Focus on the Family cuts 21% of work force following large donation to Yes on 8
Tue. November 18, 2008 12:00 AM by Kevin Wayne
Colorado Springs, CO -
James Dobson's Focus on the Family will drop 202 positions - about 15 percent of its staff - in the coming weeks, the Colorado Springs Gazette reports.
Coincidentally the layoffs were announced just after Focus spent $539,000 in cash and another $83,000 worth of non-monetary support into "Yes on 8" to overturn the California Supreme Court ruling that allowed gays and lesbians to marry in that state. The group was the seventh-largest donor to the effort in the country.
Barb Cotter, an editor at the Gazette, wants to know if the organization could have saved money had it not donated $500,000-plus donation to Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. "It all has to do with the division between Focus and its political arm, Focus on the Family Action, and a host of IRS and nonprofit rules that come into play," she writes.
Focus on the Family chief Operating Officer Glenn Williams blames the smaller number of donations that account for 96% of the group's total revenue.
"They should do more with their half-million dollars than spending it to collect signatures to take the rights away from a class of people," Fred Karger, the founder of the anti-Prop 8 group Californians Against Hate, told the Colorado Independent.
The cash contributions Focus made to Yes on 8 are equal to the salaries of 19 Coloradans earning the 2008 per capita income of $29,133.
This round of layoffs for the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family is the largest round of layoffs in the evangelical Christian group's 31-year history.
Focus has a staff of about 1,300 people in the United States and was was founded in 1977 in Arcadia, Calif.
On November 8, Dobson was meet by 500 people in Chicago protesting his induction into the "Radio Hall of Fame" of Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications.
Dobson's "Focus on the Family" broadcast is carried by 1,000 radio stations in the U.S. often carries anti-gay messages.
Coincidentally the layoffs were announced just after Focus spent $539,000 in cash and another $83,000 worth of non-monetary support into "Yes on 8" to overturn the California Supreme Court ruling that allowed gays and lesbians to marry in that state. The group was the seventh-largest donor to the effort in the country.
Barb Cotter, an editor at the Gazette, wants to know if the organization could have saved money had it not donated $500,000-plus donation to Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. "It all has to do with the division between Focus and its political arm, Focus on the Family Action, and a host of IRS and nonprofit rules that come into play," she writes.
Focus on the Family chief Operating Officer Glenn Williams blames the smaller number of donations that account for 96% of the group's total revenue.
"They should do more with their half-million dollars than spending it to collect signatures to take the rights away from a class of people," Fred Karger, the founder of the anti-Prop 8 group Californians Against Hate, told the Colorado Independent.
The cash contributions Focus made to Yes on 8 are equal to the salaries of 19 Coloradans earning the 2008 per capita income of $29,133.
This round of layoffs for the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family is the largest round of layoffs in the evangelical Christian group's 31-year history.
Focus has a staff of about 1,300 people in the United States and was was founded in 1977 in Arcadia, Calif.
On November 8, Dobson was meet by 500 people in Chicago protesting his induction into the "Radio Hall of Fame" of Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications.
Dobson's "Focus on the Family" broadcast is carried by 1,000 radio stations in the U.S. often carries anti-gay messages.