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Notes -
Yep, I'm pretty sure that side of things is already taken care of, at least for every American congregation I've seen. The church will pretty much give you all the food, cleaning supplies, and other household goods you need, and help pay for your rent / medical bills, at the discretion of the bishop (the congregation leader, at about the same level as a pastor). Often this support is conditional, you have to appear to be making some effort to improve your station in life, which can mean a requirement to attend weekly personal finance seminars, but that's pretty much it. If anything, as far as I can tell it errs towards generosity, though the extremely online subsection of ex-mormons seems to disagree.
I do have some weak qualms with the church's finances--I have no idea why we have so much money saved up, as our numbers dwindle--but they seem to be managing it well and I have faith it will eventually be used for the right purposes.
I hope to eventually help people a lot, but for now I'm just grinding and working on being able to afford kids myself. In the meantime I'll keep paying tithing and trying to serve people in person, and hope to build a greater capacity to serve in the future.
It's a good suggestion though @atelier, sponsoring people on a more personal level like that has a ton of advantages, not to mention the institutional structure and experience that churches have to offer. This is perhaps a bit cliche, but I have a theory that welfare is uniquely harmful for people because they do not have to ask for it. There is no sense of "humbling oneself and recognizing you need help", there's not even a sense of "that specific person made a sacrifice to help me, and thought that I deserved help," instead it's just "Papa Government gave me some cash because I fall into X income category and have Y kids." In many cases it's obfuscated even further--there's no check from the government; instead things, especially medical bills, are just mysteriously cheaper. I can't imagine the human psyche is helped by such diffuse, sourceless aid. The least people can do as they're given food and shelter is recognize that such support is charity, not something they are owed.
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