Support The Oaks
“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." - G.K. Chesterton
At The Oaks we want to cultivate a passion for what we are doing by encouraging our supporters to participate in our mission of educating our students. As this participation grows into an engagement, we would hope you can even develop an ownership of everything we do here. Therefore, we have partnered with Mission Increase Foundation, a Christian foundation that is dedicated to transforming our fundraising programs into donor discipleship programs through the principles of transformational giving.
To learn more about transformational giving please read "The Ten Principles of Transformational Giving" and contact our Headmaster, Bruce Williams, to learn how you can join our mission of educating our students. In addition here is an excerpt from a Mission Increase Foundation blog post by Jenny Printz where she describes Transformational Giving a bit further:
"Transformational Giving is a collaboration between you and God in which He infuses your corporate and personal assets with His grace as you offer them in the way He asks to the people and purposes that He directs."
Not exactly an elevator speech. So let me break that down for you:
1. Transformational giving is a collaboration between you and God
Most of the time we think of giving as something we do. But the Bible shows us that when God is on the scene, giving is not something we do. It’s a collaboration between us and God that occurs at God’s invitation. There’s no such thing as an act of authentic giving that God’s not in. Giving can’t start with us. It can’t be done just by us. It’s not us initiating anything, and it’s not even us responding to anything. It’s something that can only be done with God. Simultaneously. Giving is a dance with God.
2. in which He infuses your corporate and personal assets with His grace
—our money, our possessions, our time, our emotions, our passions, our creativity. Corporate assets are the valuable things we have through our associations with other people—our friendships, our networks, our influence. In TG, God fills those assets to the point of saturating them. What does He fill them with? His grace. So our money becomes something more than money (and not just more money). Our time becomes something more than time. Consider the boy with the fishes and the loaves: his lunch becomes something more than lunch. This happens in the actual act of giving—hence the word "simultaneously" above.
To infuse means to fill something in such a way that it completely saturates it. Personal assets are all the valuable things we have personally.
3. as you offer them
Transformational Giving is always an offering to God. It may happen through a nonprofit (or it may not), but it is always an offering to the Lord. So it is offered reverently, humbly, expectantly, worshipfully, without thought of return, and without preconception of what God will do with it. The moment it becomes rote, it becomes as refreshing as stale, warm Mountain Dew left in the car. We don’t look to the nonprofit to transform the gift. We look to God to do that.
4. in the way He asks
If we listen carefully, God will always give us directives about our giving, and those directives extend far beyond ‘when’, ‘to whom’, ‘how much’, and ‘for what’. God will often give us detailed instructions as to how. ‘Throw the net on the other side of the boat’, ‘Go catch a fish and open its mouth’, ‘Sell all you have, give it to the poor, and come and follow me’ are the words of a God who pays exquisite attention to detail. How we give is at least as important to God as what, when, and why, yet this is the dimension of giving that draws the least attention in contemporary practice.
5. to the people and purposes that He directs.
God calls us to give in ways that directly connect us with the recipients of our giving and with the cause. In TG, we don't give to charity; we give through charity. That is to say, organizations are not the recipient of our donations; they are the means by which we are extended to encounter the recipient and the cause directly. That’s God’s way. He came Himself to give Himself. He didn’t send an intermediary. He doesn’t want us to utilize nonprofits as intermediaries, because He is at least as concerned that we be changed through our giving as that the recipient of our gift be blessed.
There are three different ways to help advance the vision of The Oaks:
Friends of The Oaks Legacy Society Building Fund
Friends of The Oaks is our annual giving program that directly benefits the student and teacher priorities and moves The Oaks closer to its long term vision. You can partner with us in this valuable program by contributing $1,000 or more in a school year to Friends of The Oaks. This investment enables us to keep tuition at an affordable level and support the quality staff necessary to facilitate our unique education.
Approximately 90% of the school's total operating expenses are covered by tuition with the remaining 10% in expenses being covered by the generosity of our Friends of The Oaks.
If you'd like to make a one time gift or a recurung monthly payment, click this button:
Legacy Society gives supporters an opportunity to pledge future gifts to The Oaks through life insurance or a variety of estate planning tools. These are endowment type funds meant to perpetuate income for generations to come and to insure the long-term sustainability of The Oaks' vision.
Membership in The Oaks' Legacy Society will create a lasting impact in the lives of children for generations. Please contact Dale DuPree, Director of Development at The Oaks, for more information.
Building Fund
Since its inception in 1996, The Oaks has operated in three different locations, out-growing each of them in turn. While grateful for the growth, this has created significant challenges along the way.
Our board has pursued numerous options over the years to provide a permanent home for The Oaks including building a new facility. So far, however, the Lord has not opened that door for us.
While we continue to seek His will for a long-term facility for The Oaks, God has graciously provided a wonderful, campus for the school to lease as we move forward, toward our goal of a permanent home.
If you would like to make an investment to help us make this happen please contact:
Bruce Williams, Headmaster