brown on green, A Regular column about finances

by David Brown

What Free Will Baptists Can Learn From the Harvard Endowment

Before the latest financial crisis, the Harvard Endowment was worth around $36 billion and produced a five percent payout to the university totaling around $1.8 billion annually. This payout supports roughly 30% of the university’s budget. The Harvard endowment is so large because they began emphasizing estate and legacy giving over 300 years ago. Free Will Baptists have a lot of catching up to do, but it is not far-fetched to believe that planned giving could have this type of impact on our ministries.

It is estimated there are 60,000 estates among Free Will Baptists. Statistics from the Federal Reserve suggest the average net worth of all Americans is a little over $200,000. Many estates are depleted as health declines, so I am assuming half of that amount ($100,000) to be the average final estate for families.

If every Free Will Baptist household tithed on their estate, it would produce $600 million. All of these funds invested in an endowment would produce $30 million annually for all of our ministries. Divert $5 million of that to national and regional ministries and $25 million to all of our churches. We would produce enough income to fund roughly 30% of every national ministry’s gift budgets. The monies distributed to churches would support 10% of the average church budget.

The Foundation recently entered a partnership with Cornerstone Estate Planning to provide estate seminars to our churches. We will work in a limited geographic area initially, but ultimately want to make this service available to every Free Will Baptist church. We believe if Free Will Baptists are challenged to give estate gifts, they will respond and make a huge impact for churches and other ministries.

We may not have $36 billion like Harvard, but we can have the same impact with fewer dollars. Please consider making an estate gift to Free Will Baptist ministries. Contact our office for more information.

David Brown, CPA, became director of the Free Will Baptist Foundation in 2007. Send your questions to David at david@nafwb.org. To learn how the Foundation can help you become a more effective giver, call 877-336-7575.