Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from all of us here at Core Academy!

Last year at this time, we were praying for our survival, and I mean that literally.  We began the Christmas season with enough cash on hand to cover December’s expenses.  Survival after that would depend entirely on the generosity of God’s people.  My wife set a “prayer alarm” on her phone.  Every day at 7:00 pm, no matter what we were doing, we would stop and pray for our year-end fundraising campaign, leading to nervous chuckles from friends and family who suddenly found our conversations abandoned so we could express our need and our hope that God would have mercy on us.  And he did.

This year, we are not facing imminent shutdown.  God has been kind, and our supporters have been generous.  Still, we have a genuine need to finish out this calendar year completely in the black.  At the start of our holiday campaign, we were $30,000 short of meeting budget, and like most nonprofits, that means dipping into the cash reserve.  We need to replenish that cash reserve for 2026.  We also need to replenish the Sanders Scholarship Fund this year, since we skipped a year due to our previous financial emergency.  Then we were hoping to acquire a new DNA sequencer to support one of our research projects.  When I worked on the rice genome, a new sequencer covered an entire tabletop and cost $330,000.  Now we can get a sequencer that fits in the palm of your hand for about $5,000 (with all the chemicals and parts needed to run it, plus shipping and tax and tariff).  We’ve been working on that project for five years now, and just as we started getting results, I got word our DNA sequencer was being discontinued.  We need to upgrade.

Unfortunately, with just a week left in the year, we are still $18,000 short of our goal.  The campaign has not been going nearly as well as we’d hoped.  Now I know times are tough for a lot of people.  Prices are high, and a lot of us are concerned about what 2026 will bring.  Charitable giving is down across the board.  Everyone is having a hard time this year.  But at the end of the day, Core Academy’s income is about 80% donation-based.  We don’t have big donors that pay our bills.  Our biggest donor this year gave us only 8% of our budget.  We rely on hundreds of small donations to continue our mission.  That means we need everybody.

What of that mission?  We’re in high gear right now working on raising up that next generation of creation scholars for the glory of God.  We’ve got nine student collaborators working on various research projects studying mostly human origins from a creation perspective.  We’ve got great new episodes of Let’s Talk Creation coming up very soon.  I have been working hard just this week to finish our “Big Book” with my co-authors Paul Garner and Hans Madueme, which will be submitted to our publisher this year.  At the office, I’ve got two of my students coming in January to work on research projects with me.  Last semester we had a student volunteer come in to help us organize our library, which was still a bit disheveled after moving into our new space.  Then at the end of January, I’ll be leading another local homeschool group on a hike as we explore the world’s largest sinkhole (no kidding)!

I know a lot of you reading really enjoy all of our work and pray for us regularly, and we appreciate that so much!  To those of you who have already donated to our campaign, thank you so much for joining us in our work.  We praise the Lord for you every day.  For those who have been thinking about a gift, we could really use your help.  Visit coresci.org/donate to find out how you can contribute.

I’m pleased to say one of our concerned donors has come forward to match gifts made in the last week of the year, starting Christmas Day, up to $5,000!  That is a huge boost to the campaign, and we’re extremely grateful!  So if you’ve been thinking about giving, tomorrow is the day to double your impact!  That website again is coresci.org/donate 

Thanks so much for reading all this.  Thanks for praying, and I hope you have a Merry Christmas!

Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com. If you enjoyed this article, please consider a contribution to Core Academy of Science. Thank you.

Have you read my book?  You should check that out too!