As I’ve hinted at this summer, our fiscal year end happened on June 30th. A major part of my supervisory role with InterVarsity GFM is to help my team (and myself) meet our budgets each year. I supervise quite a few budgets for my area. Each staff has their individual ministry budget that incudes salary and benefits as well as a school account. It’s always a longer list than I remember from the last time I looked!

We’re really grateful for our ministry partners at this point in the year. This July I can report that my entire Area came out in the positive. That’s roughly a total ministry team budget of about $630,000. That reflects not only donors of mine who are reading this, but all my team members’ donors as well. Our team is blessed to have an incredible network of ministry partners. Thanks for being a part of that team!

At the macro level God’s provision is obvious. Yet some budgets on my team need a lot of attention. I have a new staff member who is still putting her part-time budget together. She’d like to be able to move her hours up (and her pay up) after finishing her initial fund-raising phase. I have other part-time staff who’d like to find enough funding to go full-time.

My situation

I’ve been on staff now with InterVarsity GFM since 2017. After climbing the big hill to get funded initially (13 months) I’ve settled into a place on the pay scale that has allowed me to get along OK. But looking at my family budget and things I need to be doing with my resources, I need to significantly increase my net take-home pay. I need to be doing lots better than “OK”. My supervisor and I worked on a new budget for me. Usually we bump our budgets up a little at a time to keep pace with cost of living increases. I needed more than a cost of living adjustment in my budget.

Medical. Retirement. Net take-home pay.

I’ll try to keep my readers out of the weeds here. Essentially, our medical needs were quite expensive this year (surgeries, emergency rooms, auto accidents). Our retirement benefits were restructured this year and we lost a defined contribution from InterVarsity that we need to replace through our income. And like everyone we’re feeling the pinch of everything being more expensive due to inflation (unrelenting in some budget categories). My supervisor and I have decided to move me further along where I belong on IV’s pay-scale.

If you want a raise, raise it!

That’s a gritty way to put it. But it’s true. I need to find new, repeating support dollars this next fiscal year. Not just a little tweak here and there. I need to move my donation income from $103K (this past year) to $120K. That’s of course not the needed differential in my salary. That’s what my total budget will do if I increase my salary and benefits to where they need to be. That’s a 16% increase in donation income. Several of you helped me make progress toward that through increases in your giving this spring. Thank You! I really need to add more dollars by finding more donors too! Pray for my networking, my prospecting, my ability to connect with potential supporters. Pray for me to make the margin for increased fundraising in the midst of my other leadership responsibilities.

Match the pic with the caption! Select from the list below…

• Glass chapel concert w. Cheryl
• Poppy’s poop pen!
• Pepperoni three cheese (moz. white cheddar. parm)
• “Can we upgrade your rental to something a little more sporty, Mr. Perry?”
• How budgets make managers feel at times!
• Great summer fruit salad (w. olive oil, fresh basil, feta)

Have a great summer! Thanks for your prayers!