As I headed down to lunch, I had an interesting idea, namely to compare the church (that is, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) with Medtronic (that is, the company I work for this summer). I have a feeling they're about the same in size, although comparing churches with multinational medical device companies isn't exactly apples to apples. Thus, I will need to make some interesting assumptions. Having somewhat intimate information about Medtronic's finances due to working in the treasury, I will rely on the company website and Wikipedia so as not to say anything I shouldn't.
Let's start with size: Medtronic has 41,000 employees. I wasn't expecting to find employee information for the church, but lo and behold the church has a LinkedIn profile! It states the 'corporation' has approximately 10,000 employees. However, the church also has over 28,000 congregations, each with leadership that spends many, many hours each week volunteering to meet the needs of members, along with nearly 52,000 missionaries, so round one goes to the church! Other estimates of size: Medtronic operates in over 120 countries, while the church operates in 176 nations/territories. Medtronic has more than 250 manufacturing facilities, sales offices, research centers, education centers, and administration facilities, while the church has 131 operating temples (it seemed the most straightforward comparison between large functional buildings, although the church also has universities, office buildings, and thousands of chapels as well). In terms of people benefited, Medtronic serves about 7 million patients yearly, while the church has nearly 14 million members. It could be argued that each family member of a Medtronic patient benefits, however, so it's not clear from the numbers alone which is the larger impact. However, the church's humanitarian aid programs benefit millions more, so once again this probably goes to the church.
How about in dollar terms? This one is tricky: Medtronic is a publicly owned company and as such reports on such things, but the church is a bit more closely held. However, there was an article in Time magazine not too long ago that attempted to grasp the big picture. So we'll lift some information from it. As of April 2010, Medtronic reported total assets of slightly more than $28 billion. The Time article from 1996 estimated the church's assets as over $30 billion, although the church said they were grossly overestimating. The church had a point - much of that would be in the form of buildings, especially chapels, that likely would never sell on the market for what they cost to build. Nevertheless, they are comparable, and the church data is nearly 15 years old. What about revenue? Time estimated (emphasis on estimated) that the church took in $5.9 billion a year ca 1996, while Medtronic's revenue for 1996 was about $2.5 billion. Today, Medtronic's revenue is nearly $16 billion, and the church has not tripled in membership since 1996, so Medtronic may have passed it up in revenue.
Well, hmm. That's a whole lot of useless information. Interesting, though.
English title: Comparing the church and the company
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