Search for Common Ground, a global peace-building nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., will merge with Preemptive Love Coalition, a global community of peacemakers working to end war through relief, jobs, and community. based in Hewitt, Texas. The two nonprofits will initially continue operating under their individual names, “with more details to come on full integration,” according managers of the organizations.
Preemptive Love, which launched in 2008, will bring expertise in rapid mobilization and ongoing response to crises to Search for Common Ground’s ongoing work in having measurable impact within some of the world’s most dynamic and complex conflict zones.
“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Preemptive Love to the Search for Common Ground team,” Search for Common Ground CEO Shamil Idriss said via a statement. “Preemptive Love’s rapid response capabilities and community development experience, paired with the established history and experience of Search, will greatly expand the ability of both organizations to serve the communities with whom we work. As like-minded organizations, we remain committed to the shared goals outlined in our missions, visions, and values: preventing and ending violent conflict through locally led, globally supported programming that creates breakthroughs for peace.”
“For some time now, Preemptive Love has been working to translate the trust it has built with local communities to build pathways to prevent war and build peace,” Preemptive Love’s Interim CEO Ellen Meyer Shorb said in a statement. “I can think of no better way to continue progressing toward that goal than by joining forces with Search, the world’s largest peacebuilding organization with over four decades of on-the-ground experience delivering remarkable results in some of the most challenging environments imaginable.”
The most recent publicly available Form 990 for Preemptive Love covered the 12 months ending December 31, 2019, but financial statements on the organization’s website provided a more recent picture. According to those statements, the organization had just less than $18.1 million in total assets for the year ending December 31, 2021, down slightly from just under $18.7 million a year earlier. During the same period, the organization’s total support and revenue dropped from 15.2 million to $13.6 million, primarily due to dips in contributions (from $13.3 million to $11.7 million) and merchandise sales (from $1.2 million to $847,474).
There was a further disturbing note in the organization’s financial statements for the year ending December 31, 2021, “During the year ended December 31, 2021, the organization received 22% from two donors. There was no such concentration during the year ending December 31, 2020.”
Concurrently, between 2020 and 2021 Preemptive Love’s expenses spiked from just less than $9.7 million to $14.2 million, largely because of upticks in program service fees (from $6.4 million to $8.9 million), fundraising (from $1.8 million to $2.4 million) and a near-doubling of management and general expenses, from just less than $1.5 million to more than $2.8 million.
“A few factors are at play, making noticeable differences in our financial reporting between 2020 and 2021.” Preemptive Love’s Director of Marketing Kara Schechtman wrote in an email to The NonProfit Times. “The main difference is 2020 was our highest fundraising year, and costs were lower due to everyone being at home because of the pandemic. Our goal was to keep the momentum and grow in 2021, so the cost increase is rather natural in response to the year we had in 2020. Support and revenue were less in 2021 compared to 2020 due to a 2021 stripe outage during a critical fundraising time and some negative media attention we received in the last quarter of that year.”
Late in 2021, Preemptive Love’s former Director of Communications and Public Relations Ben Irwin ran an article in Medium.com (https://bit.ly/3n3jPdQ) in which Irwin accused Preemptive Love founders Jeremy and Jessica Courtney of abusing staff and misleading donors regarding how their funds were used. After an internal investigation, the organization’s board of directors announced the Courtneys would not be returning to the organization in early 2022.
“Another difference is less investment income in 2021 compared to 2020, as we had to report a $495K PPP loan as income in 2020 which we did not have in 2021,” Schechtman continued. “The financial challenges that we experienced towards the end of 2021 are part of the reason that we looked towards options to ensure the long-term sustainability of Preemptive Love, which has led to this subsequent merger. One of the most exciting components of this merger is the way in which the revenue streams of our organizations complement each other so perfectly, and we’re excited to create our shared future with Search for Common Ground.”
As of Preemptive Love’s Form 990 for the year ending December 31, 2019, the organization employed 43 people.
Search for Common Ground, the larger of the two organizations, was established in 1982. Its wider global net gives it a more complicated financial picture: The organization’s website has financial statements within an Impact Reports that breaks out its United States-based activities, its Brussels activities, as well as combined statements. The most recent of these covers the year ending Dec. 31, 2020. But its Form 990s only cover its United States operations and are not available past the year ending December 31, 2019.
“Search for Common Ground is a global organization, and it is our hope that this merger will integrate PLC across all of Search’s work,” Director of Communications Jack Farrell wrote in an email to The NonProfit Times.
The global numbers paint a fuller picture of the organization. According to the organization’s Impact report for the period 2020-2021, the organization employed 1,004 individuals. It reported total support and revenue of just under $68.8 million for the year ending Dec. 31, 2020, compared with $55.6 million for the year ending Dec.31, 2019. During that period its expenses jumped from just under $57 million to more than $65 million. Within its expenses, program expenses rose from $46.1 million to $63.8 million. Most strikingly, its net assets plummeted from just under $84.5 mill to just under $7.6 million.
There may be less to this drop than meets the eye, according to Farrell. “This did not reflect an actual decrease in net assets or a drop in real funds raised,” Farrell wrote. “It reflected strictly our adaptation to a new accounting policy (implementation of ASC-606 [which requires reporting entities to recognize revenue when the promised items are transferred] and ASU 2018-08)” which covers both received donations as well at those promised but not delivered.
Farrell offered further detail regarding the striking changes. “[A]ll restricted donor contracts were recorded as donor receivables and temporarily restricted net assets upon signature up to the full obligated amount,” he wrote. “After this adaptation we only record revenue once conditions of the award have been substantially met and all donor advances are recorded as liability. Hence, we had to offset receivables against temporarily restricted net assets to be compliant with this new accounting standard. This resulted in the drop of both receivables and net assets in 2019.
“The fact that this was strictly an accounting adjustment and not a change in our financial health or stability is reflected by the fact that it was not accompanied by any reduction or even pause in our steady growth in programming and staffing.”
