Details were scant on Thursday after Focus on the Family announced, and the Denver Post subsequently reported, that 75 staffers would be sacked in addition to the 200 who were terminated in November 2008.
“They’ve been praying over these things. They’ve been agonizing over these things,” [spokesman Gary] Schneeberger said of Focus leaders. “It’s a bad day. It’s never easy to say goodbye to family.”
Focus blamed the same $6 million revenue shortfall which previously prompted the announcement that the organization’s “Love Won Out” ex-gay roadshow would be transferred to Exodus International.
As I previously commented, that shortfall is not as bad as it sounds, given FOTF’s $138 million annual budget for 2009.
According to the Denver Post:
By the end of the ministry’s fiscal year on Sept. 30, Schneeberger said, officials expect to have collected 95 percent of the $138 million in revenue they budgeted.
“That is pretty amazing, from our perspective, given that some nonprofits are looking at . . . much bigger losses,” Schneeberger said.
Meanwhile, Exodus International is believed to be under stress from an ill-timed purchase of its new headquarters building at the height of the U.S. real-estate boom, as well as from a recession-based decline in donations to non-profits in general and culture-war organizations in particular.
