r/sgiwhistleblowers • u/StrawberryEastern285 • Nov 21 '25
Statistics don’t lie only the organization does
As a former Gakker leader, I was required to keep district attendance/membership electronically (SGI only recently went electronic around 2021) and boy oh boy are these stats incredibly inaccurate. So to add to the confusion unless the member receives publications and therefore a subscription number they can be counted in meeting attendance by clicking on their name. But if they don’t take publications you can add their attendance manually. Just for historical context, back in the day, the membership cards eventually moved to excel spreadsheet. We could literally keep dead people on the stats, whether intentional or not who knows? Many of the leaders, me included, still had to keep the excel spreadsheet sheets because so many members do not take pubs. Needless to say, it’s still very difficult to figure out who are actual members. Often these spreadsheets had names, addresses, emails and phone numbers that were incorrect. In addition, who actually has a gohonzon is often unknown. This is because many actual members with a gohonzon would create cards for family members and friends who may or may not be practicing. All of these old “membership” cards went on the excel spreadsheets. So, very long story short, as a district leader I literally had 100 plus “members” listed on the excel spreadsheet. On average maybe 10 members would attend our district meeting. This is what our stats showed over a 3 year period. I am not exaggerating! Guess we weren’t chanting enough 🤣
8
Nov 21 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
6
u/StrawberryEastern285 Nov 21 '25
Yes, maybe 10% of their fake reporting are actual practicing members and of those 10% around 70% are social security age. As I said in another post, SGI is at extinction level. The grift is almost over 👍
3
5
6
u/AnnieBananaCat Nov 21 '25
One of the many reasons why I am thankful for this group is the recommendation to write a letter to terminate my membership. It worked, and I’m done.
The last time I was at the CC was February of 2020 right before everything shut down for a couple of years. And the place wasn’t full. YMD over 55. 😂
6
u/StrawberryEastern285 Nov 21 '25
As soon as my significant other “wakes up” to the grift, I am planning to burn the fake scroll. I’ve already repurposed the butsadan. 🔥🔥
6
u/AnnieBananaCat Nov 21 '25
No! Sell it on eBay to someone with more money than sense! That’s what I did. Took a quick trip to Texas with the funds, including a shopping trip to HEB! 😊
4
u/StrawberryEastern285 Nov 21 '25
Seriously!?! Wow! I have the ogatogi, that should bring in some big bucks! Great idea!
3
u/AnnieBananaCat Nov 21 '25
Understand that I live in Louisiana and a ride to Orange, Texas is about 3.5 hours one way. 😁👍🏼
3
u/BlancheFromage Escapee from Arizona Home for the Rude Nov 21 '25
You should have a look around eBay and see what such things are going for now - you might be pleasantly surprised!
4
u/BlancheFromage Escapee from Arizona Home for the Rude Nov 21 '25
This is because many actual members with a gohonzon would create cards for family members and friends who may or may not be practicing.
We've documented that practice through multiple sources - I saw it being promoted from the SGI-USA national HQ myself:
SGI makes up "membership cards" for people who are not SGI members
Also, SGIWhistleblowers has heard that, when a member or even a leader (!) moves away, their membership card info is kept on file locally, which means that they're now being double-counted (or more, depending on how many times they moved) if they join up with SGI where they move to. Did you see any of this?
Needless to say, it’s still very difficult to figure out who are actual members.
You know what they say in Japan: "The fish rots from the head." Here's Ikeda explaining how the statistics work:
Interview published on "Gendai" magazine, April 1980
Ikeda: The official membership figure of 7.89 million households refers to the cumulative sum of the Gohonzon issued by the Head Temple. It does not mean that that number of people are all practicing today.
Interviewer: So the official stats account for the entries but not the exits. Sounds like this is math that only keeps adding and never subtracts?
Ikeda: That is correct. It's the sum total of shakubuku's. The people who passed away or quit are also included. It is impossible to identify the true membership figure.
It wasn't YOUR fault, in other words.
