REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON FINANCE.
Your Committee on Finance beg leave to report that they have examined the Treasurer’s statements of receipts and expenditures and find them properly certified as correct by the auditors. Also the trial balance, and the list of trust funds, and the books of accounts are so certified.
The trust funds appear to be securely invested and wisely administered for the purposes for which they were created.
We find that the accounts of the Treasurer are carefully kept and that the control and disbursement of the current funds of the Association are conducted in a thoroughly systematic and business-like manner, with ample safeguards against error and loss.
Your Committee take pleasure in commending the wisdom, fidelity and economy of the officers and Executive Committee in the financial administration of the great trusts confided to their care.
It is gratifying to find that the expenditures of the Association have been so carefully guarded and distributed that for six consecutive years last past they have not exceeded the annual income. During this period a large indebtedness previously incurred has been wholly paid and no new indebtedness created in any department of its work.
The balance in the treasury is $789.83, after paying all bills due to September 30.
There is every reason to expect that this satisfactory condition of things will be continued through the generosity of the churches to this cause.
At the last annual meeting, your Committee on Finance recommended that the churches increase their contributions from $243,000 to $300,000 for the then current year; and the reports submitted at this meeting show that this was done within $3,000. This additional sum of $54,000 has been used partly in completing the college buildings at Talladega, Ala., and Strieby Hall, at Tougaloo, Miss. It has also greatly helped in the support of needy students, besides materially increasing the working force and general church and school efficiency.
It is worthy of remark that almost every dollar of this increased contribution has done effective work in the mission fields, since, while the receipts for the past two years have been more than $100,000 larger than in the two years next preceding them, the expense of raising and disbursing these funds and managing the affairs of the Association has increased less than $400 per annum, thus showing that the Association is fully equipped for a much larger work without additional cost for the machinery of administration. This fact constitutes a strong appeal to the benevolent who wish their gifts applied without waste or diminution to the good ends for which they are bestowed.
These more ample facilities for church and educational work bring with them larger demands for funds, so that simply to preserve its efficiency in fields already occupied the Association requires an annual increase in contributions. Besides, new demands are continually made for new foundations in different places.
From the reports and papers submitted at this meeting, we gather that $5,000 more than last year will be needed to increase the work among the Chinese in California; $20,000 more for the enlargement of the work among the Indians; $25,000 more for the support of schools and churches among the Freedmen, and $25,000 more towards the building of Smith College at Little Rock, Ark.
In view of all these facts and reasons, the urgency of which all friends of the Association will readily appreciate, your Committee recommend that at least $50,000 be added to the current income of the Association for general uses during the next fiscal year, and express the earnest hope that the further sum of $25,000 may be obtained for special purposes, making a grand total for 1882–3 of $375,000.
J. G. W. Cowles, Chairman.