Frequently Asked Questions

A steering committee, consisting of one partner from each of the translation organizations and four representatives from initial investors, currently leads the Every Tribe Every Nation alliance. The alliance also sponsors staff positions that support the DBL and related activities. See the Who We Are page for more information.

The Every Tribe Every Nation alliance leverages the capacity and competencies of international Bible agencies, thereby avoiding the need to create a separate nonprofit organization with registration, mailing lists, and employees. Each partner lends its people and know-how to the alliance, reducing costs and creating an efficient infrastructure. A minimal contracted staff and advisory/working groups do most of the work of Every Tribe Every Nation, keeping overhead down and administrative costs minimal. In fact, the Every Tribe Every Nation alliance gives donors a 100 percent guarantee that funds contributed to Every Tribe Every Nation all flow to direct ministry.

Every Tribe Every Nation funds are directed by the Every Tribe Every Nation Steering Committee (consisting of four donors and one ministry executive from each Bible agency) and administered by the National Christian Foundation (NCF) Heartland in Kansas City, Missouri. Gifts to the Every Tribe Every Nation Fund at NCF are disbursed as grants to each ministry partner the month following their receipt.

The ministry partners have prioritized funding projects including digitization, translation acceleration, and engagement. Every Tribe Every Nation allocates funds to a pre-approved list of projects that meet these criteria. In this way, the Every Tribe Every Nation fund is like a mutual fund or private equity fund.

When donors give to Every Tribe Every Nation through the Alliance Project Fund (APF), their gifts directly support text digitization and translation acceleration. The APF sustains a portfolio of alliance partner ministry projects directly connected to the goals of Every Tribe Every Nation. The APF is both flexible and extraordinarily useful. For ABS/UBS, APF allocations are the key to enabling cooperation with individual Bible Societies, accelerating their translation projects, releasing translation rights and digitizing older translations. For Biblica, APF funds hasten the completion of major language translation projects and support rapid digital access to Scripture for greater impact on international programs. For Wycliffe (along with The Seed Company and SIL), APF provides unrestricted major funding to hasten the completion of translation projects in difficult-to-fund or highly sensitive areas of the world.

Alliance ministries annually submit projects for inclusion in the funding portfolio. Each year, the Alliance Project Fund (APF) tracks the performance of the projects (currently 40) and reports on results achieved through the contracted monitoring and evaluation services of Global Scripture Impact (GSI). Based on the previous year’s performance, the Every Tribe Every Nation Steering Committee makes an annual determination of APF funding—continuing at the previous year’s levels, re-allocation, or rebalancing for the next year.

The current Alliance Project Fund (APF) portfolio reflects 40 ministry projects focused on digitization, DBL operations, Scripture translation acceleration, or translation completion. The APF is marketed as a single portfolio, much like a “private equity fund.” Donors support the totality of all projects in the fund, without selectively targeting individual projects.

However, should a donor desire to designate funds to a particular area of interest, Every Tribe Every Nation can help them find the right ministry partner to which to direct their gift.