The Mission Action Team at Piedmont Community Church

BETTER WORLD FUND GRANT REQUEST LETTER & FORM and FUNDING PRINCIPLES

Have you ever wanted to know more about the MAT? Some frequently asked questions are printed below and will hopefully clarify the role of the MAT in the larger PCC community.

Q. Who selects people to be on the MAT Team?
A. Anyone can be on the MAT team from the congregation; just come to the scheduled meetings.

Q. Does the MAT team report to the Board of Trustees or the Board of Deacons? A. The Board of Deacons who then recommends the expenditure of monies for mission recipients to the Board of Trustees. A member of the Board of Deacons is a member of the MAT team and attends all the meetings.

Q. When people go to Malawi from PCC, does the church pay their expenses?
A. No, the individual pays their own expenses. The church supports some of the costs of sending staff on the trips as they are working while on the trip. However, Bill McNabb paid his own way on the initial trip to Africa in 2003.

Q. Are all the international mission giving decisions made by the Senior Pastor?
A. No. We have been introduced to some opportunities by the staff but the entire congregation is encouraged to bring any opportunities they are aware of for international giving to the MAT for review. The Alternative Gift Market is a good example of exposing our congregation to agencies that serve around the world, as well as giving the congregation an avenue to become actively involved locally.

Q. Who sets up the guidelines for reviewing the groups applying for funding?
A. The Board of Deacons has set some guidelines that the MAT uses in determining worthiness of organizations (the mission giving philosophy is available online) and we work on refining these on an ongoing basis. The MAT team researches and proposes a response to a funding request, then it is brought to the Board of Deacons and then the final review is given by the Board of Trustees, who have the fiduciary responsibility to the congregation.

Q. Are we going to start giving the majority of our budgeted mission dollars overseas and not locally? A. No. We as a congregation decide what is important to fund and those who are interested in how our money is spent will get involved in those decisions by attending the MAT meetings. We as a congregation have spent almost all of our annual mission money locally for the past 20 years and we now have opportunities to participate globally. We will give globally but not to the exclusion of local needs. We are looking for partnerships that can be supported both here locally and still have the means to respond to requests from global partners.

Q. What is the Better World Fund?
A. PCC raised $4.5m during the Capital Campaign, and of those funds, 10 percent or $450k has been set aside for wider mission giving.

Q. How much of those funds are being spent locally?
A. The Board of Trustees decided that of the $450k set aside, $45k or 10 percent would be spent locally and $405k would be spent internationally. The MAT team has been assigned to research and consider where the money could be spent and to determine criteria by which they will determine who will obtain funding. The BWF is a finite event in our church life and at the end of the three year period (2007) we will not have such large sums to distribute. Please see links to a grant request letter, form, and principles at the top of the page.