My current calling is Stake Financial Auditor. There are four of us in the stake, and twice a year we visit each ward (we each do two wards) and sit with the bishop and ward financial clerk and review the books. The church is very close hold on its financial dealings and it is also very careful on how the money is handled, and how it is spent.
While there is nothing secret or sacred about what I do as an auditor, unless you have been a financial clerk or in a bishopric, you probably have no idea what an audit involves, or even that they occurred.
Every ward/branch/mission in the church is audited twice a year, in January and July. During the audit, I ask questions of the clerk and Bishop to make sure that the donation envelops are always opened in the presents of two people, one of which has to be a member of the bishopric. Also I make sure two people always take the money to a 24 hr drop box on Sunday after it is counted.
More detailed is the selection of 18 expenditures from the previous six months, which I then verify that each check has two signatures on it, the Bishop signed the form approving the expense, and finally, that there is a receipt.
Each exception is noted, and a corrective action is taken. The most common exception is the lack of a receipt. The most common missing receipt is when a Bishop uses fast offerings to help somebody pay the rent/mortgage. The check is never written to the person receiving assistance (another item I check) but is written to the landlord. But once that check is delivered, the person must get a receipt and return it to the bishop. This was a perennial problem when I was bishop, and is the same today for every ward I audit.
Lastly, I check one deposit from each month, making sure the names from each donation slip match the printout, and that the amounts match also. This assures that everybody gets credit for their donation.
While I have no worldly training to be a financial auditor, being a Bishop for five years and being a detailed oriented engineer, along with training from the Stake seems to be all I need for this calling.
Does knowing the church does very detailed audits of each ward twice a year make you feel better about the churches fiances, or do you still want to know where the money came from that paid for the mall?
Wheat & Tares 
For a religious population that is known for its high rate of tithing members, very little of those funds are used on the local level. Local clergy are not paid. There is no ward or stake office with a paid secretary. There is one lousy copier in each building and it is locked up tight. There is no paid nursery. There is no custodian. Energy bills are not high as the HVAC systems are not on 24/7. There is a church exemption from local taxes.
All ward organizations are on extremely tight budgets. Basic necessary expenditures to run an auxiliary are often subsidized by individuals in the ward.
On a local level, members can receive financial aid when needed, but those funds come out of fast offerings not tithing. Extra fast offerings do not stay local. Those get sent to SLC and are never seen again. The LDS church does not commit to funding of local community service organizations. The only assistance the church offers is the free labor of members.
Money flows to the central church. It does not flow back.
The central church is extremely careful to keep each individual unit financially accountable. Who keeps the central church accountable? The easy answer is God. But if God isn’t enough to keep local units accountable why would that be any different at a higher level?
The church talks about their amazing Church Storehouse and all the production of food that they are capable of. Having worked around one of those basic entities of production while in college, I was surprised to realize that while some small portion of the production went to the storehouse with storehouse labeling, the bulk of production was labeled for commercial sales.
There is no local position within the church that focuses on finding local needs and addressing them with food or financial resources of the LDS church. The only consistent offers from the church is free labor. The church is constantly setting up ways for local members to give more, volunteer more, help more. The church does nothing but assign one volunteer to go assign more volunteers to work. Whether through the ward, stake or Just Serve, free labor is the only reliable commodity offered.
The LDS church has recently purchased a number of high dollar investment properties in my local area.. $300 million for one. $650 million for another. $200 million for a third.
Yes, I do want to see some hard numbers. For a church that expects members to be fully devout and loyal, very little is given back. There is ZERO accountability.
“While I have no worldly training to be a financial auditor,..”
What’s strange is my daughter is a BYU educated CPA but for some reason isn’t qualified to be a stake auditor or ward financial clerk – or even handle fast offerings that eleven year old boys collect.
Like Damascene, I want to see numbers.
My husband stopped paying tithing last year and (began donating to other charities rated on Charity Navigator) because of the church’s lack of transparency and it’s commercial businesses.
Recently, as we were cleaning the church, I was remembering how my uncle was the custodian for his ward building for several years until they instituted the current “do it yourself/unpaid labor” model. I would feel good about my tithing dollars helping to pay a custodian for our building.
Doesn’t change my views at all as I have been on the other side of those audits. I have no question that things are generally run quite well on that end of things.
It would appear I am not alone in noticing the capacity of the church to volunteer free labour from the members. I prefer to volunteer my time where I see fit. I would also appear I am not alone in my regret of the loss of a paid custodian. Growing up our custodian was a very well respected member of our ward community, and as children we were all taught to care for the building, so as not to make the well-beloved custodian’s job harder than it needed to be. Seemingly the church does not believe the labourer to be worthy of their hire. I’ve commented before on the extensive subsidising that goes on in callings by members, especially when it comes to providing printed materials. There is no copier in our building.
