wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] New Wilmington campaign raises $550, 000,

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Note #8825 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05395
July 28, 2005

New Wilmington campaign raises $550,000

1st-phase total is far short of goal, but organizers say they are pleased

by Toya Richards Hill

NEW WILMINGTON, PA - The first phase of a fund-raising campaign to support
the New Wilmington Missionary Conference (NWMC) has ended short of its goal.

	Campaign managers had hoped to raise $1.5 million over five years to
pay the NWMC director and sustain a program that sends college students
abroad for mission work, but the NWMC Development Fund reached only $550,000.

	Still, overseers of the fund-raising effort say they are pleased to
have raised that much.

	"I think it's amazing that we were able to get this $550,000, when
other fund-raisers are going backwards," said Pat Templin, the campaign
chair.

	"We have a base of people who are, at the core, retired or working
missionaries. Our membership here, we really don't live out in the
fund-raising world."

	The goals of the campaign were to raise $1 million for a new
Director's Compensation Endowment Fund and $500,000 for the Summer Service
Endowment Fund.

	The conference, which is celebrating its centennial year, is
dedicated to strengthening the Presbyterian commitment to mission service in
the United States and abroad. Current and former mission workers and their
families gather annually at Westminster College to renew and re-charge. 

	This year's event has featured a 100th-birthday bash for the NWMC; a
commissioning service for national and international PC(USA) mission workers
and volunteers; and the recognition of 120 active and retired missionaries
with 2,805 years of service.

	The 2005 conference, which ends on June 30, also marks the end of the
first phase of the fund-raising campaign, whose theme is "That All May Know."
It is managed by the NWMC Endowment Foundation Board of Trustees and the NWMC
Board of Managers.

	"We've had 100 good years of mission service, and we wanted to
prepare for the years ahead," the Rev. Donald Dawson, the NWMC director, said
of the fund-raising campaign. "We believe the renewal and strength of the
church rests in the hands of our mission focus."

	Dawson is the first NWMC director to be paid by the conference
itself. In the past the position has been funded by the denomination or by
the director's presbytery or congregation, Templin said.

	Over the years, she added, "the job has grown. ... We needed to
compensate him."

	Sixty percent of Dawson's salary comes from the World Mission
Initiative at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; the other 40 percent comes
from NWMC. Dawson also is director of the World Mission Initiative.

	At the close of the 2004 fiscal year, on Jan. 31, donors had added
$126,395 to the director's compensation fund, raising the total to $392,826,
according to the foundation's annual report. Contributions for 2003 came to
$78,899.

	The other beneficiary of the campaign was the conference's Summer
Service Scholarship Program, which sends college-aged students overseas for
six weeks of mission service. Its funding comes from special conference
offerings, designated donations and income from the foundation. Rising
program costs prompted the NWMC to create the new fund to support the
program.

	"The expenses connected to that are greater" than in the past,
Templin said. 

	In 2005, the Summer Service team traveled to Turkey; in 2004, a team
served in Slovenia.

	Donors contributed $17,277 to the Summer Service fund in fiscal 2004,
raising its balance to $136,638, according to the annual report. That was
significantly down from 2003, when donors contributed $37,115.

	Templin said the second phase of the campaign will be more loosely
structured than the first.

	"We will still encourage three- and five-year pledges," she said,
although there won't be as many organized events. "We don't want people to
think, 'Well, we don't need to give to this anymore.'"

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