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July - September 2023

Quick Notes

Reminder: WorldVenture’s hired vehicle insurance card (available on the GMC) expires on October 20. If you need it after that date, remember to download the new card.

The next Open Enrollment— the month when you can adjust your budget—is scheduled for December 2023. Please note that this may be canceled due to the Global Worker Compensation project and onboarding workers. Please stay tuned for more information about what you may need to do!

This newsletter is being completely redesigned! The next one will be in a new format, easier to read as well as to navigate

You can also find this letter on the GMC

This newsletter is also published on the GMC for your future reference as well. We know that you have so much going on and that keeping up with what is happening in Finance may be another item on a never-ending task list – thank you in advance for taking some time to read these announcements and for the important work that you do every day. Our hope with sending this to you is not that you become an expert in all WV financial matters, but that you are informed of changes and know where to turn if you need help. It is our pleasure to serve alongside you!

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Finance Department News

As mentioned in the Quick Notes, we are developing a completely new format for this quarterly newsletter, which we hope you find both easier to use and more helpful. Some of the feedback we’ve received has indicated that the newsletter is too long, contains too much text, and tends to be repetitive.

So the plan is to make it more readable, as well as easier to navigate and quickly get to what’s of interest to you. We look forward to introducing the new format for the next newsletter, if all goes well.

If you have any feedback you’d like to give us about this newsletter, it’s not too late. Please let us know any thoughts you have that could make this tool more useful to you; email us at FinanceHelp@worldventure.com.

How to contact Finance regarding any of the content (unless otherwise noted) in this newsletter:

Your Finance Team

Soraya Marin, VP/Chief Operations Officer

Luke Oravec, Treasurer

Fabian Perea, Assistant Treasurer,

Christina Segura, Senior Staff Accountant – Europe/MENA, Americas

Dan Penney, Staff Accountant – Africa, Asia

Madeline Shanley, Receipting Manager

Mary Ackermann – Donor Receipting Specialist

Becky Binuya, Receipting Staff

Open Position – Donor Receipting Specialist

Ryan Volz, Accounts Payable Manager

Renee Chase, Accounts Payable Staff

In Case You Missed It (From Gmc “Discussions”)

These announcements are re-published from the GMC “Discussions” tab in case you don’t follow those or missed them at the time.

Weekly GMC maintenance that may impact your “My Reports” (July 17, 2023)

In the next couple of months, we will be doing some weekly maintenance to our system as we prepare for our annual audit. The weekly maintenance is scheduled from 8:00am to 5:00 pm, Colorado Mountain Time (GMT-6), and will occur every Friday from July 21st through September 1st, 2023.

During those hours, your GMC Statement reports may not be accurate. We apologize for this inconvenience, but wanted to let you know about this and that reporting inconsistencies are an expected result during those hours.

Should you have questions about your funds and the related reports outside of these maintenance times, please do not hesitate to contact the Finance department at financehelp@worldventure.com

Donation processing failure explanation (from Fabian Perea, June 30, 2023)

You may remember that earlier in June, I notified the WorldVenture Community of an error with our third-party payment processing service that briefly stopped our donation service. While the primary issue was resolved quickly, we later discovered a related error that impacted some of our financial partners in one of two ways:

  • One group experienced a duplicate charge on their June 5th commitment.
  • Another group didn’t get a charge at all for their June 5th commitment

Even if one or more of your partners were impacted, you likely didn’t see a missed commitment in your financial reports because our payment processor reported these as fulfilled properly. But as part of our financial reconciliation process and the astute observations of some individuals, we discovered the error and escalated it with our service providers. In the last several days, we’ve been working with our principal payment service to get this resolved. We also connected with the impacted partners, including providing updates today concerning their specific resolutions. We also informed those impacted that some financial institutions may post individual resolutions with a delay because of the upcoming US Independence Day holiday.

I realize this matter has been resolved successfully, but in the interest of transparency, accountability, and unity in mission, I share this update. Thank you for your prayers for the Finance team and for your faithfulness in sharing the good news that brings true freedom!

New Excess Funds Policy

Our last newsletter included a teaser about the new Excess Funds Policy that was being developed. This policy has now been finalized by the GO Team, so here is a summary (the full policy document will soon be available on the GMC if you want to read it in its entirety—that document’s name is “FIN.POL.2023.001 Excess and Deficit Funds Policy”)

Excess funds” refers only to those situations where funds remain in a worker’s USF or a Special Project account after all final expenses are accounted for and any purpose limitation or time restriction that was put on the use of those funds has been met.

