You may have heard about us starting a nonprofit organization called Heart for Uganda.  The vision is to create sustainable programs that can continue on in Uganda long after Klint and Vicki are not around.  We are interested in a long term investment in the people of Uganda and this requires some infrastructure.  I wanted to take a bit to talk about why we have taken this step.  Ok…it turned out to be a little more than a bit…

First a little background….  We are going as independent missionaries, which means that we do not have an organization that pays us a salary to conduct mission work for them.  One of the main reasons that we are going this route is that God has called us to fulfill a particular mission at a specific location.  The mission sending organization affiliated with our church focuses on evangelism and church planting where we are going to focus on building up individuals and organizations through vocational and organizational development programs.  The sending organization also will send you to where they have the most need and we feel called to Uganda.  Because we are going as independent missionaries, we are raising our own funds to support our mission in Uganda.  This creates an issue in that we are not a 501c3 organization for tax deductible purposes.  People donating to our mission would not get a tax deduction for their support if they wrote a check directly to us.  To solve this issue, we have been teamed up with a sending organization called Ripe for Harvest.  Ripe for Harvest is a 501c3 tax-exempt organization and they handle the donations to our mission whether they come via check draft, check or credit card and we are considered a W-2 employee of Ripe for Harvest.

One of the issues that have arisen with the arrangement with Ripe for Harvest is that there is a cost associated with the benefits that they provide.  There are home office expenses that they need to cover including:  rent, staff salaries, accountants, legal counsel, IRS reporting, postage, mailing supplies, operating supplies, travel for field visits, computer, etc.  The administrative costs come out to 12%.  With our budget, this works out to about $569/month that we have to raise just to cover this cost.

Another issue is that we have to raise funding for programs through this same sending agency, which means that we would need to raise an additional 12% over and above what we need for program expenses.  Programming expenses are the costs to operate our various programs including hiring translators, transportation, materials, etc.

Another issue is that there are grant opportunities that we can apply for, but we cannot apply for them as individuals and we can’t apply for them as Ripe for Harvest.  These are lost opportunities for raising funds to cover program expenses.

The biggest issue is that with us going through Ripe for Harvest, our mission in Uganda ends when we return home.  Relationships are key in Uganda and building those takes quite a bit of time.  We feel that a successful program will be built over a long haul and we don’t want to have it unravel when we are gone.

This brings us to our formation of our own nonprofit organization called Heart for Uganda.  Heart for Uganda will allow us to raise funds with lower overhead, allow us to raise program expenses without the 12% overhead costs, allow us to apply for foundational grants and most importantly, allow us to create a sustainable program that will continue on without us.

We have formed a board of directors and they have been working very hard and have already done strategic planning, board training, developed bylaws, developed articles of incorporation, setup as a Texas nonprofit corporation, developed policies, setup bank accounts and have begun the paperwork to apply for 501c3 tax exempt status with the IRS.  We are anticipating that the paperwork will be complete very soon and once we file with the IRS, we can begin the process of migrating our donors over to Heart for Uganda from Ripe for Harvest.  We appreciate your continued prayers as we go down this road.

The post Nonprofit Organization appeared first on Heart For Uganda.