The IMB’s report of their recent trustee meeting included information about their budget for the coming fiscal year, October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018. The total budget is $262 million. The Board’s budget is by far the largest of all Southern Baptist entities and is slightly more than the combined totals of all six seminaries plus NAMB. My grandson would call it “ginormous” if it was on his radar.
The budget is described as “balanced” and “conservative,” terms that should assuage all Southern Baptists who drop their hard-earned money in the offering plates Sunday after Sunday to reach the world for Christ.
The budget is further described as following five core principles:
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Uses realistic to conservative projections for receipts (projecting Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® receipts at $153 million for 2017-18);
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Maintains contingency reserves at an appropriate level (set at 5.5 months, which falls within SBC Executive Committee guidelines);
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Excludes property sales from budget receipts or expenses;
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Spends 100 percent of LMCO receipts on the mission field; and
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Presents a balanced budget for approval each year ($262 million for 2017-18).
Note that the projection for this year’s Lottie Moon is about the same as last year. No excessive exuberance in budgeting Lottie Moon money not yet received. In the past an inflated goal was conjured and funds budgeted as if money was in hand; hence, a huge mess. Seems realistic to me to plan and budget for what was received last year.
The note that revenue from property sales are not factored in the budget is not insignificant.
At some point down the road someone will write a realistic history of this period of the IMB and it will include, probably gently, the assertion that IMB was somewhat mismanaged during a long stretch prior to the catastrophic missionary reduction plan of 2015-2016. That’s my editorial comment about water over the dam, anyway.
Any organization as large as the IMB would have some areas worthy of scrutiny and criticism; nonetheless, I’m supporting of current leadership and am planning to give generously to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this year and it would be good if the offering was more than expected.
“Conservative fiscal management”…has a nice ring to it.
This is excellent. All Christian organizations should be well run financially. I do not know about the reserves being set where they are set, by I would advocate for that issue to be watched carefully. Also, it appears that the reserves figure includes operating reserves only. We recently had an analysis of our church property and had a maintenance schedule set up to mark when certain things would need to be done to the property (e.g. roof replacement, ac replacement, painting, everything you can think of). Then we established a reserve account into which we put contributions for the future… Read more »
The 2017 SBC Annual — which includes the audited financials for all of the entities, which of course includes the IMB — has been out for about a month. I have not been paying attention to exactly when in the year the annual comes out. Evidently it is a “couple of months” after the annual meeting. Has anyone looked at IMB’s financials that are in the 2017 annual? I have not yet looked at this. I believe one of the key metrics is year-to-year change in “net assets” which is broken down into “unrestricted net assets”, “temporarily restricted net assets”,… Read more »
I don’t know Roger. I’d love for you to look at it and report. IMB restated the previous year’s figures. I haven’t delved into all that.
Thank you, William. I agree with you that the property sales not being included in the “budget receipts or expenses” is significant, however they could still use them to bridge the gap between LM receipts and the overall budget; I assume that was mentioned because of the legal requirement to use those monies in the country/region that they originate in. Greater transparency is never a bad thing and the press release, while using comforting language, does not deliver on many details. In its defense, that is not what a press release is designed to do. It would be nice if… Read more »
I now have the PDF of the 2017 SBC Annual downloaded onto a directory on my system here along with the PDFs for the SBC Annuals dating back to 2005. I’ve printed out pages 287 – 300 which is the audited financials for the IMB for calendar year 2016. From a cursory reading of the IMB financials in the 2017 SBC Annual I do not see any mention of the change of the accounting year. So I guess the change in accounting year does not show up in the 2016 financials. The 2016 financials expressly state that they are for… Read more »
Unrestricted net assets at year end 2016 for the IMB was significantly higher that in any previous year going back to 2008. Here is an extract of unrestricted net assets by year. In all cases these are year end balances Year End Unrestricted New Assets (x1000) 2015 $76,057 2016 $162,463 It should be noted that unrestricted net assets more than doubled between year end 2015 and 2016. Note 15 discusses the situation that certain post retirement benefits that are payable by the IMB were not properly valued in the year-end 2015 financial statement. Benefits payable were adjusted due to adjustments… Read more »
The new budget year begins October 1, 2017. We are currently in the process of closing the books on the financial year.