CLICK HERE FOR 2015 BUDGET TO ACTUAL FINANCIAL STATEMENT

As always, as part of our commitment to fiscal transparency, we are releasing our financial statement for the year 2015. We are so grateful to every single person who played a part in supporting us!

Transparency isn’t just about numbers. It’s also about our story, so let us share a few things about what we experienced last year that puts more context to these numbers.

First, as you can see, we only spent 65% of what we budgeted. That’s largely because we only raised 79% of what we budgeted. Some of it was due to our limited capacity as a small organization, so we were able to do less in some areas than we had hoped. For example, we were not able to organize a fundraising event, which is why we only spent 25% of what we budgeted for Development. We also struggled to receive support from foundations.

Another reason though, is that we simply don’t believe in spending money because we said we would. This is a common end-of-the-year practice in many businesses, government agencies, and even nonprofits.

There’s also some great news in these numbers. For example, we raised almost three-times as much from our community than we anticipated!!! Thank you all so much for believing in our work!!! We also received our second $25,000 grant from one foundation that we believe will be a long-term commitment. So while we didn’t meet our goal for grants this year, it’s only going to go up from here.

Plus, because of our frugal spending, we have a nice surplus moving into next year. As an organization that relies so heavily on faith, this is a nice cushion.

A few more things:

• We didn’t need to hire any contractors because of some amazing volunteers we’ve had throughout the year. THANK YOU ALL!!!
• It took us a while to find the right grant-writer, so we only spent half the budgeted amount.
• Almost all of our trainers and guest speakers donated their stipends and honorariums back to East Point, which is why we spent less than 5% of those two items combined.
• Thanks to our partners who believe in us, we didn’t have to spend anything on site rentals this year!
• We also spent much less than anticipated on travel. This is because our local programs have really taken off, and we’ve really invested in building those up.
• We were going to invest some money into brochures and other publications (graphics design and printing), but because word was getting out so much about our work without them, we didn’t feel like it was necessary.
• We did go over budget on equipment because our laptop was unfortunately stolen during the year, which was an unforeseen expense…

Click here to see our financial statement. If you have any questions about any our finances, please feel free to email us at info (at) eastpointpeace.org.

Again, thank you to each and every single person who supported us in 2015, and we’ll see you in 2016!!!

East Point Peace Academy