Cedars "I understand your point, but the truth is that (unless we get to see a copy of the Society's accounts) we have absolutely no way of knowing just how well donations are keeping pace with all Watchtower's operational costs, including printing literature and maintaining facilities. The recent organizational downsizing ("consolidation" of branches, reduction in magazine printing) would indicate that there is a shortfall somewhere along the line, and the Society is having to adapt accordingly."
Here is what we do know,....
The consolidation is a smart move simply because it enables them to do more with less costs. Also there is no reduction in printing. It is true that the magazines contain less pages since january 2013 but at the same time they started to print them in more and more languages. In some other languages they now print them every month instead of every quarter (take for example the Yoruba language spoken in Nigeria). Besides that they release more brochures and tracts more often.
You also mentioned the costs they spend on "caring for special pioneers, missionaries and traveling overseers in their field service assignements."
These are the figures since 2000 for the expenses on "caring for special pioneers, missionaries and traveling overseers in their field service assignements."
In 2000 $66 Mill.
In 2001 $70,9 Mill.
In 2002 $72,4 Mill.
In 2003 $80 Mill.
In 2004 $93Mill.
In 2005 $104 Mill.
In 2006 $111 Mill.
In 2007 $121 Mill.
In 2008 $141 Mill.
In 2009 $140 Mill.
In 2010 $155 Mill.
In 2011 $173Mill.
In 2012 $184 Mill.
As you and any other can see they used more and more every year for "caring for special pioneers, missionaries and traveling overseers in their field service assignements." Let me remind you that the biggest financial crisis since WWII was between 2008 and now, but despite that, they managed to spent more and more on all kinds of things and expand instead of downsizing.
They may print less thicker magazines but on the other hand their New World Translation is now printed in well over 115 languages (compare that with 1993 18 languages & 2003 about 45 languages) not to mention their biblestudy book 'What does the Bible really teach?' (published since 2005) that is printed in even more languages. In total the Jehovah's Witnesses are now printing literature in more than 600 different languages and this number of languages is growing month after month.
Project JW.ORG
As we all know the Jehovah´s Witnesses decided to combine several domains/websites (www.watchtower.org, www.jw-media.org & www.jw.org) and merge them into one (www.jw.org). On the 28th of august 2012 this new website did go live. They introduced and promote a new brand and logo and make readers aware of the online content that is offered.
So what can we say after almost one year? Was it a wise decision and does their new internet strategy and approach pay off?
In this world there are over 633 Million different websites (last time they were indexed was dec 2012). There are a few companies that do monitor internet traffic statistics and who do publish a ranking list. The most well known company that does this is www.alexa.com. Another site that give some clear insight is www.statscrop..com
So what do these monitoring websites tell us? From 2009 till august 2012 www.watchtower.org was ranked around nr. 20,000 of the worlds most visited websites. During the same period the domain www.jw-media.org was ranked between nr. 60,000-100.000 and www.jw.org was ranked around nr 40,000 in 2009 to around rank 10,000 during 2011.
What is the position of www.jw.org now?
According to www.alexa.com the website www.jw.org is ranked as number 1831 on the list of the worlds most visited websites. Of the 87,116 websites monitored in the category ´ Religion and Spirituality´ they are ranked nr 2,.. with only the bible itself (www.biblegateway.com) above them as nr 1.
Know that there are 1.2 billion catholics on this planet and 1.5 billion muslims but still no website of them even come close. Even the website of the vatican (www.vatican.va) itself is stuck at position 11,166
So lets summarize,.. 633 Million websites on earth... www.jw.org is ranked at position 1831 of the worlds best visited websites and of the 87,116 Spiritual and religious websites on this planet they are the nr 2 with only the bible itself above them. We can say that it was a smart move to emphasize on and renew their website. Furthermore its good to know that they get these results without spending a dime on internet marketing and advertising.
