FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP) — Members of the Baptist World Alliance’s executive committee heard a sobering financial report detailing investment losses over the last year, agreed to slash the group’s budget, gave initial approval to organizational changes and met BWA’s new director for freedom and justice during their annual meeting March 3-4.
Gathering at the organization’s headquarters in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Falls Church, Va., BWA leaders agreed to slash the 2009 budget by nearly 30 percent, from an original figure of $2,973,155 to $2,111,155 — a reduction of nearly $900,000 in expenditures.
Ellen Teague, finance director for the worldwide umbrella group for Baptists, said the cuts are necessary to maintain a decent amount of reserve funds, heavily depleted over the last year because of huge investment losses.
“This is the most difficult financial situation that we’ve encountered in the 15 years that I’ve been the director of finance and administration,” Teague told committee members.
She noted that, giving-wise, BWA actually ended 2008 much better than many other non-profits — with income from donors and member bodies less than 5 percent behind 2007’s total.
But the organization was forced to draw heavily from its reserves to cover heavy investment losses owing to the world’s tanking markets. BWA transferred more than $2.3 million in unrestricted reserves to the operating fund to cover the losses. In order to stick to internal guidelines that require a minimum of $500,000 in reserves — and even under a best-case 2009 income scenario of donation income similar to 2008’s — Teague said BWA would have to slash its spending dramatically.
“Basically what we’ve done is we’ve experienced the good years and the bad year. It’s a lot of good years — and in one year we’ve managed to wipe out most of it,” Teague said. “This is very serious, because it means that we no longer have reserves that we’ve had in the past, that we’ve built up over a number of years.”
BWA General Secretary Neville Callam said the organization’s staff had already instituted pay-raise freezes and significantly cut their expenditures in anticipation of a reduced overall budget. He and Teague said that, after the committee approved the new budget figure, they’d go line-by-line to figure out exactly where the additional cuts should come.
Callam — who became the organization’s first non-white CEO in 2007 — also said he hoped to identify new sources of revenue by beefing up BWA’s list of potential contributors.
“The database of donors is too small,” he said. “It is astonishing that the database of donors is so small.”
After discussion, committee members approved the new budget figure. They also approved a separate resolution that empowered Callam and the rest of the staff to increase expenditures above budgeted levels during the year if revenues were significantly higher than expected.
BWA president David Coffey said that, while the financial report was sobering, committee members shouldn’t waver in their faith. “God has been good to us over 100 years, and he’s not going to abandon us now,” he said.
The body also gave initial approval to a set of bylaws revisions necessitated by constitutional changes that are already in motion. The BWA General Council — a larger governing body that gathers annually — is scheduled to have a final vote on the recommendations at its next meeting, set for July 27-Aug. 1 in Ede, Netherlands.
Committee members also voted to recommend that the General Council approve Raimundo Cesar Barreto as director of the new BWA Division of Freedom and Justice. Council members created the new division — which will focus on religious freedom and justice issues that affect BWA member bodies — last year at the organization’s annual gathering in Prague, Czech Republic.
Barreto, who currently is a pastor in Salvador, Brazil, holds a doctorate in Christian ethics from Princeton Theological Seminary. He also has degrees from Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology and the North Brazil Theological Seminary. He has taught at theology schools in Brazil and the United States.
Executive committee members also heard that the recipient of the 2009 Denton and Janice Lotz Human Rights Award is Indian Baptist activist Leena Lavanya.
Referred to by some as the “Baptist Mother Teresa,” Lavanya’s Serve Trust organization operates several charities among India’s poor and dispossessed. They include HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention and other ministries to female sex workers as well as homes for the elderly and those suffering from leprosy.
Lavanya is the granddaughter and niece of prominent Baptist leaders. She will formally receive the award during the Netherlands meeting.
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Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.
Related ABP articles:
BWA births division for justice; scholars spotlight ecology, diversity (8/5/2008)
BWA Prague meeting ushers in new structure, Muslim response (7/30/2008)