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Is 100 billion really that much? The church has 16 million members. That is about $6,000 per member. The church has had 200 years of tithing and compound intere

Is 100 billion really that much? The church has 16 million members. That is about $6,000 per member. The church has had 200 years of tithing and compound interest to get to this point. If used as an endowment to support 16 million people in 170+ countries that doesn't seem too crazy. A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy.

tomrod 7y ago
16 million members claimed, closer to 20%-30% attend, maybe 20% of that figure pay substantial amounts (excluding children, impoverished, most families are single-income homes due to Mormon doctrine, etc.)
darksaints 7y ago
$100 billion in one fund. $32 billion accounted for in other funds [0]. Not to mention 2% of the land in Florida, several billion dollars in commercial and residential real estate. Who knows what else they're hiding. And 16 million members is fools' accounting. It doesn't account for the millions of people like me who don't go to church and yet are still members because I don't want to pay money to hire a lawyer to force the church to take my name off the records. [0] https://kutv.com/news/local/mormonleaks-says-new-documents-link-lds-church-to-companies-worth-over-32-billion https://kutv.com/news/local/mormonleaks-says-new-documents-l...
- ngngngng 7y ago
  > I don't want to pay money to hire a lawyer to force the church to take my name off the records. You literally just have to ask in writing. Send a letter to church headquarters in Salt Lake. But you already knew that didn't you? I swear ex-mormons are more devoted to getting people converted to their way of thinking than believing mormons are.
  - darksaints 7y ago
    No, sending a letter in writing is not enough. Not if you don't want to be tracked down and harassed with reconversion attempts, or for them to contact your family members and friends to rat you out. The only way that has remotely proven to prevent such behavior from the church is to have it done by a lawyer. But you already knew that didn't you?
    - ngngngng 7y ago
      My dude, you've obviously spent hours on hacker news trying to defend your belief system (or lack thereof). Just let it be, if you don't want to be Mormon anymore, then don't. Your inability to live with your decisions is painfully clear by the time you invest trying to publicly justify your choices. Move on like the dozens of people I've known that just sent in a letter and have not been harassed since. Edit: Also, the part you edited out wasn't as clever as you hoped, glad you removed it.
      - darksaints 7y ago
        Mormons spend tons of time proselytizing. Does that mean they're unable to live with their decisions and that they're trying to justify their choices? I know you want me to just move on and stop criticizing your church but no thanks. I'm not going to give it a rest. I'm invested in the destruction of the cult that made my life a living hell. If the mormon church really wants to be the kind of church where people leave quietly, they have to change the way they treat people. No more lies and deceit would be a good start.
  - henrikschroder 7y ago
    > You literally just have to ask in writing. No, that is no longer true. Because of the popularity of services like quitmormon.com, all resignation requests have to be notarized since a couple of months back.
jacurtis 7y ago
This isn't that the church has $100 billion dollars. They actually are estimated to be worth more than Apple in real estate and cash. This $100B is one single fund that is a "secret" fund. It was collected by the church members donating to charity, but asking the church to allocate the funds. So this is in addition to all the other offerings a member is required to make (10% of pre-tax gross income). So the church took money promising to allocate it to charity, and the church members thought they were donating to charity, but the church instead siphoned it off and kept it for themselves in a secret fund that they denied existed. It took a whistleblower from within the fund's organization to reveal it to the public. So this is in addition to normal money that the church has, or its real estates, or its hundreds of billions in other investments. This is actually a tiny slice of the pie, but it was collected maliciously and wasn't reported to the IRS.
- pc2g4d 7y ago
  "kept it for themselves"---it still belongs to the church. I thought everybody assumed, since the church so frequently taught its members about prudent financial management, that the church itself was doing the same thing. I've left the church, I have many criticisms of it, but I really don't have a problem with an organization taking the long view and accumulating a large enough reserve to survive on the interest. It's the same approach universities and other large nonprofits use. And it's not like it's particularly neglecting its present-day mission either. Probably is too stingy, though (e.g. using volunteers to clean buildings.)
henrikschroder 7y ago
> A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy. Technically, legally, the current president of the Mormon church, Russel Nelson, has those 100 billion dollars, and everything else the church owns, because of its corporate structure.
- wl 7y ago
  Those assets, technically and legally, belong to the office Nelson occupies, not Nelson personally. It's a corporation sole, which is often used by Bishops of other churches to hold the assets of a diocese. The alternative would be the corporation aggregate with a board of directors.

