering in the Houses of Parliament, at the Palace of Westminster. He said LDS Charities responded in 2015 to 132 disasters in 60 nations, including a major typhoon in the Philippines, a cyclone in the Kingdom of Tonga, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and refugee assistance for Syria and Iraq. In Syria’s neighboring country of Jordan, the church’s humanitarian work has included more than $1 million in aid, provided after the Jordanian government asked for help with refugees fleeing the war in Syria, a step that reflects welcoming those in need (Matthew 25:35).

Elder Holland said that beyond emergency relief, the church provided wheelchairs in 48 countries, maternal and newborn care in 42 countries, vision care in 34 countries, clean water and sanitation projects in 26 countries, gardening projects in 17 countries and medical immunizations in nine countries.

Elder Oaks told the Oxford audience that these humanitarian efforts are separate from the church’s worldwide missionary work. “Our humanitarian aid is given without regard to religious affiliation, because we want our missionary teaching to be received and considered without influence from force or food or other favors,” he said.

Other examples of the church’s humanitarian efforts cited in the report include bringing clean water to Ghana, saving a school in Samoa and building a new home for a man in Kazakhstan.

Source: Read the original report