InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA 
The information on this page was last updated 2/23/2024. If you see errors or omissions, please email: [email protected]
Summary
InterVarsity is a vibrant campus ministry that establishes and advances witnessing communities of students and faculty. For over 75 years, InterVarsity has had a vital presence on hundreds of college campuses, courageously proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Savior, engaging in discipleship around Scripture, and loving people of every ethnicity and culture.
Our chapters exist to serve the campus. We welcome students into caring, diverse communities, where they can build friendships and explore Christian faith in the marketplace of ideas.
At many campuses, we have more than one chapter, which may include separate outreaches to international students, nursing students, sororities and fraternities, athletes, artists, and ethnic minority groups, as well as faculty and career-specific graduate student chapters.
Contact information
Mailing address:
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
635 Science Dr.
Madison, WI 53711
Website: www.intervarsity.org
Phone: (608) 274-9001
Email: [email protected]
Organization details
EIN: 362171714
CEO/President: Tom Lin
Chairman: Ed Ollie, Jr.
Board size: 17
Founder: Stacey Woods
Ruling year: 1985
Tax deductible: Yes
Fiscal year end: 06/30
Member of ECFA: Yes
Member of ECFA since: 1980
Purpose
We believe that God has called us to reach every corner of every campus. Our vision is to see students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world changers developed.
Mission statement
In response to God's love, grace and truth:
The Purpose of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA is to establish and advance at colleges and universities witnessing communities of students and faculty who follow Jesus as Savior and Lord: growing in love for God, God's Word, God's people of every ethnicity and culture and God's purposes in the world.
Statement of faith
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's uses the following to express its Statement of Fath:
We believe in:
- The only true God, the almighty Creator of all things,existing eternally in three persons- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-full of love and glory.
- The unique divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness and authority of the Bible.
- The value and dignity of all people: created in God's image to live in love and holiness,but alienated from God and each other because of our sin and guilt,and justly subject to God's wrath.
- Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine,who lived as a perfect example, who assumed the judgment due sinners by dying in our place,and who was bodily raised from the dead and ascended as Savior and Lord.
- Justification by God's grace to all who repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.
- The indwelling presence and transforming power of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all believers a new life and a new calling to obedient service.
- The unity of all believers in Jesus Christ, manifest in worshiping and witnessing churches making disciples throughout the world.
- The victorious reign and future personal return of Jesus Christ, who will judge all people with justice and mercy, giving over the unrepentant to eternal condemnation but receiving the redeemed into eternal life.
Donor confidence score
Transparency grade
A
To understand our transparency grade, click here.
Financial efficiency ratings
Sector: Fellowship Evangelism
| Category | Rating | Overall rank | Sector rank |
| Overall efficiency rating | | 776 of 1104 | 25 of 32 |
| Fund acquisition rating | | 861 of 1105 | 27 of 32 |
| Resource allocation rating | | 896 of 1105 | 27 of 32 |
| Asset utilization rating | | 274 of 1104 | 7 of 32 |
Financial ratios
| Funding ratios | Sector median | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
Return on fundraising efforts Return on fundraising efforts = Fundraising expense / Total contributions | 8% | 13% | 12% | 12% | 11% | 10% |
Fundraising cost ratio Fundraising cost ratio = Fundraising expense / Total revenue | 6% | 11% | 10% | 10% | 9% | 8% |
Contributions reliance Contributions reliance = Total contributions / Total revenue | 86% | 83% | 80% | 81% | 82% | 79% |
Fundraising expense ratio Fundraising expense ratio = Fundraising expense / Total expenses | 7% | 11% | 10% | 10% | 8% | 8% |
Other revenue reliance Other revenue reliance = Total other revenue / Total revenue | 14% | 17% | 20% | 19% | 18% | 21% |
