Your ShelfYour Projects

Summary of Last Year's Thanksgiving Campaign

14%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 23, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 38.

Read the full edition

Summary of Last Year's Thanksgiving Campaign

By A. J. S. B.

THROUGH the courtesy and efforts of our treasury department we are able to present the clear-cut, concise “Statement of the 1908 Thanksgiving Fund” found in this department. It includes all returns up to Sept. 1, 1909.
Of the 692,000 copies of the special Thanksgiving REVIEW printed, 648,852 copies were ordered by our conferences, and 35,148 were used in advertising the campaign.
It is interesting and encouraging to note that not a single one of the twelve union conferences listed had a “balance short” after the cost of its supply of the Thanksgiving REVIEW was paid. And, of the sixty-six local conferences reported, only six show any shortage at all. A splendid showing, indeed!
The actual cost of the papers and the campaign expenses made each copy of the Thanksgiving number of the REVIEW cost the General Conference two cents. Figured on this basis, the 648,852 copies circulated by our people among their neighbors and friends resulted in donations amounting to $43,902.16, or an average of nearly seven cents a copy, five cents of which went directly to our foreign missions. This is truly encouraging.
Last year’s Thanksgiving campaign for missions was the greatest missionary effort ever taken by our people. The distribution of nearly 700,000 copies of our church paper, the REVIEW, filled as it was with inspiring reports, statistics, and appeals, gave our neighbors and friends a much broader view of the work of the third angel’s message. Previous to this effort many people, even our intimate friends, had very limited ideas of our work, supposing it to be confined largely to proselyting in the home field. In view of the nature of that splendid campaign, it seems very fitting that this summary be published in our Missionary and Publishing department. It is through just such home missionary efforts as this that this promise of the Lord (Isa. 60:22) is fulfilled to even the timid and the fearful worker: “A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation.”
A. J. S. B.