Missouri Baptist Children’s Home balance sheet moves into the black
Positive report leaves staff, board members encouraged
By Brian Koonce
Staff Writer
August 9, 2005
BRIDGETON – Although the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home’s (MBCH) balance sheet showed them “in the red” this time last year, an increase in gifts from wills and bequests is making 2005 a much better year.
The MBCH’s board of trustees heard the financial report at its July 26 quarterly meeting. Whereas the children’s home was $504,000 in the hole as of July 2004, they are now up on the positive side of the balance sheet, with more than $445,000 left over after expenses.
“This is a good report,” Elmer McCully, chairman of the board’s finance committee, said as he announced the revenue and expenses. “This is the first time in two or three years that it’s been a positive figure.”
While the home’s expenses remained largely unchanged for this year, it did benefit from increased revenue triggered in large part from a big jump in bequests and wills to the institution. The 2005 numbers in that category jumped 260 percent from $166,000 in 2004 to more than $600,000.
MBCH President Bob Kenison said they hope to use other memorial gifts to help fund the completion of the home’s spiritual life center. The church-like building with its steeple and cross is a dominant fixture on the MBCH campus designed to help minister to the spiritual needs of the clients the home serves, he said. Although the building itself is constructed, $620,000 is needed to complete the project. That’s where memorial gifts come in.
The board unanimously approved a proposal to use 1,200 undesignated gifts to the memorial fund from 2000 to the present – ranging from $50 to $4,999 – to purchase paver stones for the Spiritual Life Center’s entrance plaza. The stones are “for sale” so that donors may contribute toward the finished building and be honored by having their name engraved on the stone. The board decided to buy stones on behalf of those who contributed to the memorial fund. This will raise about $215,000 for the center’s completion.
“The funding of [the Spiritual Life Center] in the immediate future is the problem, but we feel like we have a way to accomplish it,” Kenison said.