Giving and Stewardship
Dear fellow Holy Spirit members,
It’s that time of year when I get questions about giving and stewardship from members of the finance committee, vestry, and parishioners.
Every fall we have a Stewardship campaign where the Stewardship Chair reaches out to our congregation and asks us to prayerfully consider our connection to Holy Spirit Episcopal Church. This encompasses time, talent, and treasure because we rely on our parishioners to share all of these in varying degrees so that our community can flourish in faith, fellowship, and outreach. We are collecting those pledge commitments now!
Also in the fall, you start to see requests to complete the financial contributions that you pledged for the current year. We have what I like to call a “timing issue” every year that is a result of the differences in the timing that contributions are made to the church and the timing that expenses are incurred. I’ll explain this.
The way the expenses work for our church is that they tend to be constant throughout the year. Our personnel, facilities, and liturgical costs don’t vary much from month to month other than some seasonality with our utility costs. On the other hand, income is not constant throughout the year. We tend to receive about 20% of the year’s contributions in the first two months of the year. We also expect to receive about 35% of the year’s contributions in the final three months of the year.
Given the barbell timing of money coming in and the more regular flow of money going out, we draw down operating cash throughout the summer. That is why in September, you start hearing those requests about keeping your pledge payments up to date. Thankfully, we have an operating reserve that supports the church during the summer and early fall months. If you are someone that would like to make your pledge payments more regularly, the Realm option for recurring gifts is a great tool!
Speaking of Realm, if you are a Realm user, please check your profile and see if you have a picture of yourself added. It will be so helpful to have these photos in place by the time we have a new rector. Fr Bob has mentioned to the staff a few times how he wishes more people had photos added to their profile so that he can learn names with faces.
At the 5:00 service this week, Fr Bob said that he sees dollar signs when he looks at me. I thought that was funny and also understandable! I hope the rest of you see a fellow parishioner, praying for you all, and a loyal staff member, striving to safeguard and maximize the treasure that each of you have entrusted with Holy Spirit.
Aimee Donnel
Director of Business Operations