When we first learned about LCC and our chance to be a part of it, the reality of raising our own support was a daunting task. Kim had raised support for a number of short team projects but as far as long term, full time support raising, neither of us had much experience with it.
We clung to the promise that God's finger would never point where His hand would not provide and proceeded to send out more then 400 letters to friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues and anyone else that we could think of that might be interested in partnering with us in this journey God was taking us on.
We received an abundance of responses to our letter, many one time gifts, many words of encouragement, commitments of prayer and approximately 30 commitments to monthly funding. With a good percentage of our first year's annual need (around $19,000) raised in one time gifts, a huge garage sale and early monthly gifts, we moved our life to Lithuania in August of 2002.
How our funding works...
Individuals and/or churches send monthly, annual or one-time checks to LCC's North American Charity office in Harrisonburg, Virginia where an LCC employee logs the checks, ensures that the money is credited to the right LCC employee and deposits a predetermined monthly amount into our checking account. This same amount is deposited whether or not we receive the actual sum total needed that month, which means LCC pays for us in advance (to ensure we have what we need each month) and the funds that come in for us pay LCC back.
Each LCC employee operates within a recommended budget amount that is based on a number of variables (number of family members, educational loans, childcare, etc). Our budget includes lines for:
- Travel to and from the States (1x/year for fundraising)
- Housing
- Living expenses
- Visa and residency permits
- Medical insurance
- Child care,
- Graduate school loans
- Discretionary travel
- And in our final year, there will be a resettlement allotment
Different strokes for different folks...
North American volunteers at LCC are funded from a variety of sources. Some are sent by their mission agency fully funded, some are sent by mission agencies only partially funded & have to raise the rest. Others are funded fully by churches while others are self-funded. One set of friends are actually funded by one individual who hires them on as employees and pays them to teach at LCC.
There are several of us for whom LCC acts as our mission agency, which means we have to work individually to raise all our funding, but the donations are channeled through & organized by LCC. We've been told by the LCC charity office that in LCC's 17-year history, we have had the broadest range of individual donors of any expat volunteer. That donor group includes approximately 30 consistently-giving individuals or families, three consistently-giving churches and a large number of individuals who have given one-time gifts.
Set-backs...
This system has worked fairly well for us (our needs have essentially been met each year), but since our costs have doubled during our 6 years here, it's getting more difficult to continue living off the same monthly gift amounts that were established in 2002. This means we have to keep working at finding new monthly donors and pray that God would continue to lay us on the hearts of those who have the resources to give us a significant one-time gift.
As our time in Lithuania has gone on, we've been amazed by the faithfulness of many of our long term, consistent givers. We've also had a number of amazing surprises, people who gave one-time gifts that shocked and humbled us. Over the past six years we have truly experienced the love & support of a long-distance community who give so faithfully.
This year...
Over the years we've also lost a large number of supporters; people who pledged to give and for whatever reason, have dropped off our lists. While we have continued to speak in churches, make new contacts and communicate the vision and ministry of what we are doing in Lithuania, this year's funding has been much poorer than in past years. Aside from our shifting support base, some other suspected reasons are Lithuania's recent inflation, the incredibly weak US dollar, and six years of being further from only being in people's minds through e-newsletters, blogs and notes.
Ultimately however, it's the declining dollar and rising prices that have most impacted our costs. A $50 per month gift in 2002 resulted in 3% of our total annual need. That same gift today in 2008 meets only 1.5 % of our annual need. In 2002 dollars, it bought us 177 litas. Today it buys us 109.5. This means that we either need to have more people giving the same amounts or the same people giving larger amounts or some combination of both to meet our needs.
Will you prayerfully consider joining our funding family?
You can either donate a tax-deductible gift online here, or send a check made out to LCC INTERNATIONAL FUND to LCC International Fund, 39 Southgate Court, Suite 202, Harrisonburg, VA 22801. Please put our names on the memo line so the funds go to our account. Thank you!
No comments:
Post a Comment