InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA (IVCF) is an inter-denominational, evangelical Christian campus ministry founded in 1941, working with students and faculty on U.S. college and university campuses. InterVarsity is a charter member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, a network of similar campus ministries around the world.
For the Canadian organization, see Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada.Founded
1941
Christian Fellowship
Social Club
University Student Society
Non-profit 501(c)3 organization
U.S. college and university campuses
- Madison, WI
Tom Lin, president
Chicago Agreement: Unity in Mission
$107M (2017–18)
1,669 (June 2019)
It is a collective campus ministry found in hundreds of American colleges whose collegiate members involve themselves in Christian student activist movements.[1]
Organization[edit]
InterVarsity is governed by a board of directors. Tom Lin became the eighth president of InterVarsity on August 10, 2016. The president works with a team of four Executive Vice Presidents.[2] InterVarsity is a tax exempt organization under the provisions of Section 501(C)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. In the fiscal year ending 30 June 2018, InterVarsity had $107M in revenue (with over 70% coming from charitable donations) and $106.6M in expenditures.
InterVarsity is a charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), and uses more than 85% of its revenue for staff-worker salaries and other on-campus work. InterVarsity was rated 4 stars (out of 4) by Charity Navigator for eight straight years.[3][4] Michael Thatcher, the president of Charity Navigator, reported: "Only 3% of the charities we evaluate have received at least 8 consecutive 4-star evaluations, indicating that InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA outperforms most other charities in America." In 2019 InterVarsity slipped just below the cut-off for the four-star rating, and based on the latest available IRS Form 990 data (for Fiscal Year 2020) is currently rated at three stars by Charity Navigator.[5] However, InterVarsity continued to maintain a 100 percent score in Accountability and Transparency.
InterVarsity strives to maintain the highest level of accountability with its ministry partners and is also rated by sites such as Guidestar and MinistryWatch. InterVarsity (as of 2018) met 18 of the 20 Better Business Bureau's "Standards for Charity Accountability".[6]
History[edit]
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA became an official organization in November, 1941. But the organization traces its roots to a movement of British university students, starting at Cambridge University in 1877. The movement spread to Canada before reaching the U.S. In 1938 Stacey Woods, the Canadian Inter-Varsity 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 United States. InterVarsity's first three staff members came on loan from Canada, and Stacey Woods served as the organization's General Secretary (CEO). In 1947 InterVarsity USA became one of ten founding members of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, a federation of national Christian student movements. By 1950 there were 35 staff workers serving students in 499 InterVarsity chapters and by the early seventies, the on-campus staff had grown to more than 200.
In September 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa ruled that the University of Iowa violated the First Amendment when it expelled the group from campus for requiring its leaders to uphold Christian beliefs.[7] A similar ruling was issued against Wayne State University in April 2021.[8]
Statement of Faith[edit]
In 2016, InterVarsity clarified its requirements for staff, asking that they affirm traditional, orthodox views of sexuality that are shared by most evangelical denominations.[9] Staff are asked to affirm a twenty-page document which affirms the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament sexual ethic that limits sexual expression to marriage between a man and a woman.[10] However, this change in policy has prompted controversy, especially from LGBTQ Christians and their supporters.[11][12]