* Health insurance for 7000 families for a year.
* 1628 kidney transplant operations.
* 4.3 million school lunches
* 2733 college educations at 4 year private schools
* 6486 college educations at 4 year public schools
* Funding for 692 homeless shelters (10 person capacity) or
* Food for 22,800 families of 4 for a year.
Just to be clear, that $83 million would buy one of the above.
Then you add in all the volunteer time that could have been spent tutoring kids, staffing homeless shelters, or delivering meals to seniors.
Sheesh.
My friend and debate partner wrote:
ReplyDeleteThese numbers are a surprise... If the LDS Church spent only $190,000 -- pin money for so huge an organization -- among $83 million spent on the issue, why is there so much uproar about that? That money along could not have swayed the issue.
Is there data on collateral donations encouraged by LDS? On volunteer time contributed or organizing done well? What made LDS such a force?
I don't have answers to all of those questions, but will try to answer some:
If I understand it right, while the Mormon church roused its members to donate huge sums, the church itself tried to say that due to campaign laws it contributed very little. Since the courts said the campaign donor laws must be respected the church had to report, perhaps we'll say, $190,000 that it had not disclosed in the past. Gay groups are skeptical, saying this still doesn't account for all the in-kind and volunteer efforts by the church.