November 18, 2016
Overall finances: Capital Campaign
and Stewardship
Financial meeting (11/13/2016)
- Our Raising the Cross campaign started in September 2015 to raise money for constructing a church and a hall. These funds are on deposit at the Diocese of the South, which also allocates 10% of our money to other church-building financial programs. We hope to have collected all the money that was pledged by September 2018, three years after we started.
- Stewardship is the money gifted to Holy Cross that we use in our everyday finances (our “Operating Expenses”). Households are encouraged to give 10% of the household income as a tithe to the church. If you are not at that level, consider it a goal. If you are giving 5% now, moving to 6% next year would be a good goal. In a similar fashion, Holy Cross pays 10% of our income to the Diocese of the South as our tithe.
- Of Stewardship and our capital campaign, which one is more important? They both are! Our church as a whole needs to grow – we need the space that the new buildings will provide. This is what the Raising the Cross campaign will support. At the same time, we cannot pay our monthly and weekly bills if we do not have the stewardship money coming in on a regular basis.
Capital Campaign Summary
Definition of several different numbers we will discuss.
- PLEDGED: a pledge is a promise to give a certain amount. This number refers to the total amount of money that has been pledged to Raising The Cross campaign and is expected to be given in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.
- COLLECTED: Pledged money that is collected thus far.
- BUILDING FUND (on deposit with Diocese): Money that we will use to build. Keep in mind that not all can be used for building; as an example, we know that the land will have to be leveled, so if that costs $100,000 then we have $100,000 less to build.
- FUTURE OPERATING BUDGET (on deposit with Diocese): Savings that we accumulate and will use only for Operating Expenses once we are in the new building. Operating expenses in our new building will be significantly higher than they are here. For example, we will be solely responsible for our utility bills and maintenance costs. We are planning ahead now so that we have funds reserved to help get us through those first few years in our new space. While we hope and expect our parish and contributions to increase when we are in the new building, that will take time, while our increased expenses will be immediate.
Please refer to the definitions above with reference to these numbers:
- As of Fall 2016, we have $700,082 PLEDGED to the Raising the Cross campaign.
- Of those monies pledged, we have COLLECTED $376,597.
- BUILDING FUND: We have $379,859.86 on deposit with the Diocese marked as our BUILDING FUND. This number includes the $376,597 that has been collected, plus some additional funds collected from fundraisers, which is why the “Amount Collected” and the “Building Fund” cannot be added together, as some have asked.
- FUTURE OPERATING BUDGET: We have $25,566.52 on deposit with the Diocese.
Also keep in mind that we pay 10% tithe to the Diocese on monies collected for the Capital Campaign. We are currently allocating 1% of the incoming money to our Future Operating Budget to pay for electricity, etc., when we are in the new building.
Stewardship Summary
- For 2016, our total budget for Operating Expenses is $110,226 and we have spent $81,536.29 of that as of 10/31/2016. We are on track to be within 1% under the budgeted Expenses for the year.
- Since at least 2008, Holy Cross has stayed within 1% of the Operating Expenses for each year! Most years we have spent less than the budgeted Operating Expenses through vigilant watch over our spending by the various treasurers, Father Christopher, and the Council members.
- Stewardship income can often drop off during the summer months – just as we are starting to spend more on things like electricity to cool the church! In 2016, at the end of July, our monthly Income was $8210 and our Expenses were $9272 – not good! We still need to pay our bills every month, including pay Father Christopher every 2 weeks without fail. We cannot expect to pay a monthly mortgage if there are months that we could come up short. Your continued giving is important to Holy Cross!
- We have not recently asked for Holy Cross households to list a specific amount regarding their estimated giving on membership forms. However, we have come to a point where it would be useful to know in advance what income (through Stewardship) that we expect to receive in a year. The amounts filled out by member households are not binding –financial situations can change over time.
- The Diocese of the South would like to see our savings rate at 25% of our total budget. [For 2016 we project it will be 7 to 10% for the year]
- The graph above shows Stewardship and Candle income since 2012 and how we expect those to play out by the end of this year. The blue line is Stewardship. Note that it dips down (from 2012 to 2013) then picks back up. This is something that a bank would be wary of. When we submit numbers to the bank, they will want the last few years, and they will want to see steady growth. In 2017 we want our Stewardship to grow so that we can show banks four good growth years (2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017) and they can give us a construction loan based on those numbers.
- The Finance committee and Parish Council noted that our candle income has gone down – $2919 is the projected number for this year – while the amount spent on candles has actually gone up this year. We expect the amount spent on candles to be about $2975 this year compared with $1564 that was spent in 2015. Our candle income needs to be higher next year.
- When looking at loans to churches, banks like to see steady increases (year-over-year) in contributions, either through growth in number of households or through increased giving.
- Our goal as a parish is to be able to show banks that we can be reliable to pay back a loan on schedule. One way to do that is to lower the concentration of giving – that is, spread out contributions over a larger number of families. We need everyone’s help to do that.
Thank you
We have many tasks ahead of us in the next few years – and many of them rely on your continued financial support. Under direction of the Parish Council, the Finance Committee has established these goals for our community – and with your help we can achieve these goals of sustained giving and sustained growth.