I’m glad there’s some oversight to the work of the clerks etc. I’ve had to alert them to errors to be corrected in the past. There was the time many years ago my sister’s donations were credited to me, that was fixed. More recently there was the month that my entire donation had been put under tithing when I checked the online receipt.
One of my brothers serves as auditor on his stake.
More on members subsidising: I sometimes wonder if this could count as tithes in kind. What would happen if members started subtracting these costs from monetary tithes and submitting tithing slips declaring so many printouts for a class in terms of ink and paper costs etc. How would an auditor even deal with that?
I’ve spent a lot of years as a ward clerk and I agree that the spending at the ward level is well operated and I have never seen any abuse whatsoever. My current ward is in an affluent area and we collect $600K + in annual tithing. Our ward budget is $10-11K. I have no concerns ith what’s spent at the local ward level. The problem is this represents less than 2% of the tithing paid. I have major concerns about the other 98%.
My last calling was the financial clerk in our ward. I was in that position for a little more than two years. I haven’t been to church in the nearly three years since asking to be released and turning in my recommend. I wouldn’t t say that it was the primary reason for my departure. Not even close. But having served in many different roles and organizations in the church over the nearly 25 years since my mission at that time, it was an eye opener to see how much cash came in through just our little suburban ward in the southeastern US ($650k in tithing alone in 2015) and how little came back our direction (our budget allotment that year was somewhere between $11-12k, half of which went tot the YM). It made me wonder where all the rest of the money went as we zipped it off to SLC every Sunday. Now I understand that not every ward has that level of contribution. And I’m all for spreading the wealth. But still. I would definitely like to see the global numbers. I’m not holding my breath.
Here’s one problem with our system.
I was ministering to a single woman who suffered with multiple sclerosis and mental health issues. Her only source of income was a monthly disability check. Making ends meet was a struggle and she received some food assistance from the church. The nearest bishops storehouse is more than 100 miles away, but monthly, someone was assigned to pick up food orders. But then, the trips stopped because the Storehouse was undergoing renovation and our ward/Stake? was no longer able to get food from it. I can’t exactly recall the circumstances, but around that time, I called the bishops storehouse to see how I could get some food for her. I was told, that food assistance is only temporary and not meant to be a long term solution.
The woman eventually was eventually placed in a care facility out of our area.
Last I heard, members in need are directed to local agencies which provide food assistance.
Does our church contribute monetarily to these local charities? I don’t know.
Having served in a Bishopric, I agree that audits are well run and that spending on a ward and even stake level are well run. That is a different thing than transparency about how much money the church takes in, how malls are paid for, where those profits go, etc. The church is far to secretive about this.
People mentioning a ward budget of ~$11K are not mentioning that that is just the local activities budget. That does not include costs that directly benefit members even if it doesn’t come out of the ward budget:
*Meetinghouse construction and maintenance including parking lots and sidewalks and landscaping
*Salaries and benefits for facilities maintenance staff plus costs for contractors. These are the people who take care of keys and locks and HVAC systems and internet and appliances in kitchens and plumbing and electrical systems including light bulbs. Not to mention replacing cleaning products and toilet paper. How much do trash bags cost for your building? If you have an elevator in your building, what’s its annual cost?
*Temple construction and maintenance including parking lots and sidewalks and landscaping
*Printed temple recommends and temple schedules and ordinance cards
*Salaries and benefits for staff at temples (engineers, security, recorders)
*Utilities for all buildings including water, electricity, heat, and air conditioning
*Internet and wifi in church buildings
*Computers in clerks offices
*Seminaries and Institutes, where the Church has buildings (and parking lots and sidewalks and landscaping) and paid staff with salaries and benefits
*Curriculum development
*Translation department
*The people who film and broadcast General Conference and firesides
*Sunday school, Seminaries and Institutes, Self Reliance Services, Addiction Recovery, Family History materials
*The infrastructure for Bishops’ Storehouses
*Missionary department; missionaries cover some of their own costs but the Church covers others including the cost of housing mission presidents so the missionaries have local oversight and guidance anywhere in the world. The monthly cost for missions have not gone up significantly in decades although housing costs have, so the Church may be subsidizing family costs.
