Last year was the Prayer Leagues first entire year of enrollment in Thrivents GivingPlus program. This is the program which allows members of Thrivent to have their donation to WMPL supplemented by Thrivent Financial.
This program has been an incredible success in the Lutheran community and it has been an amazing blessing for the Prayer League. In 2006 Thrivent met their goal of giving away 28.8 million dollars through this program. Each year upon meeting the goal set for the year Thrivent ends the program for that year and no longer matches gifts. This did occur in 2006, but I am happy to report that only three of the 190 forms that were submitted to WMPL in 2006 were rejected for this reason.
Thrivent donated $39,500 to the ministry of WMPL as a result of matched donations received in 2006. This was up from the $12,695 that WMPL received from Thrivent for donations received in 2005. This increase in funding received is a result of more participation in the program by you. More than twice as many individuals participated in 2006 as did in 2005 and we would like to see that number increase again this year.
There is however a change in program rules this year that will make it a little more difficult. Until this year any member of Thrivent could participate in the program. Individuals who own Thrivent Mutual Fund accounts or Thrivent Life Insurance Company products are members of Thrivent. In addition to those members anyone could become an associate member of Thrivent by paying a $10 annual fee to Thrivent. Effective Jan. 1, 2007 associate members of Thrivent are no longer eligible to participate in the GivingPlus program. Only members who own a Thrivent Mutual Fund or a Thrivent Life Insurance product will be able to participate this year. I have no way of knowing exactly how many of you this will affect but I suspect it is a small number of you.
If you participated in this program with us last year you will receive a thank you letter from us with another gift form enclosed sometime during the beginning part of this year. If you have not participated in the past and you would like to you can learn more about the program by clicking here.
Member gift forms should be submitted to WMPL for processing and not to Thrivent. Our address is:
WMPL
232 Clifton Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Please feel free to contact me for more information or to request a member gift form via mail. You may give me a call (612-871-6843) or drop me a line (jdahl@wmpl.org).