Evangelist Franklin Graham has led the two organizations he heads to part ways with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), an organization that was cofounded by the late Billy Graham and of which the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) was a founding member.
Franklin Graham became the CEO of Samaritan’s Purse in 1979 following the death of Samaritan’s Purse founder Bob Pierce, and he became the CEO of BGEA in 2000, succeeding his father. Both organizations have for decades been members of the ECFA, which is an accreditation body for financial transparency and accountability.
However, the ECFA’s records show that BGEA and Samaritan’s Purse both voluntarily resigned from ECFA accreditation effective Oct. 1. The reason for the departures is a change in the ECFA’s leadership standards for member organizations.
In March 2024, the ECFA announced that it would raise standards for accreditation with regard to the care and accountability churches and ministries provide for senior leaders.
“Through this new standard…ECFA-accredited church and ministry boards will purposefully come alongside their organizations’ senior leaders to establish biblical character expectations and to be proactive in offering them holistic care,” the ECFA said in a press release at the time.
In a letter to ECFA President Michael Martin, Graham expressed his belief that the new standards have “inappropriately ventured outside” the ECFA’s “founding mission, purpose, and practice.”
“We make this decision with no ill will toward you or anyone affiliated with ECFA, but with a firm belief and peace that this is the right position for our organizations to now take,” Graham wrote. “We will continue to adhere to the highest standards of financial accountability and to report effectively, timely, and transparently to donors as we seek to be good stewards of all God has entrusted to us.”
While Graham lauded the “ECFA’s efforts to encourage and monitor financial accountability of nonprofit ministries,” he expressed that he and the boards of BGEA and Samaritan’s Purse “have strong objections and concerns, both in principle and practice,” regarding the ECFA’s new leadership standards.
Graham went as far as to allege that the ECFA is “trying to be the moral police of the evangelical world,” something that is “outside the scope of ECFA’s expertise.”
Graham went on to express that the standards for the character and spiritual practices of ministry leaders are vague and that without “clear, agreed upon standards and guidelines, a new standard is essentially meaningless window dressing.”
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