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how does your congregation raise money?
I grew up going to a Roman Catholic church. Collection baskets were passed at Sunday services -- once for the church and, often, a second time for a special purpose (ranging from helping $disaster victims to buying a pipe organ). Members of the congregation were issued envelopes with an identifying number (not name) on the outside, so you could put cash in and still get a tax receipt at the end of the year. Children in religious school were also issued (small) envelopes; they were also numbered and I assume our coins were tallied with our parents' envelopes, but I never asked. Of course, some people (like visitors) just put cash directly into the basket, too.
This always struck me as dicey; how could an organization with regular expenses like heat and salaries and a building manage finances that way, other than by assuming that this year will be like last year? It occurs to me now that there might have also been a pledge system that I, as a child, never saw, but I'm just guessing here.
One of the things I found really refreshing about synagogues is that they have dues. When I found out about this I did a little happy-dance. Yay, no more guesswork! Join the congregation, get a bill, pay it, and everything's good. Right? (Aside: we couldn't pass a basket at Shabbat services even if we wanted to, because doing business and handling money are forbidden on Shabbat.)
Now that I've been part of congregational life for a while, though, I've realized that that's not the end of it by far. There are still special appeals, of course (we help $disaster victims too, after all), but there are also endowment campaigns, special appeals to supplement dues, fancy fund-raising dinners (with ad books, to draw contributions from non-members/businesses), and a myriad of other fund-raising activities. (I know that some congregations have a building fund with its own rules for member payments; we don't, so I don't really know how this works.) There are also fees for certain activities; the biggie here is religious school, which is a separate payment on top of dues.
My congregation -- and I assume this is true pretty much everywhere -- never turns anybody away for lack of ability to pay dues. We'll negotiate a reduced rate, sometimes quite nominal. Some of the other fund-raising is specifically to offset that. A draw from the endowment each year also offsets some expenses. I don't know if the proportion of our expenses paid for by dues is public information so I won't say, but we try to reduce that proportion by building the endowment -- through fund-raising, of course.
All of this makes me wonder when we risk hitting the point of "fund-raising fatigue" for members (I didn't grow up with this as normal so my perspective is unreliable), and what the mix of dues to fund-raising tends to be like elsewhere, and what other (fiscally-responsible) approaches are out there. What do others do? Are synagogues unique in having dues, or do churches have that too (perhaps packaged differently)? If you're a member of a church, does someone sit down with you and say "we expect you to donate $X this year"?
So, readers who belong to congregations of any sort, how do your congregations pay for expenses?
no subject
They have the advantage of a) a significant endowment, and b) property owned by the church not currently being used by the church. None of the money they collect over the course of the year (except for special appeals - disasters, etc.) actually gets spent in the year they collect it. Instead, they budget forward using in the money generated by the endowment + projected rental income + a percentage (I think it's 60%) of last year's collection income as a guide. All collection income (including pledges) over a certain annual threshold gets rolled back into the endowment.
This way of planning served them well for decades, until the past five years when they had to deal with a combination of the stock market crash + sky high heating bills + the priest getting sick (he needed an organ transplant) and the church needing to suddenly pay all the living expenses for their regular (ill) priest (who was living in the rectory with his family) plus a long-term interim priest. (Note: if you pay the Rabbi's living expenses, get long term disability for him/her. They didn't and it ended up costing them much more than 15 years of premiums would have.)
Fund raising: Her church does pass the collection plate, but also has the regular congregation make an annual pledge that is done quietly, by mail, and is above anything that might be put in the collection plate. A lot of families only pledge a dollar or two per week, and that's fine. They also do special appeals (they sponsor a town in Haiti), but all their other fundraising is events - so, a church fair, a book sale, an easter-egg event, a big dinner, etc.
If you have questions, feel free to ask. They're actually very solvent, despite the recent 'perfect storm' of events that caused their budget to be a mess the past few years. One issue is that they are unable to touch the principal of their endowment, only the interest, so there is reliable income, but zero temptation to do a big thing they can't afford by drawing down the endowment. Also, the diocese can step in and help (they ended up assisting with the cost of the interim priest) if things get really dire, and I don't think that you have that extra management level.