*Boy Scout fees paid on a stake and general level (will be ending soon)
*The kids from your ward and stake who go off to BYU, BYU-Idaho, or BYU-Hawaii for a partly-subsidized education
*The people in your ward and stake who are participating in a partly-subsidized education through Pathways
*Family history centers including regularly-replaced computer and printing equipment and furnishings
*FamilySearch resources including data storage and free memberships for members to Ancestry and other commercial genealogical organizations
*Purchase and maintenance of youth camps including full-time paid staff
*Stake activities including Relief Society and Priesthood and youth conferences
That’s just off the top of my head. Anything else?
Quinn actually has done some excellent work on where the money is going. It is amazing just how much money goes to keep the Church going in Europe and the third world.
I agree completely with recent comments that there are many other expenses associated with running an organization of this size on both a local and global level. That’s the point. Let’s have a little transparency on what that looks like. With actual numbers. I also understand they are under no obligation to do so. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t.
FWIW, I have not read Quinn’s book but I (and my CPA spouse) listened to an interview with Quinn about his book. Based on what we heard, it seemed to my spouse Quinn’s work was fairly limited, leaving many, many questions unanswered, explained or explored. (Probably because Quinn lacks knowledge about corporate finance).
“The church is very close hold”
“churches fiances”
“in the presents of two people”
“Bishop” “bishop”
[too many punctuation errors and run-on sentences to count]
“being a detail oriented engineer” (ironically, without the necessary hyphen)
I’m glad Bishop Bill is out there looking after the the Church’s resources with his eye for detail.
There is a much better discussion of financial disclosure by Sam Brunson, an actual expert in nonprofit finances, in the Spring 2015 issue of Dialogue. I recommend that for a detailed (and copy-edited) discussion of relative benefits of financial disclosure (and one not motivated by an apparent occasional itch to scream “mall!” into the void). For my part, I agree with him that detailed financial disclosure isn’t very useful, but that an independent audit would benefit the Church and its members.
Dsc, I think it’s incredibly rude of you to criticize Bishop Bill for his typos. This is a blog. If you want to Dialogue, read Dialogue. Take this for what it is.
Dsc, I learned teaching honors English at BYU that there is no necessary connection between intelligence and spelling or between intelligence and grammar. Of course, there are also different kinds of intelligence; there is also no necessary connection between what one might call academic intelligence and common sense. As one opposing counsel once said to me, “Cain’t you say that no nicer?!”
Ziff, it sounds incredibly naive to not like someone pointing out numerous errors from someone claiming to know better how to deal with the church’s money better than it’s authorized leaders. Bill set himself up as a light into the world, he deserves any pushback he gets…
@Need Screen Name,
Your point is valid that members benefit from things outside of the ward budget. My building has 3 wards and probably nearly $2M in annual tithing collection. If you take building cost, maintenance, utilities, and other direct costs to that building, you would certainly be above 2%. I’d think we’d be in the 10-15% range on an operating basis.
Of course there is a big overhead expense at the SLC level, though it’s highly debatable how much benefit the individual member receives from that allocation.
I don’t doubt Bishop Bill’s intelligence. I do doubt that he is, as he claimed, detail-oriented. Due to numerous factual errors and hypocritical statements (e.g. defending his own misrepresentations with logic that he publicly criticized only weeks before) I’ve also come to look critically at all of Bishop Bill’s posts.
Ziff, if you’re concerned about unnecessary snark, don’t be. Bishop Bill is as capable of dishing it as he is receiving it.
Greg,
Good for you and your ward. That’s not true of most wards outside of the United States. I, for one, am glad that local wards don’t have to find their own buildings, and that’s in part because of the success and generosity of members where you are.
Dsc,
I think that is a good thing. Don’t mistake my deep concern about the total secrecy related to Church finances, as opposition to better off wards supporting less fortunate wards. That’s exactly how it should be.
Dsc, thanks for your commentary. I would not expect anything less from a person of your profession……..
When I was reading this, my comment was along the lines of Dave C’s.
As i read this post, I understand that you’re probably not saying all the details of what a financial audit for the church involves, but the main thing I’m struck by is by how everything you *have* described only describes part of what I would experience as part of a financial audit as a CPA (albeit I am a tax professional, so my involvement in audits is with reviewing tax provision amounts).
Namely: these are tests of controls. And while determining the effectiveness of controls is important in an integrated audit (segregation of duties is extremely important), I have no feel for the *substantive* procedures performed to validate the numbers.
(that being said, as I read through the comments, I understand the frustration with a lack of transparency, but I would also point out that not all financial statements are audited for public release.)
Dsc, your comment to Bishop Bill was pedantic and rude. Maybe you’re having a bad day – I don’t know – but knock it off. You’re not contributing to the discussion whatsoever with comments like that.
