DONATE
Three Ways to Give
For One Time Donations:
1. A cheque can be sent in with a note attached designating the money to a specific fund or missionary. Please do not use the memo line on the cheque.
2. A credit card may be used to donate by phone. 905-529-0166
or online with CanadaHelps (see form at right, scroll down if mobile).
NOTE: The amount charged by the credit card company will be deducted from the gift.
For Recurring Donations:
3. Print and fill in the Pre-Authorized Donation Form and send it to WEC Headquarters. You can give a preauthorized gift from your chequing account or from your credit card. The credit card companies do take a percentage (from 2.5 to 3.5%). If from your chequing account, the full amount is received and goes to the support of the chosen worker.
If you haven’t done so, you might want to check out our thoughts on finances in the About WEC section. (This link 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.
Now it needs to be said that the government has certain ways of regulating the way things should be done. Not all people around the WEC world and not all projects which are desirable are able to receive funding from us. Restricting of funds is confined to programs and projects approved by the organization. Should a donor choose to restrict a contribution for use in a particular program or project, we will honour that restriction, the understanding that, when the need for such a program or project has been met or cannot be completed for any reason as determined by the organization, the remaining restricted contributions will be used where most needed.
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 Bearing in mind the above paragraph, 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 ministries. Just let us know how much for each. Again, the “project or ministry” you choose to give to must be approved before funds can be allocated to said project or ministry.
(There are occasions where money is given to a project that already is fully funded, or to some ministry that is, for some reason, no longer possible. In such cases, we try to find a similar ministry and direct the money into that one 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.
