My summary. Please tell me if I have facts wrong.
- The organisation used to make a significant percentage of its income from the profits of publishing - small margins & huge volumes, volunteer labour
- Legal problems (Jimmy Swaggart) put an end to the pretence of it not being a commercial venture.
- The GB introduced a 'simplified' model where mags were to be given away for free but expected JWs to contribute the normal costs as a voluntary donation when they collected their supplies at the K.Hall. This was to be in addition to regular contributions and to donations received for the literature from the public.
- The vast majority of JWs declined to take advantage of this new 'opportunity'. They took their magazine order for free and discovered that the public almost never offered a donation.
- It eventually became clear that printing literature resulted in financial loss rather than profits so over recent years it has been severely curtailed to the point where the WT and Awake have all but been discontinued.
- Because of bad management and probably a large amount of 'Jehovah will provide' rhetoric, they carried on living beyond their means and selling off real estate to make up the shortfall in revenue.
- This leaked video proves that all branches have been instructed to make a 10% cut in their budget year on year and to adopt a new accounting system that will allow HQ to closely monitor their spending.
- Within a few years the real estate dividend will be used up. There is no prospect of any permanent increase in contributions and no new business model so the only solution is a permanent reduction in the size of global operations.
In short, the organisation has peaked.
However fast or slow it proves to be (SBF v Morph) the future is one of decline.