How to Establish a Church Budget
Although the amount of money your church takes in might vary each week, there are likely standard expenses your church pays for on a weekly or monthly basis. You can set aside money to pay these expenses, including ministerial staff salaries, if you establish a church budget. If you use software packages like Excel or Lotus 1-2-3, you can create a church budget in less than an hour.
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Instructions
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Schedule a meeting with church leaders (e.g. auxiliary presidents, associate ministers). At the meeting discuss the church’s annual goals. For example, you can discuss the church’s evangelism, missionary, emergency food services and/or sanctuary expansion goals. To help prepare for the meeting, consider announcing the budget meeting during a church service and giving church leaders two to three weeks to discuss annual goals they have for auxiliaries and other organizations they lead.
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Record donations and contributions received by the church during the previous year, including tithes from church members. To project how much money the church may receive during the current year, annualize tithes and offerings received by members who joined the church partway into the previous year. For example, if a family of four joined the church in June of the previous year and they gave an average of $1,000 a month to the church, their annualized tithes and offerings would equal $12,000. Should your church operate services that are partly funded by the government like a daycare or a training center, include these additional funds in the total amount of donations and contributions.
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List and review your church’s fixed expenses. Fixed expenses include items like church building mortgages, mandatory insurance and pastoral and administrative salaries. If your church purchased transportation vehicles (e.g. vans, buses) via a loan, also include the costs of the monthly auto loans in the fixed expenses.
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Write down variable expenses for the church. Variable expenses include items like Sunday School lesson books, communion supplies, recreational equipment and supplies for youth at the church, hymnals, flowers and other church decorations. Food for church fellowship events, candles and offering envelopes are also variable expenses.
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Type the name of your fixed and variable expenses (e.g. mortgage, salaries) in the first column of a spreadsheet, listing the name of each expense one below the other vertically row by row. Next type the total amount of donations and contributions the church projects that it will receive each month at the top of a spreadsheet. You can type the first three letters of each month as column headings. For example, at the top of a spreadsheet and starting with the second column, you can type “Jan., Feb., Mar.” through Dec, taking up the next 12 columns. Beneath the monthly contributions list how much money the church plans to spend on fixed and variable expenses. To find out how much money the church has remaining after paying expenses, subtract the total expenses from the total donations and contributions. As the year progresses, make adjustments to donations and contributions and expenses, replacing the projected numbers with the actual amount of money the church received and spent each month.
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References
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