BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

1
BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE
2
MEMORIALS, GIFTS AND SAVINGS

• Well finish up with savings and memorials and
  gift policies
• Building for the Future includes much bigger
  topics
• Capital campaigns (Church Extension)
• Endowments (Christian Church Foundation)
• Weve chosen to stay with smaller topics that are
  nonetheless problematic for many churches

3
SAVINGS

• How many of your congregations have savings
  accounts? How often do you put money into
  savings?
• Good business practice is to have in reserve an
  amount equal to 25-50 of the churchs annual
  operating budget
• Show this on the books but keep it separate from
  the day-to-day operating budget

4
SAVINGS

• Ideally your savings are earning interest not
  so easy to do in the present environment
• Be aware for the possibility of conflicts of
  interest when investing
• The Christian Church Foundation has multiple
  investment funds for this purpose
• A minimum of 1000 is needed to open an acct
• But only for long-term investments (gt 5 years)
  the CCF funds are market funds, and may not
  return the full principal over less than that
  amount of time

5
DESIGNATED FUNDS

• Heres how some churches deal with the need for
  rainy-day funds when income does not equal
  expenses
• Put memorial gifts into designated funds
  (accounts are separate from operating budget)
• Borrow against these funds to balance the
  checkbook
• Not a good plan it is too easy to forget to
  pay these back, putting the church at some
  liability because the funds were not given to
  support the regular operating budget

6
DESIGNATED FUNDS

• Designated funds are also challenging to deal
  with in other ways
• Who is authorized to spend the money?
• How strictly should the donors wishes be
  followed?
• There can be many accounts, each with a
  relatively small amount of money can they be
  combined in order to be used more effectively?
• Ideally, your congregation has a policy about how
  to handle designated funds

7
GIFT POLICY

• A better way is to put gifts into a fund
• Permanent Fund or Memorial Fund
• Set it up now, so it will be available when you
  have donors
• The policy should address all kinds of gifts, not
  just money
• It should have a provision for not accepting a
  gift that is inappropriate or has too many
  strings attached

8
GIFT POLICY

• Allow monetary donors to choose use from several
  categories
• Building, furnishings, maintenance
• Ministry activities
• Endowment
• But dont allow donors to specify a particular
  gift within a category or create new categories
• The policy should specify that if a donation is
  not spent in a stated time period, it will be put
  into a specific category (usually savings or
  endowment)

9
GIFT POLICY

• Gift policy good practices
• The use of the funds should reflect your
  missional priorities
• Make your fund known through the church
  newsletter
• Maintain a public record of fund donors and/or
  the person being remembered
• All gifts should be acknowledged multiple times,
  by the pastor and the trustees
• The Christian Church Foundation can assist with
  gifts of property, stock, etc.

10
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

• Your congregations finances should reflect your
  vision and mission
• You should have clear policies keep working at
  improving them
• People are willing to give when they know the
  church and the individuals can be trusted
• Good stewardship should extend beyond
  year-to-year funding of the operating budget it
  should carry the congregation into the future