Examples of such situations are:

  • funds remaining in an appointee’s support account (USF) after the appointee has withdrawn and all outstanding fees and charges have been paid;
  • the positive balance of a Global Worker’s USF that remains after the worker retires or resigns and all fees, expenses, and post-employment termination obligations have been met (if the worker goes to Global Specialist status, an “excess funds” situation would not apply until their Global Specialist term has ended);
  • funds remaining when a special project with a positive balance is left orphaned by the departing worker who managed the special project, and the special project was not reassigned to another WorldVenture worker.

In the case of a Global Worker’s retirement or resignation, here is how the unused balance will be allocated:

  1. 50% of the surplus balance is designated to the Over/Under Reserve Fund (“OURF”), which is a fund set aside for workers.

  2. Up to 50% of the remaining balance can be designated by the Global Worker…
    1. …to one or more of the following:
      1. another Global Worker
      2. an active Special Project
      3. a WV appointee
      4. a cross-cultural, like-minded ministry organization

    2. Such designations of up to a total of $20,000 can be approved by the worker’s Global Director and the Finance department.

    3. Designation requests of more than $20,000 must be sent to the VP of Operations/COO who will bring a recommendation to the GO Team for a final decision.

    4. In the months approaching a Global Worker’s retirement or resignation, the worker must maintain normal management of their funds until their date of separation, and are prohibited from transferring funds within three months of the retirement/resignation. Both the Global Directors and Staff Accountants are accountable for tracking expenditures and the movement of account funds through to the closing of the Global Worker’s account.

    5. In the case of WorldVenture workers who are involuntarily terminated, the GO Team will decide how to handle the excess funds according to the specifics of each case.

The policy also defines the treatment of deficit balances, as follows:

  1. Any deficit of a closed account will be repaid to WorldVenture per the responsibility assumed by the departing WorldVenture worker, or a special project with its associated global worker.
  2. The departing worker is also responsible for informing supporting partners if a deficit is anticipated prior to accounts being closed.
  3. An agreement between WorldVenture and the departing worker will be signed to this effect before the departing worker engages in a meeting with supporting partners.
  4. If a departing worker is unable to raise the funds to repay the balance due to WorldVenture, Finance will deduct the amount required from the OURF to cover the deficit.

 

Please consult the full policy document on the GMC if interested in more information.

Spouse Compensation Project Update

Dear Global Workers,

We hope that whatever September means in your context, it is a beautiful day!

The Global Worker Compensation Implementation Team met regularly during the summer months to keep up momentum on this important project, and great progress was made!

We have been working on the Software updates that were needed to ensure that both the onboarding process to the Consolidated Salary Model for all Global Workers and the transition for Global Workers choosing to move from volunteer to employee status will be smooth and efficient.

Please keep in mind the following:

  1. All Global Worker units will transition to the Consolidated Salary Model. We are onboarding a small Pilot Group beginning this week, and from there we will have a better sense of the process for the wider WorldVenture community.
  2. Global Workers who do not currently receive a salary/W-2 from WorldVenture can decide if they would like to remain a volunteer or change to employee status and receive a salary.

This might sound complicated, but really it isn’t! We ask that you take some time to familiarize yourself with the contents of the “GWC” project tab on the GMC. It can be found on the top bar next to “Profile.” On this tab, you will find the resources needed for the onboarding process.

Some of these resources include:

  • A flowchart of the process whether you will only be transitioning your budget to the Consolidated Budget Model or you will also be onboarding a second Global Worker.
  • A set of FAQs to help answer your questions about the process and guide you in preparing your new budget. (We recently added a section on “Special Considerations.”)
  • A Consolidated Budget worksheet to help you prepare your new budget for submission (with training material to be added soon).

As we begin with the Pilot Group, we appreciate your prayers for this process. It’s the amazing culmination of several years of work! As always, we welcome your questions. Please send them to: compensation@worldventure.com

Serving together,

The Global Worker Compensation Implementation Team

Finance Report On Fiscal 2023

While we are still in the process of finalizing our records for the fiscal year June 30, 2023 (“2023”), we want to share with you some of the preliminary results of the last year. We know that the Lord has presided over all our activities and needs as an organization this last year, but 2023 seemed to be full of more “downs” than “ups”. However, many times during the year, as we neared the end of the month, we would see the Lord consistently provide for our workers and activities.

