QuakerQuaker's March 30 fundraising appeal was recently amplified by Releasing Ministry Alliance.  Our week 3 mailing with more about QuakerQuaker and the QREC is ava...


“It feels right to run a crowd-funding campaign to fund the development of a crowd-funding platform,” says ReleasingMinistry.org co-founder, Viv Hawkins.

The Releasing Ministry Alliance announces a campaign to solicit start up funds to pay for the development of the web application and the establishment of an organizational structure for ReleasingMinistry.org. Please contribute at releasingministry.org/campaign

The goal of Releasing Ministry is to help Friends and others who are called to Spirit-led service (ministry) to be able to live more fully into their leadings and gifts. Both Vonn New and Viv Hawkins, the founders of the project, have experienced the practical difficulties of maintaining a livelihood while engaging significant time and energy to ministry among Friends. New explained, “We both experienced wonderful spiritual support and accountability from our faith communities, but we also found that some very practical problems stood in the way of us being completely faithful to the ministry we were given. It was very hard to get the word out so that Friends would know that we could be invited to visit and it was extremely difficult to balance our time and energy with the need to earn money for a livelihood and to have the time and flexibility to travel where we are called. These are practical issues that reflect our collective values. Understanding that we are not alone with these challenges, we decided to use our practical skills to try solve these problems.

An informational website has been launched at http://releasingministry.org. Future development will include information about participating ministries with testimonials and accountability information, along with a way for visitors to the site to invite the ministry to visit or to donate money and other forms of support.

Releasing Ministry has been funded in part by the Lyman Fund and has been endorsed with a minute of support by Central Philadelphia, Chestnut Hill, Greene St, Germantown, and Frankford Monthly Meetings and Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting. We invite conversations with other organizations who are considering offering support or endorsement.