written by Peter Rust, updated 4/16/2010 by Adam Borries

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 system helps keep our bank balance in the positive, 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. Previous directors went through a lot of stress over finances. When Peter Rust started with TFC, he was the first director to be hired part-time; Adam Borries now fills that role, supplementing income with second job at Logos Bible Software, while juggling TFC duties three days a week.

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 $50,000 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 our eighty current students, it works out to about $55 per student, per month.

Inability to Cover Costs

Our monthly donations have not been enough to cover the costs, low as they are.  Support is especially low in the summer months, when fewer students are involved in our programs; families often don't continue to give, even though our expenses remain essentially the same. Our Fair fundraiser helps to offset the lull, but we don't make enough of a profit margin for it to carry us through the whole year.

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 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.