THF_2025ImpactReport_Digital - Flipbook - Page 26
Generosity Is
at the Heart of
Tyndale Foundation
Mark D. Taylor
Tyndale House Publishers to pay royalties to the Foundation on every copy sold.
The Living Bible was published in 1971, and over the years, 40 million copies were
sold. The royalties were continually transferred to the Foundation. In those early
days, Ken wanted to give the money away as quickly as possible, and the
Foundation’s annual budget for grants soon grew to millions of dollars.
Ken was a visionary, and he appreciated and supported the work of other
visionaries. Early grants included major gifts toward the establishment of new
graduate-level seminaries in Anglophone and Francophone Africa. Those
schools became the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST),
now called Africa International University, and the Faculté de Théologie
Evangelique de Bangui (FATEB).
The Foundation provided seed funding for a handful of other Christian charities:
By its very nature, Tyndale Foundation is in the business of being
generous. The Foundation was founded in 1963—just one year after Ken
and Margaret Taylor started the work of Tyndale House Publishers. Billy Graham
had printed and distributed 600,000 copies of Ken’s book Living Letters, and
Dr. Graham said that they should pay Ken a royalty of five cents per copy. That
initial royalty came to $30,000 (the equivalent of $318,000 in today’s economy).
Ken and Margaret had ten children, and they could definitely have used that
$30,000 payment for the expenses of that large family. Ken had a moderate
salary from his work as director of Moody Press in Chicago, and their house
in Wheaton was very substandard. In those days, one could build a new house
for $30,000. But Ken said, “The Bible is God’s book, so he should get the
royalties.” So Ken and Margaret put the entire payment of $30,000 into a new
organization called Tyndale House Foundation.
Interestingly, Ken had written a series of life goals in 1956, including this
entry: “Create a stock fund, primarily for benevolences, to grow to $100,000,
despite some disbursements.” In today’s economy, that would have been
the equivalent of $1.2 million. Ken’s salary was probably $10,000 at that time,
yet he had this huge vision of starting a fund with which to make charitable
contributions!
So Ken and Margaret had the joy of distributing $30,000 to various ministries
around the world. And as Living Letters continued to sell, Ken arranged for
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• One example is a gift in 1975 that enabled Dr. James Dobson to begin
a radio program called Focus on the Family. Fifty years later, that
organization continues to do important work in many different areas.
• In 1986, Tyndale joined other local businesses in creating the Outreach
Community Center in our neighborhood in Carol Stream, Illinois.
That agency continues to minister to the needs of many hundreds
of clients each year.
• When Seed Company was founded in 1993, the first major donor was
Tyndale House Foundation. Thirty-three years later, Seed Company
has begun Bible translation work in more than 2,500 languages.
In 2001, Ken and Margaret Taylor transferred ownership of Tyndale House
Publishers to the Foundation. As a result, the dividends from the profitable
operations of the publishing company began to flow to the Foundation.
This enabled THF to increase its annual grant budget even more.
From 1963 to 2025, the Foundation has given thousands of grants to many
hundreds of partner organizations, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ken Taylor’s early desire to be generous has certainly been fulfilled.
The apostle Paul encouraged the church in Corinth to be generous and cheerful
givers (2 Corinthians 9:7). That applies to all of us today. And our generosity
will bloom and grow as our gifts are used to spread the impact of God’s work
around the world.
