how does your congregation raise money?

[cellio]

I'm interested in answers from all religions/denominations. (Please identify which you're talking about.)

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?

Comments

[hildakrista.livejournal.com]

Well, I grew up Roman Catholic, too, and I had the same experience as you, complete with my own tiny numbered envelopes. But I'm commenting on Ben's mom's experience. It's not illuminating for your question, I think, but interesting:

Ben's mom's father was the pastor of a very small Christian and Missionary Alliance Church (protestant) in East Nowhere, PA. When he died, we were up at his tiny, poorly made house to clean it out. I came across a giant drawer full of hundreds - literally hundreds - of tiny little notebooks. On each page were names and an amount a money next to each, usually within the $1-$10 range. His salary, meaning all (ALL!) their income from his job was by weekly donations from the congregation.

Ben's mom says that the side effect of this was that if he preached an unpopular sermon, they ate beans for a month. Or if they did fundraising for something else (like housing a returning missionary for a period of time), they ate beans. If a family in the church moved or switched churches (common in small-town protestant communities during disagreements), it caused them hardships as well.

Their family offset this by the pastor also doing carpentry and odd jobs. Which the congregation also didn't like. They wanted their pastor to just be the religious guide, not have other jobs. It was, however, necessary, and carpentry was sort of OK, for obvious reasons. But growing up very poor as a child of a pastor (as did Ben, in his own turn), results in some interesting behaviors. This comedy article (http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor/) describes their family to a "T". Like, weirdly accurate.

Just thought you might be interested to hear about the poor side of church finances, and how it affects the employees and their families.

[mortuus.livejournal.com]

Wow, that Cracked article was totally on point. I grew up in a dirt poor family too, and that totally has it right about what it's like when you're poor, and the things you have to relearn once you're not.

[cellio]

Wow. Thanks for sharing that. That sounds like a really uncomfortable position to be in -- especially for a religious leader who almost certainly feels called from time to time to challenge his congregation and not just give the easy warm fuzzy message. Sometimes people need to be stirred up, but if it means eating beans... what a deterrent. :-(

(That Cracked article made quite an impression on me the first time I saw it.)