Yeah c‘mon DSC, Mike and others, stop being mean sometimes and start feeling the Spirit in your comments.
Being funny though is still ok, as long as it‘s above the belt.
What I meant to write:
I definitely would like to see more financial transparency in the Church. I didn‘t know there were audits at ward level, or that there is a calling for that, and I was even in a bishopric. I could just be oblivious – I didn‘t know about the 2nd anointing either.
I live in Europe – maybe things are different here. I‘ll be quiet now.
Maybe this is too far off topic, but I’m in favor of much less transparency on the local ward level
(But definitely finances should be more transparent at the general level).
I’m increasingly more and more uncomfortable with my tithe amount being known to several financial/bishopric members in my ward. It feels awkward to me, having been through both drastic famine and fortune that my neighbors should have such insight into my private financial affairs. I might be more inclined to donate even more freely if I felt my neighbors weren’t privy to personal financial matters, it absolutely distorts relationships negatively.
I pay online through lds.org, but our end-of-year statements are nevertheless printed and redistributed to us at tithing settlement, so at least the financial clerk and bishop see the amount. This is unacceptable to me, it feels too much like I’m putitng my alms on public display.
Yikes. I thought because I paid online that the amounts were private. I didn’t get a printed statement from my ward, just an email from the church telling me to go to LDS.org to download my annual statement. Random people in the ward knowing our income makes me deeply uncomfortable as well.
Who do you report the audit results to? This year, instead of telling them how exactly stake funds were used, you and your co-auditor in the stake should try only reporting your findings with this phrase:
“We are of the opinion that the general funds of the stake received and expended during the year 2019 have been properly accounted for in accordance with established procedures outlined herein.”
Would they be satisfied with that explanation? Probably not. Am I satisfied that the above words constitute what is essentially the most detailed official accounting of church financial practices that I can ever expect to receive? Nah.
Thank you, Eugene for the complement. I haven’t even said one thing on this topic yet and my silence is considered mean. I am honored.
Everything I say is funny…to me. Hee. Haw. Hee. Haw. What do you think, I’m Sat. Nite Live material?
It is hard to even get it above the belt when one is as short in statue spiritually and educationally as I am.
(I am still trying to figure out how to use the darn inogi thingies and also to spell the word.:)
Perhaps we should ponderize these words at this time of my favorite relative: “I never said I had a testimony that my own theories are true…..” Rod Meldrum.
***
Attempting to contribute a tiny, useful morsel to the conversation:
In my statistically average ward for the South (according to a member of the 70’s- personal conversation) we took in well over a million dollars in tithing every year back in the 1990’s- when the bishop was so foolish to make me EQP. and I tried to introduce the ministering program but the ward wasn’t ready, they claimed.. Then Bro H moved in .He was retired and recently married to a cute. foreign Asian wife less than half his age. Naturally he was snubbed. Until he wrote that million dollar tithing check. During his retirement he was playing around buying and selling stocks when the internet first became available to him. After that he was put on the high counsel.
From this remote observation we can perhaps draw 2 lessons. Tithing income might be less now than it was then if affluent wards are not shelling out as much now as average wards did then. Second and more important. A small number of big contributors can really skew the estimates. I think those who raise money for non-profits know that a few people give most of the money.
We need better data before we can draw anything more than guesses. The elaborate transparency program described above is designed to convince members at a local level that money is handled with perfect integrity without disclosing any real information in the big picture. That is pretend transparency.
In stark contrast, the evangelical church I also attended today had a summary in the bulletin of their budget for 2018. I didn’t pay much attention except they took in about $850,000 from a congregation about twice the size of my ward and expenses were about $50,000 higher. So they were indirectly insinuating for anyone to help cover the difference. They are also trying to raise $4 million to build a school for poor Hispanic immigrant children. They raised the initial amount to start the project but will need quite a bit more to finish it. So far they have enough to build a wall around it. Just kidding. Nothing was mentioned about money over the pulpit. It was straight doctrine of Christ the entire time in a Scottish accent. Of the 14 testimonies in the good old ward, not one said more than a sentence about Christ. I don’t know how much geography they covered in the second hour- so my opinion is compromised.
I served a mission. One Ward that I was in had a charismatic Bishop…..young, handsome, beautiful wife and children. The Bishop had a decent paying job. The Ward was very, very large.
The Bishop embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Ward clerk discovered the embezzlement. The Ward was deeply divided over the punishment the Bishop received…… nothing…..the Church did not do anything. He was removed as Bishop.
Half the Ward believed the Bishop should at least have been disfellowshipped.
