GCF OVERVIEW
with GCF Founder & Chairman of the Board Stuart Rempel
OUR BEGINNINGS
I have a Bachelors degree in business administration and economics. After spending 10 years with a family manufacturing business in Saskatchewan, I worked in fund development for a major Christian charity. There I gained invaluable experience with administrative and accounting needs of missions. In 2002 I launched the Great Commission Foundation, initially to provide estate planning for Christians. However, individuals started approaching me with an entirely different need.
People would come to me and say, “Stuart, I’m doing a project in Haiti and I need to receipt my donors, can you help me?” Or, “Stuart, I’m doing a project in Cuba and I need help. I need someone to receipt my donors…” or people would come to me and say, “I want to send a bunch of money over to Thailand, can I do it through your foundation so I can get a receipt?” That’s how it started.
The mandate and working relationships with potential missions soon came into focus.
WHO WE ARE
The Great Commission Foundation (GCF) is a team of skilled administrative and accounting personnel dedicated to using their talents and expertise to enable people to follow God’s calling to fulfill the Great Commission of Jesus Christ. GCF is a registered Canadian charity with Canada Revenue Agency (#85992 8483 RR0001).
OUR MANDATE AND WORKING RELATIONSHIPS WITH MISSIONS
GCF works exclusively with Christian ministries and projects in a dynamic cooperative relationship. Ministries and projects engage in outreach activities and provide on-site personnel while GCF provides essential administrative and accounting expertise to enable them to do their ministry. It is a team effort working towards a common goal: the advancement of the Christian faith, education, and the relief of poverty.
WHO DOES GCF SERVE?
We serve people and ministries who probably would not fit into a traditional ministry model – ones specifically called to a specific people group or type of ministry and there’s just no mission board that does what they want to do.
In other cases, we have people who have registered charities and they’re not strong in administration and have trouble with all the guidelines that Canada Revenue has and all they want to do is do ministry. But to do it the right way is important to CRA. So we’ve come along with a number of registered charities and said, “Let us do this for you and take the burden off your shoulders and you focus on your ministry and what you’re called to do and not on these details.” We’ve really specialized in that area.
Compliance is a huge, huge area. And it’s getting bigger each and every year as CRA changes its guidelines on an ongoing basis. So we feel that we’re offering the most effective and efficient service that anybody can give anywhere. As a result of that, over the last four years, an average of 94 cents on the dollar has gone to the donor’s project. And that’s almost unheard of in missions’ circles.