| Operating ratios | Sector median | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
Program expense ratio Program expense ratio = Program services / Total expenses | 83% | 75% | 79% | 79% | 80% | 82% |
Spending ratio Spending ratio = Total expenses / Total revenue | 91% | 98% | 99% | 101% | 106% | 101% |
Program output ratio Program output ratio = Program services / Total revenue | 74% | 74% | 78% | 79% | 85% | 83% |
Savings ratio Savings ratio = Surplus (deficit) / Total revenue | 9% | 2% | 1% | -1% | -6% | -1% |
Reserve accumulation rate Reserve accumulation rate = Surplus (deficit) / Net assets | 11% | 3% | 2% | -1% | -10% | -1% |
General and admin ratio General and admin ratio = Management and general expense / Total expenses | 11% | 13% | 11% | 12% | 12% | 10% |
| Investing ratios | Sector median | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
Total asset turnover Total asset turnover = Total expenses / Total assets | 1.15 | 1.54 | 1.63 | 1.56 | 1.57 | 1.53 |
Degree of long-term investment Degree of long-term investment = Total assets / Total current assets | 1.42 | 1.41 | 1.38 | 1.43 | 1.44 | 1.42 |
Current asset turnover Current asset turnover = Total expenses / Total current assets | 1.61 | 2.18 | 2.25 | 2.22 | 2.25 | 2.16 |
| Liquidity ratios | Sector median | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
Current ratio Current ratio = Total current assets / Total current liabilities | 9.62 | 9.54 | 8.37 | 7.35 | 6.41 | 8.41 |
Current liabilities ratio Current liabilities ratio = Total current liabilities / Total current assets | 0.09 | 0.10 | 0.12 | 0.14 | 0.16 | 0.12 |
Liquid reserve level Liquid reserve level = (Total current assets - Total current liabilities) / (Total expenses / 12) | 6.72 | 4.92 | 4.70 | 4.66 | 4.50 | 4.89 |
| Solvency ratios | Sector median | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
Liabilities ratio Liabilities ratio = Total liabilities / Total assets | 8% | 11% | 12% | 13% | 14% | 11% |
Debt ratio Debt ratio = Debt / Total assets | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
Reserve coverage ratio Reserve coverage ratio = Net assets / Total expenses | 81% | 57% | 54% | 56% | 55% | 58% |
Financials
| Balance sheet | |||||
| Assets | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
| Cash | $4,201,260 | $2,738,578 | $2,459,658 | $1,672,287 | $3,976,427 |
| Receivables, inventories, prepaids | $10,109,853 | $10,969,791 | $8,396,310 | $8,385,156 | $8,182,184 |
| Short-term investments | $32,716,608 | $35,063,461 | $34,696,571 | $34,916,877 | $34,636,935 |
| Other current assets | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Total current assets | $47,027,721 | $48,771,830 | $45,552,539 | $44,974,320 | $46,795,546 |
| Long-term investments | $4,188,288 | $1,698,705 | $2,005,136 | $1,296,121 | $1,144,940 |
| Fixed assets | $12,517,686 | $14,577,697 | $15,251,795 | $16,484,780 | $16,381,498 |
| Other long-term assets | $2,733,019 | $2,105,986 | $2,117,228 | $1,945,200 | $1,917,998 |
| Total long-term assets | $19,438,993 | $18,382,388 | $19,374,159 | $19,726,101 | $19,444,436 |
| Total assets | $66,466,714 | $67,154,218 | $64,926,698 | $64,700,421 | $66,239,982 |
| Liabilities | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
| Payables and accrued expenses | $4,718,757 | $5,567,920 | $5,139,081 | $6,752,509 | $5,178,815 |
| Other current liabilities | $211,760 | $255,706 | $1,058,137 | $266,180 | $382,637 |
| Total current liabilities | $4,930,517 | $5,823,626 | $6,197,218 | $7,018,689 | $5,561,452 |
| Debt | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Due to (from) affiliates | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Other long-term liabilities | $2,546,410 | $2,377,997 | $2,226,647 | $1,943,855 | $1,712,185 |
| Total long-term liabilities | $2,546,410 | $2,377,997 | $2,226,647 | $1,943,855 | $1,712,185 |
| Total liabilities | $7,476,927 | $8,201,623 | $8,423,865 | $8,962,544 | $7,273,637 |
| Net assets | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
| Without donor restrictions | $36,510,828 | $35,237,868 | $35,236,956 | $35,578,020 | $38,187,421 |
| With donor restrictions | $22,478,959 | $23,714,727 | $21,265,877 | $20,159,857 | $20,778,924 |
| Net assets | $58,989,787 | $58,952,595 | $56,502,833 | $55,737,877 | $58,966,345 |
| Revenues and expenses | |||||
| Revenue | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
| Total contributions | $86,972,012 | $89,247,745 | $81,059,637 | $78,228,860 | $78,950,374 |
| Program service revenue | $2,452,956 | $8,488,721 | $4,554,319 | $5,823,263 | $11,300,005 |
