The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association exists because a crusade audience in Portland, Oregon took a preacher's offhand challenge seriously. Billy Graham had been approached about starting a radio program to carry his preaching beyond whatever city he happened to be visiting, and, not entirely expecting to be taken up on it, he told his summer 1950 Portland crusade that he would commit to the idea if listeners pledged twenty five thousand dollars in a single night. The congregation gave roughly twenty four thousand dollars during the service, and two more five hundred dollar gifts arrived at his hotel room before midnight.
Graham now had a program to build and no legal entity to build it with. His business manager, George Wilson, filed incorporation papers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association came into existence on September 15, 1950, its very first job being simply to hold and account for money that had already been pledged for a radio program that had not yet gone on the air. Hour of Decision followed within two months, first broadcasting that November.
What began as a receiving account for one night's pledges grew, over the following decades, into the organizational structure behind everything the Graham ministry produced: crusade telecasts, films, Christianity Today magazine founded in 1956, and Decision magazine. The association moved its headquarters from Minneapolis to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2003, closer to Graham's adopted home state, and continues operating today under the leadership of his family, seventy five years after a single Portland crusade audience decided a preacher's dare was worth funding.