Does anyone know where the contents of the hygiene kits donated by the LDS church actually come from? I think people are being gamed, because I think that the contents are donated by corporations such as CVS and Walgreen's and such. Then they get the boxes from other donors. The assembly comes from the local LDS press gangs rounding up hapless members to assemble the kits in the "cultural" hall. The transportation is then likely donated by some transport company, the distribution through somebody like Catholic Relief Services.

I'd like to make sure I know what I'm talking about, but I suspect that all the LDS church does is tally up the estimated costs of the goods and boxes donated, plus the transport and distribution, and then claims that's how many dollars in essentials that they provided--at essentially zero cost to the church. I also believe that they use hygiene kits as a donation product because they are easy to turn into PR. I hear that, in reality, hygiene kits are often not even distributed because people need food, hard cash, blankets, bedding, and tents, not toothbrushes.

I've seen Relief Society and youth activities to assemble these kits multiple times. In every case local members solicited donations and/or donated all of the kit contents. TSCC didn't pay for anything. I believe the kits were then taken to welfare square. I'm not sure if CVS and others donate stuff directly to welfare square for kits to be assembled there as well, but I know the church pays nothing for a lot of the stuff that ships out of there.

This is what I've seen happen. My wife purchasing these things.

Al the ingredients for our hygeine kits come from the dollar store.

Yep, headed up more than one of these projects. Walmart donated almost everything for several of these things. I even did the requesting, picking up and delivering to the Stake Centers.

Actually, the church does pay a lot of money to assemble hygiene kits. There has also been a real push in recent years to move away from people assembling kits to be shipped worldwide.

They spend money on toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, rags, and a few other things. They buy them in bulk from various vendors. Some supplies are donated, but most are purchased.

Kits are assembled by both volunteers and paid employees. Donated kits make up a very small percentage of overall kits assembled and shipped by the church.

The paid employees are in a job training program (part of the Deseret Industries branch of LDS, Inc) at the Humanitarian Center.

Their job training program is one thing that the Morg gets right. They work on giving individuals skills to become as self reliant as possible. They train people with barriers to employment.

Do I think they need to spend more on Welfare? Yes. Do I think they tout their "charity" to make it seem more a more prominent use of their money than it really is? Yes. Should they reveal their financial info so we can see where money is sent? Yes.

There are many evil things about the church, but I don't think this is one of them. The "brethren" are trying to get away from service projects where people just assemble kits and are trying to encourage people to seek out the needs of individual communities to serve.

Granted, most of this pushing is done through a small full time staff at a building in the corner of SLC.

Humanitarian Services also does some awesome things, which the Morg films and uses in promotional videos to show how awesome they are at charity.

Source: approx 3.5 yrs working at the LDS Humanitarian Center.

That sounds great and all. But, the church isn't stupid to not come out ahead on every deal it makes. The tax benefits, not to mention the PR of this, help the lds corporation more than anyone else.

Source: Having been a board advisor for two years to two different non-profits.

Yeah, the church pays $0 in taxes. They even get state sales taxes refunded when they have to pay it. Being nonprofit puts their income tax at 0.

Though they do have a tax department, so they do have tax consequences for things.

I've never witnessed the church paying for any of it. I've only seen it either donated by a store or charity, or by the members themselves. And BTW, aid agencies always say they can't use hygiene kits. They often get discarded.

I've personally bought materials and helped assemble these. The church didn't pay a dime for the contents. This was about 15 years ago, so their methods may have changed.

At the time, the service committee I was on nearly decided to help out a local shelter for abused women and children by getting ward members to donate household goods. But the ward leaders wanted us to do the hygiene kits instead. I never understood what the deal with that was. WHY would they prefer that?

Last I heard which was a couple years ago. The contents of the kits are still member donated.

Like I said above, I think it's easy pickins for the Mormons to choose the hygiene kits. Seems like a big deal that they can package and show the public. Cleaning supplies? Terribly useful, of course, but there's no "package" they can display to the public.

In a disaster such as a flood, hurricane or earthquake, I always wonder why someone needs a toothbrush when there is no clean water.

The hygiene kits always struck me as a useless PR stunt.

I feel the same way, those kits are just a useless PR stunt so they can brag about helping people after a disaster. It's also why they wear those yellow t-shirst, so they can advertise themselves as contributing.

What they really need is mental hygiene kits.

As other posters have stated, the contents are paid for an donated by the members. It just would not do to have the precious funds for malls and land grabs used for worthless activities such as taking care of the poor and unfortunate.

We (my church group) assemble hygiene kits and take them down to the local gay and lesbian community center. We also have a continuing food drive for them. They have a great need for them because they have so many kids come through there who are homeless due to being kicked out of their homes by their "Christian" families.

So here's a way for the Morg to get some good PR off of their hateful actions. Keep telling the sheeple how bad their gender non-conforming kid are. They will keep treating their kids badly and trying to "fix" them until they give up and kick them out or, most likely, the kids run off because the home situation is unbearable.

Then the Morg can take hygiene kits to the shelters and support groups who help these kids on the street, because it is known that there is a big group of homeless gay teens in Utah. They can call out God's news groups, Bonneville, and tell them to write stories about how the LDS is trying to help LGBT kids, so see... they are not bigots. There will be no story about where these homeless kids come from in the first place, only good "we care about everybody" press.

I asked a person whom ships quilts for the Lutheran church if they would like us to create hygiene kits to send along with the quilts. The person said that they don't accept LDS hygiene kits. They would prefer boxes containing the same items (i.e. large boxes of toothbrushes) that they can disperse when and where rather than a collection of items in a plastic bag. If they receive LDS kits, all they can do is "toss them on top of the quilts." This increases the shipping costs.

If I was in management of CVS or some other retailer, I'd be wondering if my store was going to get any PR out of this deal; if not, I'd tell LDS (any other) to cut a deal with the manufacturer.

Retail operates on a very thin margin.