| Membership dues | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Investment income | $1,771,877 | $1,392,678 | $3,782,747 | $1,319,565 | ($215,613) |
| Other revenue | $13,239,222 | $11,772,023 | $11,248,735 | $10,144,113 | $10,367,677 |
| Total other revenue | $17,464,055 | $21,653,422 | $19,585,801 | $17,286,941 | $21,452,069 |
| Total revenue | $104,436,067 | $110,901,167 | $100,645,438 | $95,515,801 | $100,402,443 |
| Expenses | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
| Program services | $77,442,912 | $86,509,498 | $79,829,259 | $80,920,506 | $83,037,132 |
| Management and general | $13,653,136 | $12,329,201 | $11,801,374 | $11,921,046 | $9,984,281 |
| Fundraising | $11,526,261 | $10,779,569 | $9,718,367 | $8,466,730 | $8,221,729 |
| Total expenses | $102,622,309 | $109,618,268 | $101,349,000 | $101,308,282 | $101,243,142 |
| Change in net assets | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
| Surplus (deficit) | $1,813,758 | $1,282,899 | ($703,562) | ($5,792,481) | ($840,699) |
| Other changes in net assets | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Total change in net assets | $1,813,758 | $1,282,899 | ($703,562) | ($5,792,481) | ($840,699) |
Compensation
| Name | Title | Compensation |
| Thomas F Lin | President | $274,368 |
| Andrew Ginsberg | Executive Vice President | $180,900 |
| Jeffrey Crosby | Associate Publisher, VP | $172,817 |
| Jason Thomas | Executive Vice President | $168,224 |
| Paula Fuller | Executive Vice President | $165,702 |
| Denela Wilson | Executive VP/CFO | $163,902 |
| Shannon Marion | Vice President/Development | $148,462 |
| Gregory Jao | Sr Asst to President | $144,861 |
| Kimberly Porter | Vice President/Ministry Svcs & Ops | $142,638 |
| Ted Rogers | Nat'l Dir. of Estate & Gift Planning | $138,381 |
| Robert Gross | Vice President/Graduate Faculty Min. | $135,256 |
| Terumi Echols | Director Finance & Fulfillment Ops | $125,401 |
| Christina Olson | Secretary | $79,499 |
Compensation data as of: 6/30/2020
Response from ministry
No response has been provided by this ministry.
The information below was provided to MinistryWatch by the ministry itself. It was last updated 2/23/2024. To update the information below, please email: [email protected]
History
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA dates our official beginning to November 14, 1941. We operated with three staff on loan from InterVarsity Canada, with Stacey Woods leading both the US and Canadian movements.
The University of Cambridge, England
The roots of our movement are with students at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1877. There, a group of Christian students began to meet together, in spite of the disapproval of some university officials, to pray, study the Bible, and share their faith with fellow students. Soon similar groups sprang up on other campuses. Eventually, they formed the British Inter-Varsity. Hence our name-inter meaning "between," and varsity, the British term for college level students.
From the very beginning, they had a strong concern to take the gospel to those all over the world who had never heard it-a concern that continues to drive InterVarsity today.
British Inter-Varsity sent Howard Guinness, a medical school graduate and Vice-Chairman of the British movement, to Canada in 1928. Students helped raise the money to provide Guinness with one-way passage to Canada. Between bouts of seasickness, Guinness led his cabinmate to Christ during the crossing. As God supplied the funds, he slowly worked his way across Canada, starting up and assisting evangelical student groups.
By 1937, the Canadians began to hear requests for help from students in the US as independent evangelical student groups began springing up. In 1938, Stacey Woods, the Canadian InterVarsity Director, met with students on the University of Michigan campus. As an immediate result of that visit, students formed the first InterVarsity chapter in the US.
InterVarsity/USA History by the Decade
1940s
InterVarsity continued to grow through World War II. As male staff workers entered the armed services, gifted women took over the staffing of large areas in both Canada and the US. Men who were assigned to college campuses for military officers training began chapters on those campuses or got involved in chapters that already existed. InterVarsity's work was promoted through a quarterly publication called HIS Magazine, which began in 1941. Robert Finley, an NCAA boxing champion from the University of Virginia, was hired as InterVarsity's first evangelist in 1945. By 1946, when World War II was over, InterVarsity had 18 staff and chapters on 277 campuses across the country.
