MINDEN, Nev., April 29, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Kingdom Ventures, Inc. (OTCBB:KDMV), a rapidly growing church development company, announced today that it has signed an agreement with a Qwest Communications (NYSE:Q) and MCI (Pink Sheets:WCOEQ) aggregator, YourNetPlus.com (YNP). Kingdom Ventures can now enable the nation's 400,000+ churches to offer Internet access to their members under a churches' own brand names. Kingdom Ventures will manage and administer the program. YNP will be responsible for providing the technological solutions, including managing over 24,000 local dial-up access numbers all around the U.S.
"We believe that Christians are the largest untapped affinity group in the United States. 92% of all Americans embrace a belief in God. Almost two-thirds -- well over 150 million people -- consider religion to be very important in their lives," says Gene Jackson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Kingdom Ventures, Inc.
"Internet connectivity could become a powerful new profit center for churches. If you could potentially save money by switching from your current Internet Service Provider (ISP) to your Church ISP, knowing that a significant percentage or your monthly fee would be donated to your church, would you switch? We believe many people would. Our goal is to touch 75,000 churches within the next 36 months," says Jackson.
"We believe most companies have overlooked the Christian market. This might be because of industry statistics which put the market size at around $6 billion. But these figures do not take into account hundreds of billions of dollars that Christians spend on everyday purchases. Our business model is based on helping churches capture a larger portion of the total spending. By simply re-directing your everyday purchases, church members could save money, but more importantly, they could help their favorite church raise money to increase its positive influence in their community. This concept of re-directing your spending could actually give a spiritual meaning to regular shopping. You would be doing good things with your every dollar," states Jackson.
Kingdom Ventures helps faith-based organizations streamline their operations, raise additional money through various fund-raising activities or simply provide technological solutions that transform small and medium-sized churches into state-of-the-art presentation centers. The company helps churches focus on their core mission -- reaching people for God -- by focusing on its core business: helping churches and their people to grow.
The Internet service program is based on YNP's Virtual ISP solution that enables service providers to differentiate themselves in the market by providing them with the capability to create and tailor ISP service offerings to their end-users. It is a fully managed and scalable service and requires no upfront investment on hardware or software. Churches will enjoy 24x7x365 trouble resolution and support.
Because the ISP will be branded according to the church specifications, churches can leverage their brand name and recognition. They can reach the market without investing in equipment and a qualified technical staff. Churches can also generate new revenue streams by providing targeted marketing opportunities to Christian advertisers.
Kingdom Ventures is a publicly traded church development company. Its common stock trades on the OTCBB under the ticker symbol KDMV. There are approximately 400,000 Protestant churches in the U.S. alone; 94% of them have fewer than 1,000 active members, and therefore limited financial resources to effectively manage the business side of their operations. Christian organizations' total budgets are measured in billions of dollars. 89% of American households give to charities an average of $1,600+ a year, and religious organizations receive 60% of it. In addition, religious and inspirational products are selling at a pace of $5.6 billion annually (source: Christian Retailing Magazine).
Within less than three years, Kingdom Ventures has built a distribution network for Christian products, consisting of 2,100+ retail stores; 1,200 Christian bookstores and 900 gift stores. It has also established strong business relationships with hundreds of Christian organizations and performed over 750 fundraising events -- helping churches and other Christian organizations grow.
For more information, visit http://www.kdmvcorp.com. To sign up for shareholder alerts, visit http://www.kdmvcorp.com/ir_shareholderalerts.htm.
All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this press release are ``forward-looking statements.'' The forward-looking statements, including statements about the company's future expectations, including future revenues and earnings, and all other forward-looking statements (i.e., future operational results and sales) are subject to assumptions and beliefs based on current information known to the company and factors that are subject to uncertainties, risk and other influences, which are outside the company's control, and may yield results differing materially from those anticipated.