You want to create a budget for your church. However, there’s a lot of variation in the ways you want to move forward with this budget. It can feel difficult to separate out what’s important and where to find ways to save. Keep in mind that the budgeting process doesn’t have to be complicated or challenging. With help from some of these budgeting tips and money-saving ideas, your budget will be well thought out and completed easily.
Start with the basics.
When it comes to budgeting, start with the basics. To start your budget, you must know your net income for the month. You also need to make a list or document that entails your spending for the same time frame. This can be completed weekly or monthly, but, generally speaking, monthly is easier to keep track of. Your net income is considered all of the income that the church brings in after any taxes or salary payouts. For a church, this money usually comes from followers, offerings and donations. Tracking your expenses or spending is quite simple. Be sure to track all expenses that are required to run the church. These expenses are either fixed or variable. Fixed means this expense occurs every single month in the same amount, whereas the variable expenses may occur only periodically or may change in amount. For example, a fixed expense is the possible rent for the church building. A variable expense is the price you pay for church supplies that month. Once you can track your income and your expenses, you can evaluate where to cut costs. You’ll also be able to see patterns on paper that help to solidify spending trends.
It’s also valuable to understand the ebb and flow of your income for your church. For example, if you know that you have more followers near Christmas or Easter time, you can anticipate a higher donation average for these months compared to others.
Find affordable supplies.
With this newfound attention to your spending, you might be looking for ways to cut down on certain variable expenses. Since your variable expenses are not set in stone, you can likely find other affordable alternatives for your church’s needs. One way to do this is by finding affordable church supplies, like preaching robes. Depending on whether you have a female or male clergy member, you’ll need preaching robes that fit these members best.
Cokesbury is an online store for Christian church supplies. On their site, you can find a variety of clergy robes in different fabrics, styles, with or without a cross embroidered, with or without pleats, and in a variety of colors and fabrics. You can also consider purchasing multiple garments from their site at once to cut back on costs. Beyond clergy robes, they sell other church supplies like offering envelopes, pulpit robes, bibles and candles. Overall, if you’re trying to cut back and budget for your church looking into different suppliers for your needs is a great idea.
Reach out to your followers.
As you know, your church runs off of your followers. As you get more followers who show up regularly, you have the potential to raise more money and to reach more donors. This money can be used to further spread your message of faith and grow your church in the ways you envision. A great idea to utilize to expand your church’s outreach is a peer to peer texting app, or P2P texting app. These peer to peer texting apps are commonly used in political campaigns, because they provide an effective way to reach your target audience with critical info, updates and messages via text messages. Companies like Peerly offer these P2P services at an affordable price. It’s a budget-friendly way to get potential followers or promote continual presence and engagement through the use of smartphones. Peer to peer texting can also raise awareness for church events and help you relay important information about services or mass times as well. This way, you can expand your following and enhance your potential income, which will work hand-in-hand with your budget plans.