Toronto hosted the first of InterVarsity's triennial student missions conferences in 1946, which began the tradition of calling every student generation to consider global missions. The Urbana conferences, as they came to be called, were held on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for more than half a century, before eventually moving to St. Louis in 2006.
In 1947, British student movement leaders, the leaders of InterVarsity, and representatives of Christian student movements from eight other countries gathered at Harvard University:
... to bring together the existing free movements which possess the same doctrinal basis and evangelical outlook and to give the utmost possible assistance to evangelical students who desire to take the gospel of Christ to the universities of the world.
Out of this meeting came the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), which today unites InterVarsity with student movements in more than 160 countries.
Also in 1947, InterVarsity Press was founded to publish quality Christian literature suitable for the campus. IVP book tables became a part of almost every InterVarsity event, highlighting the importance of the discipleship of the mind.
InterVarsity's commitment to multiethnic ministry was also established early on. In 1945, a staff member invited several Black students to a Bible study at the home of a Trustee. As a result of an ensuing incident, the Board passed a resolution forbidding racial segregation at InterVarsity events and calling for unity in the body of Christ.
1950s
By 1950, at the end of our first decade of ministry, there were 35 staff serving students in 499 InterVarsity chapters across the country.
We began our second decade with a year of evangelism. During the 1950-1951 academic year, 58 campus missions were held. Speakers, such as Billy Graham and John Stott, presented a series of lectures that shared the gospel in relevant, engaging ways.
We also began to develop our own camps and retreat centers to train students in Bible study and discipleship. Campus by the Sea was the first in 1951, located on Santa Catalina island off the coast of southern California. In 1952, we added Hudson House in New York, and then Bear Trap Ranch in the mountains of Colorado in 1953. In 1954, we began to develop Cedar Campus in Michigan's Upper Peninsula on the shore of Lake Huron, as a summer training facility.
New approaches to prayer and Bible study helped nurture the faith of college students during this decade. Former missionary Rosalind Rinker helped students learn how to pray in more natural, conversational ways (and eventually wrote Prayer: Conversing With God, later named as one of the most influential books of the 20th century). She and Paul Byer began to mimeograph pages of Scripture, which allowed students to mark their Bible study observations with colored pencils, a practice that continues in InterVarsity today.
1960s & 1970s
John Alexander became president during the turbulent sixties and led the ministry to a new level of maturity that continued through the seventies. In 1969, InterVarsity moved the national office from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin. By the early seventies, there were more than 200 field staff.
Bob Baylis began the student exchanges in 1967. He took InterVarsity students to Europe. They stayed with local host families, studied church history, and fellowshipped with students in various countries. Forty years later, hundreds of students from the US participate in dozens of mission projects around the world, from inner city slums in Asian cities to student camps in Eastern Europe. All of these projects pair US students with students from the local IFES movement as together they share the love of Jesus with those who may not have heard of him.
1980s-2000s
InterVarsity weathered a series of leadership changes in the eighties but continued to expand staff and outreach. The leadership of Stephen Hayner from 1988 to 2001 gave InterVarsity another period of stability through the nineties. Alec Hill became president in 2001 and laid the foundation for a period of growth and expansion that continues as his legacy. This has come through a renewed focus on evangelism to match InterVarsity's strengths in discipleship.
In 1981, Terry Morrison developed a more organized relationship between InterVarsity and other IFES national movements with the establishment of the InterVarsity Link program. Today, over 65 US InterVarsity staff work with IFES movements around the world, training and encouraging national staff and students to proclaim the gospel.
2000s and Beyond
Today, Tom Lin is InterVarsity's president, and there are more than 1,000 InterVarsity staff serving more than 40,000 students and faculty on approximately 700 campuses nationwide. In addition, through InterVarsity Press, we publish 100 titles a year that equip church leaders, professors, and Christian disciples who want to grow spiritually. We strive to reach every corner of every campus, as we establish witnessing communities that follow Jesus as Savior and Lord.
Program accomplishments
Per the 2022-23 Annual Report:
711 total campuses
1.1 million people engaged with InterVarsity's online content
4,880 student leaders
1,837 decisions to follow Jesus
23,383 core student participants
1,052 chapter communities
844 students training students
Needs
Support kingdom building on campus by giving now. Search for specific staff to support or learn how your gift can propel key projects.