I remember my partner and I speaking with the wife of the Bishop and she was devastated, thinking of divorcing him. She had no idea her husband was embezzling. She was pregnant (don’t remember how many children they already had) when this was revealed to the Ward.
(Not long after this happened I was transferred. )
From what I have seen, the ward financial audit is performed exactly as Bishop Bill describes.
The ward financial audit is merely a check to see that the bishopric is following the procedure, with the goal of preventing or detecting local embezzlement. It has nothing do with transparency or financial decisions made at church headquarters, such as the MALL.
I currently take no position on the MALL, but until today I never realized how much fun it is to scream MALL “into the void.”
Retx, and others, there are rumors of ways to hide donations from your local leaders. A search for a blog / podcast by Bill Reel may shed some light, but I think it takes more work than merely donating online. His post was published before online payment was available, but I think it still applies. For my part, it didn’t seem worth the effort so I haven’t tried it.
Damascene: “very little of those funds are used on the local level” You’re not thinking of a bi-weekly storehouse that provides families in need with food/personal necessities. Maintenance/upkeep on the building; doesn’t this occur because we have all contributed?
The fact that they have $32 billion in stocks tells me everything I need to know.
If you don’t want your local leaders to know how much you pay, call down to Salt Lake and set up a separate CUBS ID number. We have one set up under our farm name and it is not attached to any membership number. My wife did it, so I am not sure of all the details, but I am sure that it works. Nobody in my stake knows how much money I pay in tithing. It is quite satisfying to sit through tithing settlement with a bunch of zeros on the paper and declare myself a full tithe payer.
NIO Dsc. (NIO stands for knock it off)
My experience is that the church takes very seriously financial malfeasance by bishops. I once sat on a high council court where a bishop was disfellowshipped. His crime, using church funds to pay expenses for a non-member coworker who lived outside of his ward. He was also required to personally repay everything.
Anne, ReTX (and others)
I have been a clerk several times over the past 20 years. Since the advent of the on-line donations, I have no clue what any member who uses the on-line system has donated. I ask all members who need the year-end summary printed to let me know, otherwise I assume that they go on-line and get their own. For those I do print out, I am much more concerned with the top line (the member’s name) than what come after. Yes, any curious Bishop or clerk can check out all donations made by ward members, unless done directly to SLC via alternate methods. Why would most of us bother to do that?
El oso, thank you for not looking at tithing amounts. I’m glad that you don’t do this.
For a church who puts locks on lockers inside a temple for storing personal belongings, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that personal tithing records should also be locked to local leaders. It’s a course correction that would go a long way, just as knowing exactly where all the money church members donate is being spent, saved, funded, etc.
Two comments:
First, I have lately been attending various non-Mormon churches in our area. The last three I visited all published their annual budgets IN THE WEEKLY BULLETIN. (Well one published the link to where to find it.) Yes, the Mormon church should be more accountable.
Second, the Mormon church has stronger controls for protecting its finances then it has for protecting its youth from potential abuse. The Mormon church needs to change it’s priorities.
Anne – you can pay directly to the church and bypass the local ward altogether
Email donations@ldschurch.org And they’ll walk you step by step in how to do it
Email donations@ldschurch.org and they will give you instructions on how to pay directly and bypass the ward well meaning eyes
I’ve heard it said that the church is not vigorously involved in local welfare efforts because the mission is spiritual rescue.
I read a good analysis about this in a piece explaining The Liahona Foundation, which is organized by members but not financially affiliated w the church.
Interesting discussion here.
As a former RSP I would sometimes take people shopping for food or clothing. I got the okay via phone and did what was necessary.
Turned in the receipts and that was that.
Yes big cache of cash in reserve.
Perhaps they know more than we about what it might be needed for in the future.
Did anyone mention the salaries of the GA?
I believe the church investments generate income to pay GA salaries bc they do not want to use tithing funds for this.
More transparency would be nice.
When the student is ready the teacher will appear. We’ll find out eventually.
Personally, I would like the church to be MUCH MORE financially transparent; to the point where members can be confident as to where their hard earned money is going; and not simply have to guess – waiting upon patronizing “just believe us” comments from church leaders; and an in-house auditing team. Additionally, the older I become that more disappointed (and at times disgusted) I feel about the ostentatious, public displays of wealth. Temple Square is one thing….but the magnitude of the expense and opulence being poured into these new Temples (i.e. Rome) is kinda/sorta distastful. I have a hard time thinking the Christ would be pleased by such things; when so many are in need.
@Tulan G
I find your story quite impossible to believe in the modern MLS era.
Left hand loafer, I couldn’t agree with you more.