The 990-Level Transparency Solution

What is 990-Level Transparency?

The Form 990 is the industry standard for non-profit financial disclosure. While SBC entities are exempt from filing a 990 with the IRS, we believe our entities should disclose the same scope and detail of financial financial information to Southern Baptist messengers and churches. This type of disclosure is:

• NORMAL: We’re not asking for anything outlandish or something that’s not available to stakeholders of secular organizations.

• SIMPLE: Giving messengers and churches 990-level disclosure is neither difficult nor complex.

• BAPTIST: We’ve given similar disclosure in our Convention historically, and this type of transparency applies Baptist congregationalism to convention governance.

We believe 990-level transparency is a key to restore trust in our convention, increase Cooperative Program giving to fund missions and ministry, and optimize our trustee system.

Check out the RESOURCES page for longer-length articles and conversations, and see below for answers to FAQs.

FAQ

Will this put missionaries at risk?

No, 990-level disclosure does not contain information that would compromise any missionary’s security. Further, this motion specifically allows the trustees to use pseudonyms or withhold information if the majority of trustees determine disclosure of such information would compromise safety.

Don’t we have trustees for such oversight?

Yes, but 990-level information is the industry standard for donors to have. Trustee boards ought to be accountable, too, and 990-level disclosure provides such accountability to the messengers who appoint them.

The Executive Committee is proposing a new Business and Financial Plan. Doesn’t that solve the transparency problem?

No. The proposed Business and Financial Plan that the EC will present to messengers in Dallas is actually less transparent than the current plan, giving messengers and churches even less rights to information than we currently have. Read HERE for a detailed analysis of the proposed plan.

Should we disclose who the donors are?

This motion explicitly excludes the donor schedule in order to protect donor privacy.

What about compensation disclosure?

A laborer is worthy of his wages. No one leading a large organization should be despised for making a large salary. However, executive compensation disclosure is one of the key ways to evaluate trustees, which is in the purview of the messengers who appoint trustee boards. Therefore, churches and messengers should have this information.

But couldn’t salary disclosure lead to unhealthy competition for seminary professors?

No, only the top 5 salaries are disclosed. Further, this is not a problem for the many Baptist universities and other evangelical seminaries that file 990s already.

Messengers can already get salary information, correct?

No. Messengers can (sometimes) obtain a salary scale, but this is only a generic range of possible salaries and does not include total compensation. Further, several entities flat refuse to comply with even this insufficient current rule in the business and financial plan.

What about the cost of the added work?

All SBC entities are already required to audit their financials with outside accountants. So the added cost of compiling 990-level information should be negligible. The information is already there; it’s just not compiled and disclosed.

Isn’t this information already available?

Some of it is, but much of it is not. Further, it is not easy to for churches to find.

One thing is for sure: The answer from convention leadership cannot be that “compiling the 990 information is too costly/difficult” AND “it’s already available” at the same time.

But what about the Ministry Reports?

These reports are insufficient. They do not disclose top compensation, top contractors, conflicts of interest policies, detailed operating costs, and many of the more detailed information of program-level financials that the 990 includes.

Do we really want the federal government involved?

No. The motion explicitly says this information does not need to be given to the government. It says SBC entities should give churches information equivalent to this well-known, public standard.

Doesn’t this contribute to our culture of distrust?

A: Absolutely not. Quite the opposite. If financial impropriety exists, this will help bring it to the light where Southern Baptists can fix it, thus restoring trust. However, if no impropriety exists, then transparency can put those false rumors to rest, thus building trust. The only thing that promotes distrust is operating in the dark.

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