Christmas for Refugees now on countdown for 2016
Even more Christian refugee children will have a Christmas this year thanks to Challenge gift!
By William J. Murray – Program Director
Dancing and singing Christmas songs
Benefactor steps forward again with major challenge: For the second year in a row, one generous man has stepped forward to help fund the Christmas for Refugees program.
The benefactor’s help was not solicited, but rather his big heart and desire to see Christmas for Refugees not only fully funded but expanded in 2016, moved him to set an even higher challenge than he did in 2015.
This year the challenge from this one benefactor is $35,000 …. that is $15,000 more than last year. This is a great blessing to this ministry and to our program for Christian refugee children living in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. He said as soon as we raise $35,000 in smaller donations, the benefactor would then provide the same amount — bringing in $70,000 for the Christmas program.
The opportunity has been made even better: There are some conditions that had to be met, because the desire of the donor is to really increase the size of the Christmas program this year. One of those conditions was that I would encourage others to join the challenge with him prior to notifying all Christmas for Refugees supporters.
So, I wrote and called several other supporters of the Religious Freedom Coalition whom the Lord has blessed, describing the challenge and asking them to join in to make this year a banner year and to increase even further the number of children we can reach. Several supporters have stepped forward to join our major benefactor by also making pledges, or by sending funds to our escrow account, and they have made a real impact this year.
October 1st was our deadline to set up the matching gift program, giving us time to tell everyone about it. By that date, another $20,400 was pledged as matching gifts. That brings our total for the matching challenge to $55,400.
THIS IS AN AMAZING CHALLENGE FOR A MATCHING GIFT PROGRAM
If the challenge of $55,400 to the Christmas for Refugees program is matched by the deadline of December 1st, we will have $110,800 for the Christmas program!
As of October 1st we had raised over half of the funds needed. But we must still raise another $148,250 before Christmas! If the matching challenge is successful the Christmas program will have nearly all the funds needed by December 1st. Once the entire $110,800 is available from the matching challenge I have full confidence that we will be able to raise all required funds for Christmas 2016!
Thousands of Christian children who have fled their homes will have a Christmas this year because of this program. Give a gift today that will be doubled in the matching challenge program.