Creating a church budget is easy to maintain from year to year. It does take a little time to set up in the beginning, however. You have to compile information from several departments and take a look at over all giving. You need to know a basic budget structure so you can fill in pertinent information. Read on to learn more about make a church budget.
Instructions
1. Open a word processing program on your computer to begin creating a budget. You could do it by hand, but it is much easier to add information in to a budget on the computer as you receive it from various departments. Make sure all departments are aware that they need to submit their expenses to you. