Update from the Treasurer

Cost savings
offset summer income dip

Schnippert.jpg (6176 bytes) By Bernie Schnippert

Greetings from the Treasurer's Office. The summer seems to be flying by. It seems like only yesterday that I wrote last month's column.

Be that as it may, our Accounting Department has just closed the month of July and reported the results of operations for the month.

Again, as I review the figures, I am reminded of the prudence of making the painful but necessary budget cuts we made during the past several years both here at headquarters and more recently in the field ministry.

July closed with a daily mail average of just less than $98,000. This ranks second only to January of this year ($90,000 a day) as the lowest income month in recent memory.

When I think back to just two summers ago when we were projecting a daily average of $165,000 (68 percent more than this July), I am thankful to God for helping us to always scale back our spending just in time.

July's average brought the yearly average down to $108,000, a little less than this year's revised budget of $110,000 a day.

The good news is that because of the prudent measures taken by Mr. Tkach and the board of directors, our cash reserves are relatively stable. The reserves are not the result of income surpluses over expenses, but primarily from asset sales and Ambassador University's closure.

Hence, the reserves are merely some of previous net worth now in liquid form. It is critical that we do not run these down. If we do, we not only do not have them in a financial crisis, but our goal of using eventual facility sale proceeds to fund a pension plan and for mission work becomes more difficult.

On a related item, PricewaterhouseCoopers issued the final audit of Ambassador University, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1997. They also issued a report on the federal awards distributed to students by Ambassador University during the same period. I am happy to report that the auditors gave us a clean bill of health on both reports.

As in the case with the yearly church audit, the Ambassador audit is available to any current church members who request one from me.

And, by the way, the church audit is almost complete. We expect it to issue within the next month or so and we are expecting an unqualified opinion again this year.

Finally, please remember that we have many church expenses during the summer, just like we do throughout the year, so please don't allow the summer doldrums to make you forget your tithes and offerings.

Thank you again for your generous support.