I'm a Mormon (grew up in Utah, served a mission in eastern Ukraine, speak Russian fluently, now live in the Bay Area). I often think of the way the Mormon chur

I'm a Mormon (grew up in Utah, served a mission in eastern Ukraine, speak Russian fluently, now live in the Bay Area). I often think of the way the Mormon church works as a distributed system, and the way it operates is not unlike most open source software. It works because everyone knows their role, is dedicated, and willing to sacrifice. In the ward (congregation) I'm in now I teach the fourteen-year-olds on Sunday. My wife teaches the 16-year-old girls in the third hour of church. In our last ward I was the eleven-year-old boy scout leader, and would take one night a week to teach them self sufficiently, how to camp and fish and hunt, knot tying, etc. We'd also go camping four times per year. Both my wife and I fast (don't eat) one day/month and donate what we would have spent on food (in reality a lot more) to the poor. We also donate 10% of our income to the church, a lot of which goes to the poor. We feed the Mormon missionaries once a month (we did so last night; one grew up as a refugee in Kenya, the other grew up in the Philippines). My wife and I each served a mission (me - Ukraine for two years, her - Lima, Peru for 18 months). The organization is what makes it work, and is really top notch. If there's an emergency we know exactly what our role is. When we come across someone who is struggling we know exactly what to do. There are volunteers assigned to be employment specialists, to help with food, over shelter, educational resources, funds earmarked, etc. (For both members and non-members). Every once in a while calls for extra funds or materials come out during a natural disaster or refugee influx, though most of the time those are stockpiled and ready to ship long in advance. There are weekly leadership meetings where needs of the people in our area (mostly concerned with members, but we'll discuss on-members as well), and each member is supposed to have an in-person visit each month to make sure they're not doing OK. I'm assigned three families, and if anything is wrong we report back and it's taken care of. In my teens I volunteered once a month teaching in a prison and once a quarter helping out in a nursing home. Growing up we served on the church farm, my parents frequently volunteered at the canning facility, and we took people into our home that were struggling to get by. There are a lot of problems within the Church, and things we need to work on and fix. But, I think, as an efficient caregiving and charitable institution, there are few in the world that rival it.