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National CP ends fiscal year 2.63% over goal


NASHVILLE (BP) — The Southern Baptist Convention ended its fiscal year $5,044,828.14 over its 2017–2018 budgeted goal and $101,902.94 under the previous year’s Cooperative Program Allocation Budget gifts, according D. August Boto, SBC Executive Committee interim president and executive vice president for convention policy.

The total includes CP receipts from state conventions and gifts from churches and individuals for distribution according to the 2017-18 SBC Cooperative Program Allocation Budget.

The year-to-year comparison includes a one-time $3.1 million gift of from the Florida Baptist Convention in the SBC’s 2016–2017 fiscal year following the sale of the state convention’s building. See story here.

“We are grateful to God for the faithfulness of Southern Baptists who give regularly to support their church ministries,” Boto said. “We are also grateful for each church that allocates a percentage of its annual budget for the Cooperative Program. Their collective gifts fuel the entire enterprise of missions and ministries that enable the state conventions and the SBC to engage in missions and ministries across the United States and around the world.”

The SBC received $197,044,828.14 in CP allocation gifts for the year. This amount is 0.05 percent less than it received during the last fiscal year, and is 2.63 percent more than its budgeted goal of $192 million.

The Executive Committee, acting on behalf of the convention at its Sept. 17–18 meeting, allocated the first $250,000 of the projected CP Allocation Budget overage to provide funding for the SBC president’s initiative to study ways to address sexual abuse and related issues in a church or ministry context. See related stories here, here and here. The funds will be administered by the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. The Executive Committee will provide reimbursement to the ERLC on a quarterly basis for documented expenses.

After the first $250,000 CP overage was set aside for the presidential study, the remaining overage was allocated in accordance with the 2017-18 budget adopted by the SBC at its June 2017 annual meeting in Phoenix, Ariz., as follows: 53.4 percent to the International Mission Board; 22.79 percent to the North American Mission Board; 22.16 percent to the seminaries; and 1.65 percent to the ERLC.

The total represents money received by the Executive Committee by the close of the last business day of September and includes receipts from state conventions, churches and individuals for distribution according to the 2017–2018 SBC Cooperative Program Allocation Budget, with the overage distributed as amended by the Executive Committee.

In designated giving, the fiscal year’s total of $194,785,535.14 is 1.77 percent above the previous year’s $191,403,752.79. Of this designated amount, $134,979,844.89 was disbursed to IMB and $58,832,309.98 to NAMB through the seasonal missions offerings (Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions) and Global Hunger Relief. The balance was designated for other SBC entities and the Executive Committee and SBC Operating Budget.

September’s CP allocation receipts for SBC work totaled $16,492,360.22. Designated gifts received last month amounted to $4,785,086.69.

The Cooperative Program is Southern Baptists’ channel of giving through which a local church is able to contribute to the ministries of its state convention and to the missions and ministries of the SBC with a single contribution to its state convention. State and regional Baptist conventions retain a portion of church contributions to the Cooperative Program to support work in their respective states and forward a percentage to Southern Baptist national and international causes. The percentage of distribution from the states is at the discretion of the messengers of each state convention through the adoption of the state convention’s annual budget. The totals in this report reflect only the SBC portion of Cooperative Program receipts.

Month-to-month swings reflect a number of factors, including the number of Sundays in a given month, the day of the month churches forward their CP contributions to their state conventions, the percentage of CP contributions forwarded to the SBC by the state conventions after shared ministry expenses are deducted and the timing of when the state conventions forward the national portion of Cooperative Program contributions to the Executive Committee.

CP allocation budget receipts received by the Executive Committee are reported monthly to the executives of the entities of the convention, to the state convention offices, to the state Baptist papers and are posted online at http://www.sbc.net/cp/budgetreports.asp.

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