LDS Church Business Portfolio: For-Profit Investments Explained

LDS Perspective

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints maintains a portfolio of business and investment assets through a corporate structure that separates ecclesiastical operations from commercial enterprises. Following the reorganization between 1918 and 1923 under President Heber J. Grant, the Church established distinct corporate entities to manage different categories of assets: the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop to administer charities and buildings, the Corporation of the President to oversee assets used for religious purposes, and the Zion Securities Corporation to manage taxable and nonecclesiastical properties and business entities. This structure allowed the Church to segregate its sacred funds from commercial operations while maintaining appropriate stewardship over resources int

Historical Perspective

The LDS Church maintains extensive for-profit business operations structured through corporate entities, most notably **Intellectual Reserve, Inc.**, which according to documentation from 2010 manages over 900 internet domains and digital assets including FamilySearch, LDSTech, beta-mapping systems with member household GPS coordinates, and various online platforms (Source 10). This corporate infrastructure represents a significant component of the Church's temporal portfolio, operating alongside its religious functions. The scale of these business interests has been subject to considerable scrutiny. Research cited by MormonThink from *The Mormon Corporate Empire* (1985) estimated Church assets at nearly $8 billion, describing the organization as running a "virtual business empire" with i