If you haven't done so, you might want to check out our thoughts on finances in the About WEC section. (Thislink will take you there.)
To summarize briefly, nobody in WEC gets a salary. Everything - from the food we eat to the tract we give to that rickshaw driver who asked questions about Jesus the other day - everything comes from God moving through others to give what is needed for that particular person or ministry. And we strive, whenever possible, to fulfil the intent of the donor in giving. If money is given to a certain ministry, we try our best to see that it all gets there. As a result, we don't deduct a percentage to put towards administration, or to fund other departments. We trust that as we look to God for our needs, and as people follow God's leading in how they give, there will be money for what God wants to accomplish.
So, if God has put it in your heart to give, we encourage you to do so, specifying how you would like your donation to be used. At the top of this page, are links to the site of CanadaHelps, which securely handles credit card donations, even taking care of giving you a receipt for tax purposes (you'll also get an acknowledgement directly from us, later). If you wish to give money so a certain missionary can, say, eat, just say "for So-and-so's ministry support". Part of what comes in under this designation is put towards his or her "living allowance", based on the local cost of living; the rest is used to fund ministry expenses, like tracts. If you wish to give towards a certain ministry objective you know about, like, say, printing a thousand copies of a recently finished translation of Romans into a remote dialect, just specify that it's "for the such-and-such project". You can, of course, request to split a donation among multiple designations. Just let us know how much for each.
(There are occasions where money is given to a project that already is fully funded, or to some ministry that is suddenly no longer possible. In such cases, we try to find the most similar ministry and direct the money into that instead.)
Two other categories of giving should be mentioned. Each month brings its own financial challenges. Some missionary may have a key financial supporter who is no longer able to give, resulting in a sudden financial shortfall. A hurried evacuation from an unstable country might result in a missionary losing everything except a suitcase of belongings. Some essential support worker may be dangling on the edge because few people want to support someone who is "not on the front lines". For just such cases we have a category called, "where needed most". Each month we make a list of the most pressing needs, and do our best to meet them with what comes in under this designation.
Finally, money that comes in with no designation is used both for such pressing needs, and for all sorts of unglamorous things that keep our little WEC ship afloat. Training new missionaries and maintaining a hundred or so Canadian missionaries on the field means our headquarters is always a bustling concern. All the visiting, phoning, teaching, writing, e-mailing, organizing, arranging, counselling, debriefing - this essential support effort needs things like heat, electricity, computers, sheets on the beds in the guest rooms, paper for the photocopier, etc. God has always met such needs by providing enough such "undesignated funds" to keep the lights on at home.
While giving online is quick and convenient, especially for a one-time donation, it's still relatively new. Most people do one of two things. If they are intending to give regular support, they arrange with us to have a certain "pre-authorized deduction" made from their bank account each month. It's a smooth, easy, low-maintenance way to give. (If interested, click on the icon at the side of the page for the Pre-Authorized form to send us to set things up.) Others mail us a cheque, or a bunch of post-dated cheques. Any way you give is great, and very much appreciated.
(But, just between you and me, going paperless saves our finance folk a lot of time, effort, and expense. They're too nice to say anything, but paper cheques mean manual data entry into a computer, manual deposits to the bank, and receipts sent by snail mail. Given that we receive several hundred cheques per month, this means lots of man-hours spent doing paper-shuffling and data-entry, and lots of money into the coffers of Canada Post. Wouldn't it be better if our finance office folk could do less of that, and more time writing e-mails like this?)
