– by Peter Rust, TFC Director

How much does Bible Quizzing or the Youth Group cost? The suggested donation is $20-40 per month, per-family.

We realize that a monthly, $20-40 per-family donation may mean a sacrifice on your part. However this new system helps keep our bank balance in the positive, and in time will enable us to pay our Quizzing Director, so we can continue to grow and do more things with more excellence.

A Bit of History

Finances have never been the strong suit of TFC or Bible Quizzing. Both the previous directors went through a lot of stress over finances and the previous director told me he never had figured out a way to “make the finances work”. When I started with TFC 3 years ago, I was the first director to be hired part-time. Due to financial pressure, I have had to reduce my hours further, though we were able to hire a part-time Office Manager, which has made a huge difference.

 

Enter Adam Borries, Quizzing Director

We brought on Adam as a Bible Quizzing Director last year, which would allow me to focus my evenings and weekends on the Youth Group and my new family. He’s done a lot for Bible Quizzing: revitalizing the program, mentoring the student leadership team and planning the events. Even if you haven’t seen him directly, you’ve indirectly felt the benefit of his time and passion. But he’s done it all volunteer, while working full time. That may be viable for a single guy, but it’s not sustainable over the long haul, especially as he’s getting married this September.

 

The Cost of TFC

TFC went through a dramatic cost-cutting stage in 2002-2005, where we cut down to one office, reduced the number of people on our mailing list and tightened our belts in every area. And we’ve stayed at about the same level of expenses since then, averaging around $40,000 per year. This is incredibly low for an independent non-profit – it covers two part-time staff, rent, utilities, office supplies, etc. If you divide this out over a hundred students, it works out to just over $33 per student, per month.

 

Inability to Cover Costs

Our monthly donations have not been enough to cover the costs, low as they are. We usually count on the Fair fundraiser to (barely) cover the lulls in giving, but our Fair booth didn’t do as well last year and donations were really low in the Spring. So we hit rock bottom, and even briefly went negative. I volunteered my hours the next month, foregoing a paycheck to help get the ministry back on its feet financially.

 

A Financial Disconnect

Normally, when an organization has more customers or more subscribers, that’s a good thing. Though the expenses may increase, there’s additional income to cover them. But with TFC, there was a fundamental disconnect. When we had significant growth in Bible Quizzing or the Youth Group, it just meant more expenses. More of the donations were coming from the community than from the teen’s parents and very little (if any!) were coming from first-year families. So financially speaking, the more we grew, the more it hurt.

 

A Growing, Sustainable System

The new suggested donation structure is aimed to change this disconnect, so that growth will be a good thing and will help fund more growth. And growth isn’t the only goal: as we have more families supporting the ministry financially, we will be able to do things with greater excellence and less stress. Note that family donations aren't the only part of our fundraising strategy. We do plan to continuing raising funds from other sources, however, family donations should be (and hopefully will be) the foundation of the ministry's financial support.