In the modern history of its financial empire, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hit several major milestones last year.
Investment reserves held by the worldwide faith of 17.2 million members — including more than $56 billion in stocks and mutual funds managed and disclosed publicly by its Salt Lake City-based investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors — reportedly exceed $200 billion for the first time.
With a gain of $23.5 billion last year, according to The Widow’s Mite Report, those investments reached a range of $206 billion in value. Those are up from $157 billion barely two years ago.
So vast and rapidly growing are those holdings, in fact, that this independent report is likening the faith’s future to one of “unlimited money” relative to its likely expenditures in coming years, even at its most ambitious in this era of mushrooming temples.
The Widow’s Mite Report, devoted to neutral research and analysis of the global faith’s financial holdings, bases these latest estimates on public research and sophisticated financial modeling.
“As an endowment, invested reserves are sufficient to fund church programs forever,” Widow’s Mite concludes in its 2024 year-end report, “even if donations stopped completely.”
Widow’s Mite estimates members contribute between $5.5 billion and $6.5 billion a year in tithing.
By the website’s projections, the Utah-based faith could be worth $1 trillion sometime after 2040.
Ultimately, the site says, there may be no practical built-in limit to the wealth the faith might amass from investment returns, likening its holdings at one point to a rocket attaining “escape velocity” compared to its earthly obligations.
Spending on temples, humanitarian aid
On top of that $206 billion in current investments, if you add in the value of the church’s operating assets — such as its ecclesiastical buildings, welfare farms, the Brigham Young University system and other immense landholdings around the globe — its total wealth is has now reached another milestone at about $293 billion as of last year.
With inflation and new construction, church operating assets alone gained about $4 billion in value in 2024, climbing to $87 billion.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) New Zealand's Auckland Temple.
The size of that commingled wealth also seems to be swelling much faster than the faith’s ability to deploy those funds, according to Widow’s Mite. That’s even with the flurry of new temples announced or under construction, which the website estimates will cost an average of $30 million apiece to build — lower than many prevailing estimates
Against that backdrop, yet another set of milestones has emerged. The church has greatly boosted its humanitarian aid in recent years. It reported spending $1.45 billion last year, up from $1.3 billion in 2023, to assist millions of members and millions of others outside the faith.
Trends of higher spending
The estimated cash and goods donated by the faith in strictly humanitarian assistance have risen, according to the Widow’s Mite analysis, from $88 million in 2020 to $500 million in 2023.
The group initially estimated that humanitarian aid had risen to $650 million for 2024 but lowered that to $560 million in March, based on data released in the church’s latest report, “Caring for Those in Need.”
That’s alongside a revised $890 million spent the same year on a range of member welfare programs, including bishops’ storehouses, fast offering relief, family services counseling, employment aid, Deseret Industries and other outlets.
The humanitarian largesse is likely to grow more each year, the website says, judging from a series of public pronouncements by church leaders — including a July 2024 proclamation from the faith’s governing First Presidency upon the unveiling of plans to launch a medical school at BYU.
“A major focus,” the leaders’ said, “will be on international health issues affecting members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the church’s worldwide humanitarian efforts.”
(Photo courtesy of UNICEF and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Latter-day Saint funding has supported global immunization initiatives led by UNICEF and the World Health Organization. Here, a woman receives a vaccination in Chad.
And, in a 2023 national TV appearance, W. Christopher Waddell, a counselor in the church’s Presiding Bishopric, which oversees the faith’s real estate, financial, investment and charitable operations, pledged that the church “will double the humanitarian work again and then again.”
A year ago, church leaders also announced they had acquired the Kirtland Temple in Ohio, historic buildings in Nauvoo, Illinois, and a series of religious artifacts from the Community of Christ — all for $192.5 million.
Widow’s Mite projects that spending on humanitarian aid is now on track to match what the church shells out on welfare programs for its own members sometime within the next one to three years.
Over the past five years, between market returns and surpluses in tithing funds, church investment reserves ballooned by about $70 billion, the website reports. At the same time, the faith’s total costs — including a backlog in temple construction and boosted charitable giving of all kinds — reached $8 billion.
So, even with an ambitious trajectory on many fronts, its $206 billion in investment reserves could pay for expected church costs for the next 30 years, according to Widow’s Mite. By comparison, some of the largest university endowments in the U.S. — held by Yale, Stanford and Harvard, for example — contain reserves covering up to 10 years of anticipated expenses.
Note to readers • This story was updated April 3, 2025, to reflect new estimated figures from The Widow’s Mite Report.