What’s the Budget For Anyway? Part Three

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Giving Speaks

The third and final installment of the “What’s the Budget For Anyway?” article by K. Peter Henrickson*~

Presenting the Budget

By whatever planning process is appropriate in your congregation, the Finance Committee needs to showcase a set of targets for congregational services three or four years into the future. The presentation of such plans and their longer term financial implications shifts the congregation’s attention from considering the spending request for next year vis-a-vis last year to considering where the congregation is heading. The stewardship drive is an opportunity to meld the conversation about congregational direction with the conversation about individual dreams. So, here are some guidelines for presenting a vision budget stimulating such conversations.

Summarize and focus expenses into the major areas of energy for your congregation. We want the membership to “own” the vision — to believe it is good and to love it passionately. Suppose we organize a vision budget around the major growth needs driving the church.^{^[1]} Consider these examples:

Worship, Spiritual Growth and Exploration
Organizational Services and Leadership Development
Community Outreach and Denominational Support
Pastoral Support and Shared Ministry

These categories represent what is sometimes referred to as a “mission budget”. They virtually scream out the necessity to describe why we are in community. The minister and board need to provide inspiring leadership in each of these areas — to show in greater detail the aspirations for your congregation. “Worship, Spiritual Growth, and Exploration”, for example, might mean a year around ministry for children or additional emphasis on laity ministry. It might mean developing two or three regular services each week (or more), each targeted to the needs of particular groups of people.

Include a multi-year forecast, three or four years beyond the budget year. The purpose of a forecast is to show that the leadership has heard what the members want and that such a church is available in the future — although not next year. Members understand that programs take time to launch; they need to see movement toward objectives. They will support growth with a vision that fits their own, that enhances lives in the community today as it moves toward tomorrow.

In the vision budget keep the focus on the future and away from the past. Consider using only the following column headings congregational meeting budget: current year budget, current year projected, budget year, first vision year, second vision year, third vision year, etc. That is, strip last year’s spending out of the budget presentation. The data are 12 months old or more and contributes virtually nothing to the discussion about future years. If someone wants to reference a particular number from last year, the treasurer can look it up quickly enough. But do not presume that the entire congregation needs or wants to review the historical perspective. That entire extra column of numbers increases potential confusion without bringing much benefit.

Give committees a way to talk about why they do what they do, and how they want to do it better. Most of what your membership envisions will be championed by the various committees. Listen to what the committees want in the future and recognize its priority in the budget presentation. The role of the board is to defer committee requests, not cut them.

Present a vision budget which is adequate to the community. Too often churches limp along without the ministerial or other staff support they need, without an annual installment on the building repair fund, or without sufficient religious education supplies. Good leadership presents a budget to focus attention away from the discouraging present and toward the place we want to be within the foreseeable future. The vision budget should highlight the opportunities facing the congregation. Develop the vision budget to get both the board and the committees to share their observations and their dreams. They are the core of the congregation and their common purpose for the future is building community.

Show what can be done with modest pledge increases over the next few years. I do not believe that any congregation can say with integrity that it enjoys a fullness of spiritual meaning in all of the four areas of energy suggested above if the average giving level is below $120/family/month. This is a commitment of about 2% where congregational monthly incomes average $5,-$6,000/month. The vision budget needs to show what the church could be with a growth of gifts to a 3% – 5% level over the course of a few years.

Show the number of members or giving units currently and into the future. Growth is important in most congregations, and the vision budget should elevate this discussion. This is also a way to focus attention on growing average stewardship levels. One might show average commitments separately for “members” and for all other contributors as a way of communicating the higher giving levels expected of membership.

Do not show the congregation numbers with more than four digits. The membership will not absorb numbers with length, or at least not an entire page of them. A budget totaling $150,000 – $250,000 can express $435 as “.4” — at least in the years out beyond the budget year while a budget of $500,000 should round to even thousands.

Put the entire budget on a single page. Leave lots of white space on the paper and do not reduce the type size. When you have done this, you have a budget that is comprehensible to those not familiar with it. Again, the sole purpose of the vision budget is to increase the level of giving. We who are church treasurers often lose sight of this objective. We default to thinking the purpose of the budget is to present numbers, and more is better. In the vision budget, fewer is better.

In summary, “This is not your father’s budget!” Look forward.

Use the annual budget process to continually revisit the congregation’s dreams for where it wants to go and how fast it wants to get there. The budget process is repeated every year. It brings focus and detail to the discussion. When done as described above it shows clearly what the leadership sees as priorities and focuses discussion on them. It shows that those programs and needs which are not this year’s priorities are still important and are viable in the future. It is public enough to generate discussion among many who are interested but not directly involved. It can be a terrific vehicle for inspiring a congregation.