Please note that the following information is preliminary and confidential and should you have any questions about it, please do not hesitate to contact me.

  • Corporate net income is approximately $71,000 for the fiscal year as of the date of this newsletter.
  • We track three areas of activities for the organization – Global Worker, Field, and Headquarters. The breakdown, by activity, of the above income is as follows:
  • Contribution income – since July 2022 we noticed a decrease in total monthly contributions and consistently reported approximately $2,500,000 per month (excluding December) for the fiscal year. Our 10-year average through June 30, 2022 suggested that we would realize approximately $2,800,000. We recognized that this decrease came mainly from our partner churches and can be seen above impacted, our Global Worker group the most.
  • Global Worker financial wellness is a metric that we track every month at a group level. While each global worker’s financial profile is different, we noted the following for this group for 2023:
    • We had an average of 3 salary reductions per month due to underfunding and under-commitments (2022 average = 3)
    • Percentage supported for open and set assignment workers was a monthly average of 90.4% which is consistent with our 5-year average of 90.5% (2022 monthly average = 92.8%)
    • Worker indebtedness to the mission decrease by $84,091 during 2023
    • Our on-field open and set assignment worker group increased by 1 worker/family in 2023 (2022 decreased by 12)
  • Payout of the Medicals Saving Contingency in the fall of 2023 eliminated over $550,000 in debt from WorldVenture’s balance sheet which strengthens the organization’s financial position.
  • We were able to meet our 2023 corporate fundraising goal in June 2023 due to the careful, measured steps of our Partner Ministry team and their multi-year plan.
  • Our self-funded Medical Fund reserve continued to move into a better position this fiscal year due to the changes we have made in the past five years. This positioned the organization to better fund our higher claim cases for plan members with critical illnesses.

The organizational finances have a rhythm, and they find equilibrium (meaning we prevent overspending and take advantage of opportunities) through our policies, procedures, and the controls that we have in place. Overall, I have placed 2023 as a prayerful year. Coming into 2024, we are still prayerful for new workers to be recruited as we emerge from COVID-19, for our Strategic Plan and process, and for our Partner Ministries efforts and team. Every month the Budget Team meets to pray and review our activities at HQ and many of us join in prayer with, and for, you over your financial needs and goals.

While we may not all be “numbers” people, we recognize that numbers are important, that we are expected to steward well the resources and relationships entrusted to us, and that being transparent with you in these areas is part of our stewardship ethos. We appreciate the work that you do every day in your ministry, and I hope that this brief review of our initial results from 2023 helps you to understand some of the bigger context of the mission.

Luke Oravec

Treasurer

WV’s New Foreign Donation Capability*

While we have long been able to receive contributions from donors outside of the US, we were not able to provide them with the tax benefit as a U.S. 501(c)(3) organization that they sometimes requested. The Finance Department has been able to partner with TrustBridge Global, a global network of donor advised funds, to develop a way for donors that are not located in the United State to make a contribution to ministries at WorldVenture.

Effective on May 1, 2023, international donors from certain countries (link below) will be able to contribute to your ministry at WorldVenture via the TrustBridge Global network in their currency and receive a tax benefit in their country of residency.

What you Need to Consider

  1. If you have international donors that currently give or would potentially like to give to your ministry, see if a TrustBridge partner foundation exists using this link: https://www.trustbridgeglobal.com/our-network
  2. If a partner foundation exists, please use the instruction guide that we have prepared and is available on the GMC Knowledge called, “FIN.UG.04.13 Donations Through TrustBridge”.
  3. For further information about TrustBridge Global who they partner with and what they do, please visit: https://www.trustbridgeglobal.com/vision-mission

We are Listening

WorldVenture has been a part of the TrustBridge Global network for many years, but it wasn’t until one of our workers reached out to us and invited us to participate in the network at-large that we discovered this potential. As a result, we received over $10,000 USD for one of our workers in 2023. As you can see, we all benefit from your feedback, so if you have an idea please share it with us!

If you have further questions about this, please send an email to financehelp@worldventure.com.

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Information contained in this newsletter is intended for internal use by WorldVenture workers, staff, approved volunteers, and board members. Unauthorized distribution to other parties is not permitted without permission from Finance leadership.