Newsletter November 2009 - Finance Report | Bible.org

3- Financial Update: We want to thank all the donors and volunteers who make it possible for bible.org to continue to provide the NETBible, audio/video sermons, training and over 6000 articles for free. As the Exec Director, I want to especially thank all those who continue to support Bible.org on a monthly basis even though the economy is in trouble. As you can see in the chart, the economy has hit us also and we are $158,073 dollars short of meeting our actual expenses so far this year but we are not discouraged as we hear about lives being touched by the site every day and we know God will meet all our needs as we remain pure and faithful to his commands. We were most encouraged this year when we went to Evangelical Theological Society Conference this year as almost everybody that came by the booth knew about the NETBible and they said they use the site and the NETBible all the time. This was a large improvement over prior years when about 50% were learning about the NETBible for the first time.

**Actual Ministry Expenses Vs Donations Graph**

The Actual Ministry Expenses (Blue) Include

Personnel Expenses for:
- Website Support
- New Content Development
- Website Improvements
- Executives are self supporting and are not an expense item to Bible.org
Occupancy Expense (rent, utilities, supplies, phone, Internet)

We've done several things this past year to reduce expenses:

We cut staff.
We moved into a smaller office.
Our tech team has taken on outside projects to reduce the cost to bible.org, but that also gives them less time to devote to bible.org projects.
We began running ads on the site and that looked like it might help make up the shortfall but ad income has dropped 75% over the past several months and has not solved the problem.
We enhanced our volunteer program so we can continue site ministry improvements without increased expenses.

With the cost reduction actions already taken - we have few ways to cut physical expenses farther, we will focus on ministry growth, product sales income, and ongoing communication of our ministry’s cost efficiency in serving millions of believers globally to our small but growing donor base.

So please pray that God will provide for bible.org and we can make up the $158,073 shortfall, whether through increased advertising revenue, NET Bible sales, year end donations, more self-supporting volunteers or however He chooses. I personally dislike ministries that keep sending out emotional pleas for money and I do not want you to think this is that type of appeal but I want you to think of it as sharing our burdens with family as this is God's ministry and the scripture teaches us to share our burdens and to serve one-another (1Thess 5:11; 1Pet 4:10) as we labor together. We want to continue to offer our material free of charge to all and request your support in this calling.

Without closing the office and telling our folks to work from home, we can not cut physical expenses any more. Next in line we will have to defer projects, or find ways to raise money through tentmaking, find new advertisers or sponsors, appeal to our donors or sell more items in our store.Perhaps you can make a Christmas purchase?

Since the first of the year we have worked on all the above and now are coming to you to ask for your prayers and your help in selling more NETBibles and/or donate. We have been on a severe cost cutting exercise but our ad revenues have fallen 75% . We have reduced staff and begun to do tentmaking activities to generate revenue. eg. We have set up some web sites for churches and other Christian ministries.
We have instructed our technical staff to increase their personal tentmaking activities in the event that at the first of the year we need to cut back their time.
We have been approached by a Christian to list their commercial jewelry that has verses engraved on them in our store. I am generally against this type of sale in a Christian bookstore as I think it detracts from serving the faith community but if we don't get enough donations I think I need to consider it as the Christian bookstores had to do it as we bought more and more books at the big box stores like Wal-Mart.
We have increased our recruiting of volunteers and the Lord has blessed us with several people coming forward and we have assigned them tasks in our volunteer collaboration group on users.
We have removed our tagging project from paid staff and are only doing that with volunteer resources. Our list of Approved Projects is on the home page and even if things do not significantly improve, we will attempt to continue two ministry related activities 1-adding new material (but at a slower pace), 2- building the social networking community site.

I would be remiss if I didn't share the one other project whose development is in danger of being stopped and that is the NETBible on line environment. Our partner sabda.org who has been doing the development informed me this week that he is unable to continue without funding. This would be a shame as his team has been working for over a year on commentaries to add to the NETBible on-line study environment. One of the reasons I am setting up a project environment is to accept donations for individual projects that will help keep them going. If you would like to donate for the NETBible online project please make a designated gift on our donation page. This resource alone serves over a million users a month – and is rapidly growing as more people discover net.bible.org as a study tool Next quarter we will have our project reporting process in place as well as our volunteer management system. I would hope you would agree that Bible.org is a good investment of resources that you allocate outside your local church. We are dedicated to be used by God to complete the Great Commission.

Please consider partnering with Bible.org this quarter and help us meet our budgetary shortfall.