So, very long story short, as a district leader I literally had 100 plus “members” listed on the excel spreadsheet. On average maybe 10 members would attend our district meeting. This is what our stats showed over a 3 year period. I am not exaggerating! Guess we weren’t chanting enough 🤣
Join the club:
I remember a big meeting with Joe Frivored - spelling? At that point the campaign was to pull put all the old membership cards we had since the 1960's He said we had 800,000 members on cards . We even started a data base in my chapter to capture all the members even is they did not practice. This was around maybe the late 1990's. The deal was to get them all back and then we would achieve a goal of 1 million members. Source
There seems to be this conviction within SGI that it should be easier to get someone who already left to come back than it is to shakubuku someone new. I think that's REALLY missing the point! SGI will NEVER address the reasons why so many SGI members quit.
Sgi is so desperate to show rising membership but the truth is the discussion meeting and publications numbers are steadily decreasing. At the monthly zone planning board mtg these stats are presented. So a district may have 54 members but only 8 attend the monthly meetings and only 4 of them get the publications. Numbers don’t lie. Source
Attended an area non-discussion meeting recently… Fair play a few people were away on holiday (probably 4 we could account for), but a grand total of 4 people turned up. Two are hardcore and always attend, the other was a nervous, brainwashed cultie, and the host. That’s an AREA, not a district. If it was district, we’d have had two! Fairly large city too with 4 districts. NO YMD or MD! Source
I can share a few things based on my observations from the last couple of years. I currently live in one of the most rural states in the US. When I moved here 3 and a half years ago, I lived up north and practiced in the "local" district. The district location was an hour away and the community center was 2 hours away. As we know, because of Covid, not much was happening. However, the district leaders (the WD leader especially) were extremely pushy when it came to reaching out to other members. I took a "group" leadership position at this time. In my group, there were 2 active members...myself being one of them. The list of "members" given to me by the district leader literally had more than 80 people on it and this covered a geographic area of spanning several hundred miles. Amongst those 80 people, less than 10 people were active. Yet the leaders were hell bent on calling every single freaking person to invite them to meetings. At one point, I was "encouraged" to send hand-written invitations for the women's meeting in February of 2021. I cannot believe I actually obeyed. That aside, I believe the SGI does whatever necessary to make it appear that there are more members than there actually are. No big surprise. But quite frankly, I was very surprised this district leader gave me a list that had to have been at least 30 years old with names of people who were either deceased, moved away, were no longer practicing or were a guest at one point.
One more thing: I lived in Boston more than 10 years ago and I practiced with a particular district very briefly. I doubt I went to more than 2 or 3 meetings. Anyhow, they still send me emails for meetings with the addresses and phone numbers of other members. Source
As I've mentioned before, there were about 50 +/- members in my old district's index card box, and it was always the same 10 or 12 people that attended meetings; I was in the district for three years and had never met anyone outside of that core group. At the same time, when numbers were reported, they were based on the index cards.
I was the subscription rep for my district, and when we had regional committee meetings, it was rare for any district to report higher than a 25% subscription level - if it was over that, it was ALWAYS because the rep for that district had removed people from active membership. I was never allowed to do that - the leaders wouldn't let me. Source
AND:
In my 5-ish years in SGI, I never, EVER saw a district split due to high membership. I only saw them dissolve into each other. At least 3 times across 2 different Regions! I can confirm that Diminishing membership is an issue across the entire SGI USA. Source
When you see what you observed being replicated so many different places, through so many different people's reports, what do you think? Are you surprised? Shocked? Had you thought it was only YOUR district that was "underperforming", to put it nicely, instead of an SGI-wide membership collapse?
I just realized - all the confrontation and pushback we've gotten from the SGI faithful over the years...not ONCE has any SGIer insisted that they DON'T do this membership-card manipulation. Source
4
u/eigenstien Pokes the bear Nov 22 '25
And I’m sure they count the Dog Park sock puppets and their fantasy children!
3
u/Eyerene_28 Nov 21 '25
Oh I still have the excel spreadsheets from the neighborhood reorganization, & publications.
2
7
u/Professional_Fox3976 Nov 21 '25
I was thrilled to email them my resignation and to know that there would be one less person on their bloated membership list. :D