Current President, John Shelhamer, has been working in and with Christian schools and colleges since he graduated from seminary in 1979. John was the director of financial aid at both Big Sky Bible College and Southeastern Bible College.

In the late 80's John found himself working for a Christian school consulting firm, Development Marketing Associates. While there, he spearheaded the development of parent & employee surveys. In 1992 DMA spun off the surveys and Development Testing Services was incorporated.

It wasn't long before John realized that there was a large number of schools who gave out tuition aid, but who knew little about the evaluation process and did not use an impartial third-party service to evaluate parent's ability to pay.

John created formulas, similar to the ones used by the government for Title IV qualification, but modified them to be appropriate for families enrolled in Christian elementary and secondary schools. This formula was modified every year for a number of years, based on feedback from client schools. The last client survey (2008) gave the formulas a 93% accuracy rating (ie, 93% of clients said the calculations were always/almost always accurate or very accurate).

Combining research from school surveys and data amassed about Christian school families has enabled us to accurately evaluate a school's financial aid program and budget. We have helped a number of schools grow through a proper balance between tuition and tuition aid (see letter).

Since those beginnings CFA has served many hundreds of Christian schools, and thousands of individual families. Repeat clients and referrals continue to be a large portion of the growing CFA business which has clients in every state; a large number of clients have been with CFA since the very beginning.

The Future

CFA has created a new entity, CFS - Confidential Financial Services. Growing into this company will enable Christian school clients to efficiently manage tuition, fees, registration, and tuition aid from one site. Expect to see more soon.

 

Company time-line

1991 Begin with school parents/employee surveys
1992 Church Ministry Management survey
1993 School students added
1994 Church/school combo developed
1996 Donor survey launched
1998 Confidential Financial Analysis (CFA) for tuition aid added
1998 Church Personal Profile added
1999 Nationwide institutional surveys (ACSI and Christian Stewardship)
2000 School alumni added
2000 CFA goes to internet
2003 Sponsoring church survey for schools
2004 Constituent mapping
2005 Specialized surveys for pregnancy centers
2005 Surveys made available online
2007 Church Project- Readiness developed
2008 Teacher Evaluation Assessment launched
2008 CFS - Online tuition management launched
2009 The addition of 4 new church ministry surveys

 

Confidential Financial Services

PO Box 6903

Colorado Springs, CO 80934

 

Owned and operated by

Development Testing Services 888-685-5783

719-687-0705 FAX

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