Dear Friends of Welch,
As a way of keeping you updated on the impact of COVID-19 on Welch College, and urging you to pray for Welch, I wanted you to have a copy of the letter I sent the Welch faculty and staff this morning.
Please continue to keep us in your prayers.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
Matt Pinson
President
Dear Faculty and Staff,
These are perilous days financially for small Christian colleges like Welch as we cope with the Coronavirus pandemic. We have had to send students home, gear up for remote teaching and learning, and credit dorm students for unused room and board. Summer sources of revenue are drying up, giving is going down, and almost certainly our fall incoming class will be smaller than we had projected.
Yet we are confident that God is going to meet our needs as He has in the past, and I wanted briefly to share some news with you and ask you to join us in prayers of thanksgiving. We have applied for a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, which is part of the recently passed CARES act, and we have received a $785,000 loan from this program. We thank God for these needed funds. Welch has never received direct government funding. But our Administration and Board of Trustees strongly believe that this “wartime” situation demands that we receive these funds.
While this is a large sum of money, it pales in comparison to the shortfall that we—like hundreds of other colleges and universities—will face as a result of COVID-19. We are running budget contingency scenarios to ascertain the spending reductions that will be necessary to sustain Welch through these difficult times. We believe it will be possible to maintain all academic programs and not to engage in layoffs or salary reductions. We are carefully monitoring the situation and will be communicating with you soon about the process by which we will formulate our revised budget for the 2020–21 fiscal year.
In addition to prayers of thanksgiving and prayers for wisdom as we move forward and engage in needed budget reductions, please join me in praying for the Lord to provide for the needs of Welch as He has in the past. Pray that God will raise up donors who are in a position to help us in this once-in-a-lifetime crisis. And pray that God will bring us the students He wants us to have this fall.
Thank you for all you are doing to continue mentoring and ministering to our students toward the fulfillment of our mission to educate leaders to serve Christ, His Church, and His world through biblical thought and life. The students treasure you, and I do as well.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
Sincerely,
Matt Pinson
President