Fellowship Bible Church (FBC) seeks to be a good steward of the resources which the Lord provides for the ongoing operations and ministry.

All donations to FBC are subject to the administration and control of the Board of Elders of FBC (“Elders”) and may be used for any reason or purpose consistent with FBCVA’s mission and purpose (as determined by the Elders in their sole discretion), regardless of any designation, restriction, or preference communicated by the donor. This policy supports the Elder’s role in overseeing the ministry of FBC as well as assists the church in demonstrating the necessary oversight for tax compliance. The Elders will strive to honor giver designations, restrictions and preferences if they determine they are feasible and appropriate in the Elder’s sole discretion.

To protect the interests of FBC and givers, the following items should be noted:

1. Gifts including liabilities, hazards, or encumbrances will not be accepted unless approved by the Elders with specific approval of accepting such obligations.
2. Gifts of real property, non-publicly traded stock, planned giving instruments, annuities, trusts, and similar contracts will only be accepted after the necessary due diligence review by FBC staff and advisors and then by a specific approval by the Elders.
3. Designations, restrictions, and preferences over how gifts are to be used should not be made along with donations unless the Elders have previously approved it as a designated giving option.
4. Givers are advised that FBC does not provide tax or legal advice regarding giving and encourages givers to seek the counsel of their professional advisors for such advice.
5. Gifts made to FBC are completed gifts under the law and are non-refundable.

FBC does not sell, share, or trade our givers’ names or personal information with any other entity outside of FBC or send mailings to our givers on behalf of other organizations. However, unless anonymity is requested, gifts preferenced to support the work of missions may be shared with specific supported missions’ workers and their affiliated church or ministry.  Any requests for anonymity for missions support should be made by sending an email to FBC Executive Pastor, John Van Drunen at [email protected].

At FBC, we use an online database called Fellowship One. This database/system allows us to provide access to your contribution records and allows you to make donations online. Fellowship One provides all of the security for the system and online giving. Fellowship One is used by churches throughout the country and has been fully tested.

There are two aspects of security related to the system. First, Fellowship One provides data security using the latest security technology. The following statement is from their security documentation: “[the system] utilizes the most current encryption technology to maintain the security of your data. Every parameter passed in the hyperlinks is fully encrypted. Additionally, the Login module handles passwords using what is known in technical terms as salted hash. In layman’s terms, this means it would take 50 computers (running constantly) continuously presenting password combinations four years to discover the password.”

The second aspect of security relates to account creation. When you first create a new account in the system, you will be able to donate immediately, but you will not have access to any previous contribution information. Before that can happen, we must manually link your previous information to the account you created.

In order to verify the authenticity of the account request, we will ensure that all of your data matches our current records (e.g., address, phone number, and email address). If there is any question, we will contact you via email before creating the link. Since this is a manual process, we will perform these steps approximately once a week, but if you would like to speed up this process, you can send an email to [email protected].

When you create your account, you will determine your own login id and password. If you forget your login id or password, you can have the system email it to you by entering the email address that you used when you created your account. If you need help or cannot remember the email address you used, you can contact us at [email protected]. You can also change your password at any time.

You can schedule new contributions at any time and can modify or cancel those contributions at any time prior to the date they are scheduled. Once the contribution has been processed, however, it cannot be canceled. If you have any problems or questions related to this, please contact us at the following email: [email protected]