Results for 2014

Bible Society Australia is truly blessed by Our Father and we thank all our supporters for contributing to such a successful year in the fulfilment of our quest.

Attention in the international arena was focussed particularly on the Middle East where the turmoil and persecution of Christians heightened under the threat of Isis. We sought your support through this crisis both using social media and mail appeals. We have been humbled by the overwhelming response which has allowed us to assist more than 5,000 Iraqi refugee families.

Another very successful programme is the Bible-based literacy classes for Pakistani women. The great benefit of this programme is to assist mothers in learning and understanding the Word and then pass the messages to the family members.

Both of these mission activities have been so well supported that we will be able to continue them into 2015.

At a local level we have been able to grow our Eternity eNewsletter and made the difficult decision to close our bookshops and focus more on online book sales. Our new online store will be launched in mid 2015.

Our Flying Bible Ministry is also going through change with the decision to work more closely with other Christian partners in the Remote and Indigenous areas, selling the plane and investing in more resources for those in need.

The consolidated net surplus for the year is $1,346,903 with $748,312 held as restricted funds for specific programmes in 2015. The primarily reasons for the very pleasing outcome are as follows:

• Donations increased by more than $950,000 from last year;
• We received a number of large legacies from the estates of supporters during the year. We thank the families and executors for their assistance in fulfilling the bequestors’ wishes. The total sum received was $2,297,439 up by $1,324,928 on last year.
• Bible Society investments continued to perform well with an overall return from dividends and higher market prices of 7.1%. The gain in the market price was substantially lower than last year by $1,055,067;
• While we were able to maintain the level of funding to international programmes, the fall in the $A has meant that the actual funds received in UBS $US currency was reduced by 3.9%;
• Contribution from book sales (and associated cost savings from the bookshop closures) improved by $307,000; and
• Savings in local mission & church relations activities totalled more than $500,000.

These movements have been offset in part by:

• The Darwin property was sold in 2013 contributing a profit on sale of $481,872 – no material assets were sold in 2014;
• lower contribution from The Bible Trust by $152,436; and
• lower interest rates and the move from equities to a more risk averse investment strategy impacted both dividend and interest income by $157,031.

The total incoming resources is $14,236,079 (2013: $12,085,312), an increase of 17.8% from the prior year while expenses fell from $13,800,504 to $13,128,472 – a saving of 4.9%.

Barry Morris, FCA
Chief Financial Officer