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*K. Peter Henrickson lives in Vancouver, WA has served the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) and its Pacific Northwest District for over 30 years. Peter served two separate terms as district treasurer for a total of 15 years. During that period, he began consulting with congregations on general financial management issues. With the learnings from those consulting jobs, Peter put together several presentations for both district meetings and the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly. And the material from those workshops grew into a book, Church Financial Management, which is now available through Amazon. Peter has served on the Board of Eliot Institute and was Treasurer for a total of about ten years and has served as the UUA’s District Compensation Consultant since 2005. Peter can be contact directly at: kphenrickson@gmail.com (360) 608-8571

^{^[1]} See Loren B Meade’s “More Than Numbers, The Way Churches Grow” referenced in the bibliography. I recommend it for further development of these notions.

What’s the Budget For Anyway? Part Two

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Giving Speaks

Giving Speaks is pleased to present part two of the featured What’s the Budget For Anyway article for congregation leaders by K. Peter Henrickson*

How do we get the Vision Thing?

The annual stewardship drive and the interlaced process of determining what services will be provided starts with asking members to focus on their gratitude for the community relationship they have. Then they should be asked what they want additionally in that experience. It leads to a consideration that they can enhance their lives through an expansive selflessness into the collective enterprise of their religious community. When everyone can do that there is a shared vision.

The process of creating a vision that is more than a year or two away is one of the most difficult tasks facing church leadership — ministers, boards, and committees. While we might appreciate the notion of having a widely shared vision, none of us know very well how to temporarily set aside the problems facing us now in order to focus on the future. If one of our committees has a long term plan, we do not know how to support it. We worry about being dictatorial over the specific proposals that someone doesn’t like; or, we get caught in a never-ending process of seeking complete consensus before committing the congregation to one course or another. Finally, once committed, we are too easily persuaded to revisit the issue three years later because the congregation is “different now.” I do not know any easy way to change the entrenched attitudes which tell us to focus on the present.

Nonetheless, I know that whatever vision is adopted by a congregation becomes so only because of the leadership. Such work is not done unless led by those who are the Board, the committee chairs, the ministers and the stalwarts of the annual stewardship drive. Vision simply does not happen if the leadership waits for it to arise from the pews.

Here is a process that may help the leadership in your church get started:

Ten months before the beginning of the next fiscal year, the board should discuss the context within which they want the budget prepared. The Board should set forth its own notion of expected growth patterns over the next few years, expected trends in giving, and other matters that could impact on the resources available or the demand for additional services. The board then communicates these planning parameters to the committees and staff.

At least six months prior to the new fiscal year the staff and the heads of the major committees get together for general brainstorming. Each gets an opportunity (and has a responsibility) to say what changes they hope for over the next five years. This discussion is an opportunity for synergies to be explored and complementary program operations to be articulated.

Ideally, four months prior to the new fiscal year the committee heads and staff get together a second time to share their specific budget ideas, including a three-year program projection.

About three months prior to the new year the finance team prepares a “base budget” designed to carry on operations only as we currently know them. This base budget is usually slightly larger than the current budget by the amount of uncontrollable inflationary adjustments.

At the same time, the finance people prepare a listing of all the programmatic ideas they have received and their assessment of related costs. The board places these incremental additive items into three groupings: necessary, meaning those items which sustain the ministry and the staff without fundamental changes; important, meaning those items which will advance the ministry and improve the way we are doing things now; and needed improvements, meaning those items which will advance our current ministry in important ways but can be deferred without jeopardy or can be financed through special sources. A dollar cost is assigned for each item and a dollar cost for each grouping is determined.

These general priority groupings give the leadership and the members a focus for what the current budget drive needs to garner to achieve the program goals. During the budget drive members can know that, for example:

“Uncontrollable increases will push our budget 1% higher while bringing no change to what we do now. What we see as necessary additions are going to increase the base budget by about 2%. Other important improvements to what we do now will cost 5% additional. And the needed improvements which are the first two big steps on our three-year plan can cost as much as another 3%. The dollar total on all these is in the range of $25,-$30,000.”

After the completion of the budget drive the Finance Committee can make a reasonably accurate assessment of where the current year spending will end and how much will come in during the next year. Based on these two key pieces of information, it is fairly easy for the Board to determine whether they are focusing their decisions about the next year on the necessary, the important, or the needed improvements list — and to quickly agree to a final budget to put before the congregation.

In a few days we will post Peter’s thoughts on how to present the budget priorities and spending plan so that they are both comprehensive and comprehensible….