October 16, 2008

Dear Partners in Ministry,

For 67 years, the Georgia Baptist Foundation has successfully fulfilled its mission as the trust agency of the Georgia Baptist Convention. During that period, the Foundation has weathered all financial storms that have come its way. It is now in the process of weathering what will be remembered as one of the worst storms of its history. During these uncertain times, we understand many questions and concerns may come to your mind with regard to the performance and safety of your account with the Foundation.

First, your endowment pool portfolio has always used a very conservative long-term investment strategy. We have never taken excessive risk in a futile search for astronomical returns. Instead, we have maintained a well-diversified portfolio that is designed to yield sustainable returns that will allow support of the ministries you hold dear, while minimizing the risk of excess market volatility.

Second, the quality of your endowment pool investments has always been high. Due to our strict quality standards, we can report that less than one-half of one percent of our portfolio was in any way associated with any of the entities that have either declared bankruptcy or been “rescued” by the federal government.

Third, your endowment pool employs only the best investment managers to assure us that the principles we have in place for managing your portfolio will remain in rock-solid force going forward.

In light of the recent developments, the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees has again reviewed these policies and reaffirmed them with two action steps:

1. In light of rapid changes in market values of the portfolio, we will recalculate the endowment pool unit value on the 15^th and last business day of the month. You can purchase or redeem endowment pool units on these two days only so that the value of the transaction accurately reflects the market on that day.
2. Your endowment pool dividend, which has previously been fixed as of the first of the year and held steady, will now float at 5% of the current unit price. Your income checks will vary depending on the market as we actively manage the endowment pool spending.

The disruption of your regular income stream is unfavorable to say the least. These actions are temporary, and we look forward to market stabilization. In the meantime, by implementing the trustees direction we are working to safeguard your endowment principal.

Your statements are proof that no investments, regardless of quality, have escaped. Regardless of how bad things get, history does teach us that markets recover from the worst circumstances. There is no reason to believe this will not happen in this case.

We can say with complete confidence that we have not lost our focus or our intensity in our quest to be the best we can at what we do in serving the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thank you for your continued confidence in allowing us to serve you.

Sincerely,