Focus on the Family will drop 202 positions – about 15 percent of its staff – in the coming weeks, the Colorado Springs Gazette reports.
The organization will layoff 149 employees and eliminate 53 vacant positions on its staff of about 1,200 people. Its budget will be reduced from $160 million this year to $138 million in 2009, Bill Reed writes.
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.
The Gazettewrote earlier that this comes on the heels of Focus’ announcement in October that 46 employees would be reassigned or laid off next year.
The Colorado Independent writes that the organization employed more than 1,500 people in 1991. But in 2006, the ministry cut nearly 30 positions and did not fill 83 positions, and in 2007, it dropped another 30 positions. In 2003, the ministry’s budget was about $125 million and it employed about 1,300 people.
