http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-most-generous-cities-in-the-us-2013-9

Based on volunteering of time and donation of money.

My question is for all of you who live in Utah, does this figure include church callings and tithing? Or are The people of Utah actually donating so much time and money above and beyond what the church asks of them?

My bet would be that at least 90% of it is callings and tithing. Lived in Provo for 30+ years and did not see it as a Mecca of charity and generosity.

I saw a statistic on TV, Bill Gates said that Utah has the highest amount of donations of any state at 5% of income. I immediately thought of tithing. The church commanding it's member to do free labor and pay tithing probably has a lot to do with these statistics.

I don't live in Utah, but of course it includes tithing and church callings.

The generosity" is really a self-licking ice cream cone. They volunteer their time and money to help the church machine grow so it can suck up more time and money.

Outside of tithing, these might be the least generous cities in the US. We always tried to donate to foodbanks, children's hospitals, etc..., but there's not always much left after tithing. If you're paying tithing on gross you could be paying 15% of your take home pay to the church...which isn't really a charitable donation.

I have personal experience trying to get people in Provo to do non-church volunteerism. It wasn't pretty. I worked for a company that is national with a small office (about 70 employees) in Provo. I was asked to head up their volunteer effort in our office. They gave employees 16 hours a year paid time for volunteering and encouraged offices to find a project to work on as a group.

Of course the first question from almost everyone was, "can we get the time off for volunteering for the church?" (there were only 2 non mormons, me (the apostate) and a nevermo from Norwary, although I still keep in touch with the closet non-believers who were a little group of their own). But the policy strictly stated that it could not be religious in nature.

I found some really good volunteer opportunities through a city agency, like helping with literacy programs, making breakfast for a homeless kitchen, etc. Got only a couple of takers for that. Finally I stumbled on volunteering for the donation drive for KBYU. It was at BYU and they would have food brought in from Cafe Rio and it was easy--being on the phone 5 minutes at a stretch. It counted since it was technically for public television. EVERYONE wanted to do that. I had to turn people away. Since they did it after hours, they got to take work hours off to make it up (the total amount of time they were there, including time stuffing their faces). But they were comfortable with "volunteering" there because it was at BYU.

But hey, I could report our volunteer hours so we didn't look like slackers. There is NO question that 99% of the "volunteer" hours in Provo is church related. They report their hours cleaning toilets when other cities are actually working on real charity stuff.

The only reason Utah cities show up well on these sorts of polls is because they include time and money donated to the church.

The only reason the members give so much time and money to the church is because they are afraid not to. That's called extortion - not generosity.

While I do know some members who have started charities and really made a difference with the poor and needy, the rank and file Mormons don't give much time or money to charity unless told to do so. The church already sucks so much out of them, and it's asked of them - not willingly given, that they don't have anything left over to give. Personally or financially. If the Mormon church was taken out of the equation, I'd bet these cities would rank near the bottom of generosity.

If you go to the original studies on which this article is based and look up their methodology, it becomes apparent that it does include donations of time and money to one's church. I'm not passing judgement good or bad, I just want to know how the data was compiled.

that was my response on face book to a family member who got defensive over my probing.

Does it include time spent serving people who are dead?

Of course! Remember, they are the most in need of our service!

This absolutely includes church callings and tithing. It also includes PTA workers who try to compensate for underfunded, overcrowded schools.

Now add the fact that volunteers involved in all other charitable ventures have to work twice as hard to make up for the fact that Mormons don't have time to actually help in the community and you have some significant numbers.