Billy had always been concerned that he do nothing to cause
the media to attack his financial integrity. Despite his efforts, an
attack came anyway. In 1977, headlines all over the country
declared that Billy had a “slush fund” of about $20 million in a
Dallas account, with the implication that here was another evan-
gelist enriching himself and his cronies.
Two investigative reporters at the Charlotte Observer, who in 1976
pored over the BGEA’s financial records and declared the operation
clean, had felt misled when they later learned of that account,
which was called the World Evangelism and Christian Education
Fund (WECEF). “Breaking” the story, they accused the BGEA of
misleading its donors by not disclosing the fund’s existence.
Actually, the BGEA had disclosed the fund during a news con-
ference in 1970 and also had filed a publicly accessible IRS report.
The BGEA planned to use the money to train evangelists at what
later became the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois, to
build a layman’s training center in Asheville—what is now the
Cove—and to assist student-focused ministries like Campus Cru-
sade for Christ and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Billy even
discussed the fund in 1972 with a reporter from the Akron Bea-
con Journal, which is owned by the same parent company as the
Observer.
Still, the fund’s relatively low profile jarred reporters accus-
tomed to Billy’s complete financial disclosure. Why didn’t Billy
offer information about the WECEF when talking with the
Observerreporters one year earlier?
“We didn’t mention the fund because it was a separate cor-
poration,” Billy later explained. “And they didn’t ask about it.
That was a little bit on the fence line, I think. We should have
said, ‘We have another fund down in Texas that we are going to
do thus and such with.’ We told the government about it, but we
didn’t think the newspapers necessarily had a legitimate right to
know about everything. I’ve changed my mind on that. I think
they do. We should be publicly accountable for everything.”
Yet Billy’s graciousness wasn’t shared by all his family and
friends. Some were incensed at how the story had been blown far
Mobilizing Money