Episcopal Relief and Development will lose more than $700,000 that the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church intended to send its way if the church’s General Convention adopts a budget proposal offered by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.
The church’s 2009 General Convention pledged 0.7% of its budget to the Millennium Development Goals, and, in effect, donated the money to ERD. Executive Council recommended continuing the partnership, earmarking $703,000 for ERD in the budget it submitted to the Program, Budget and Finance Committee.
The presiding bishop proposes allocating the money to the church’s fledgling Development Office for use in a matching grants program. (See budget line 243.) The proceeds of that effort would be used to rebuild schools and hospitals in the Diocese of Haiti, the presiding bishop wrote in a letter accompanying her proposal. Haiti is still struggling to recover from the cataclysmic 2010 earthquake.
The presiding bishop’s budget also sets the value of the in-kind services that Episcopal Relief and Development receives from the church $1 million higher than the Executive Council’s budget. (See line 249).
Episcopal Relief and Development has written to the Program, Budget and Finance committee explaining the effect the funding reduction would have on its work, outlining its current work in Haiti and expressing puzzlement at the increase in the valuation of the in-kind services it receives.