tomrod 7y ago

16 million members claimed, closer to 20%-30% attend, maybe 20% of that figure pay substantial amounts (excluding children, impoverished, most families are single-income homes due to Mormon doctrine, etc.)

darksaints 7y ago

$100 billion in one fund. $32 billion accounted for in other funds [0]. Not to mention 2% of the land in Florida, several billion dollars in commercial and residential real estate. Who knows what else they're hiding. And 16 million members is fools' accounting. It doesn't account for the millions of people like me who don't go to church and yet are still members because I don't want to pay money to hire a lawyer to force the church to take my name off the records. [0] https://kutv.com/news/local/mormonleaks-says-new-documents-link-lds-church-to-companies-worth-over-32-billion https://kutv.com/news/local/mormonleaks-says-new-documents-l...

ngngngng 7y ago
> I don't want to pay money to hire a lawyer to force the church to take my name off the records. You literally just have to ask in writing. Send a letter to church headquarters in Salt Lake. But you already knew that didn't you? I swear ex-mormons are more devoted to getting people converted to their way of thinking than believing mormons are.
- darksaints 7y ago
  No, sending a letter in writing is not enough. Not if you don't want to be tracked down and harassed with reconversion attempts, or for them to contact your family members and friends to rat you out. The only way that has remotely proven to prevent such behavior from the church is to have it done by a lawyer. But you already knew that didn't you?
  - ngngngng 7y ago
    My dude, you've obviously spent hours on hacker news trying to defend your belief system (or lack thereof). Just let it be, if you don't want to be Mormon anymore, then don't. Your inability to live with your decisions is painfully clear by the time you invest trying to publicly justify your choices. Move on like the dozens of people I've known that just sent in a letter and have not been harassed since. Edit: Also, the part you edited out wasn't as clever as you hoped, glad you removed it.
    - darksaints 7y ago
      Mormons spend tons of time proselytizing. Does that mean they're unable to live with their decisions and that they're trying to justify their choices? I know you want me to just move on and stop criticizing your church but no thanks. I'm not going to give it a rest. I'm invested in the destruction of the cult that made my life a living hell. If the mormon church really wants to be the kind of church where people leave quietly, they have to change the way they treat people. No more lies and deceit would be a good start.
- henrikschroder 7y ago
  > You literally just have to ask in writing. No, that is no longer true. Because of the popularity of services like quitmormon.com, all resignation requests have to be notarized since a couple of months back.

jacurtis 7y ago

This isn't that the church has $100 billion dollars. They actually are estimated to be worth more than Apple in real estate and cash. This $100B is one single fund that is a "secret" fund. It was collected by the church members donating to charity, but asking the church to allocate the funds. So this is in addition to all the other offerings a member is required to make (10% of pre-tax gross income). So the church took money promising to allocate it to charity, and the church members thought they were donating to charity, but the church instead siphoned it off and kept it for themselves in a secret fund that they denied existed. It took a whistleblower from within the fund's organization to reveal it to the public. So this is in addition to normal money that the church has, or its real estates, or its hundreds of billions in other investments. This is actually a tiny slice of the pie, but it was collected maliciously and wasn't reported to the IRS.

pc2g4d 7y ago
"kept it for themselves"---it still belongs to the church. I thought everybody assumed, since the church so frequently taught its members about prudent financial management, that the church itself was doing the same thing. I've left the church, I have many criticisms of it, but I really don't have a problem with an organization taking the long view and accumulating a large enough reserve to survive on the interest. It's the same approach universities and other large nonprofits use. And it's not like it's particularly neglecting its present-day mission either. Probably is too stingy, though (e.g. using volunteers to clean buildings.)

henrikschroder 7y ago

> A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy. Technically, legally, the current president of the Mormon church, Russel Nelson, has those 100 billion dollars, and everything else the church owns, because of its corporate structure.

wl 7y ago
Those assets, technically and legally, belong to the office Nelson occupies, not Nelson personally. It's a corporation sole, which is often used by Bishops of other churches to hold the assets of a diocese. The alternative would be the corporation aggregate with a board of directors.