The true numbers are unfortunately lower, as seen on the Church’s own website:
http://www.providentliving.org/welfare/pdf/WelfareFactSheet.pdf

In at 23 year period (1985-2008), the total value of aid given was $833.6 million. This includes volunteer hours, work assignments, in-kind donations, etc. In actual cash, the amount is $282.3 million for the same time period.

Putting this into perspective, dividing $282.3 million by 23 years, the Church averages around $12.3 million per year in actual cash used for humanitarian aid. If their income is truly $7-9 billion as you mentioned, this is around 0.15%. Fairly paltry.

That’s of course, an estimate form other areas as the LDS church is not about to reveal the massive loads of cash pouring in.

Do you ever have a hard time explaining what we do in the LDS Church to people who aren’t members, who didn’t grow up in our culture? That is how I find Tim’s article so valuable. He took the time to explain some of the good things we do to people who don’t speak our quirky language.

I do, however, really appreciate the article. We can only hope that his view is not as unique as it appears to be. Again, not that I wish to be considered a “better” Christian, but there are times when we Mormons are defined too much by what our detractors are saying about us.

There are opportunities for service missions, and as has been said in the comments, the Church participates in many charitable projects. I hope that we could get more involved in Europe, too. That is up to local leaders at least to some extent.

Putting aside my reservations, though, it seems from the chart that most of the $1 billion you mentioned is concentrated in the last ten years, with a sharp increase year over year between 1998 and 2002, with contributions since then being fairly level, with possibly a slight downtrend, averaging around $90 million per year from 2002-2007. Can you (or anyone) comment on the policy behind this pattern? The year to year fluctuations from 2002 on might be attributable to variations in the need (natural disasters, etc.) but it seems likely that there was a decision to increase annual contributions in the nineties, and that they have been held roughly constant (not adjusted for inflation) since 2002. Did the church comment on this at the time (pardon my ignorance), and has it said anything about its intentions for the future? Is anything known about the principles that guide the allocation of the funds? Again, the PDF may answer these questions, so leave a link if you have a chance. Thanks. I’d like to be better informed about these activities to the extent possible, but I’m a babe in the woods as far as knowing where to look.

All right, now that I have said something stupid but that I think is funny I will state my point of view really shortly.
I can’t see how someone who is sincere and follow the bible can be a “not as good christian” than someone else. To me a good christian and a better christian is defined by what lies deep inside the heart and the soul.
It is nice of him to write such things about us but the feeling I have about his post is that we are blessed with teachings that have been lost or disregarded by some. It does not make us better Christians. It makes us more accountable when we chose to behave one way or another. Maybe I can say that it makes us more “effective Christians” but not “better” in this way that it does not place us above the rest of the crowd.

It would be nice if the LDS Church ran soup kitchens or similar charities.

The LDS Church has donated over $1 billion in humanitarian assistance over the past 20 years (here’s a PDF file summarizing that help, and here’s a chart). In particular, the LDS Church has six major humanitarian initiatives aimed at saving lives and improving the quality of life worldwide: clean water, wheelchairs, vision, neonatal resuscitation training, measles vaccination, and food production. In many of these projects, the Church coordinates its efforts with both major and local organizations.

Beyond that, the Church is heavily involved in local welfare and food bank services all through North America. Rather than set up competing facilities and services, the Church usually chooses to provide materials (and volunteer help) to existing food banks, soup kitchens, charities, and the like. For example, our wards here in Parker (Colorado) have a close relationship with the Parker Food Bank; we had two concerts with the Colorado Mormon Chorale at our stake center last Saturday, and the ‘cost’ of admission was a canned food item for the food bank. We also participate in providing volunteer labor to collect food items for the food bank once or twice a year at the entrance to a local grocery store, and once a year the Denver Bishop’s Warehouse allows the Parker Food Bank to come in and, in effect, take what they want. Finally, the LDS Cannery here in Denver does ‘humanitarian’ canning on a regular basis, with all the food canned that day being donated to one of the local food banks or soup kitchens.

Given that so many such charities already exist, it makes far more sense for the Church to funnel its efforts through them rather than invest in the property, infrastructure, and staff (not to mention on-going legal, regulatory, and health department issues) to set up its own soup kitches, etc. ..bruce..

Now, if you want to talk salvation, it is the means to an end. I like the LDS “means” better than the other churches I have studied because, in most cases, I can not only spiritually but rationally understand how everything fits together in one great whole.

Tim pointed out how we send out vast numbers of proselyting missionaries. I would love to have an option for young people to do service missions instead. I could see it actually wining over more converts in western countries than knocking on doors. One of my co-workers and his family go on service missions with their Baptist church. They’ve gone to South America to build schools. They went recently to Hungary to work in an orphanage for their last vacation. We have service missionaries in our Church, but not the opportunities to go on short, concentrated missions like that.

hmmm . . .

Let me pop in here at the beginning with my two cents.

Biblical Christianity has nothing to do with who is better than who.

I get enough of my share of listening to this stuff in S.E. Idaho.

As a Baptist, let me just say that I am that man in the gutter but a man looking up to the grace of Jesus Christ.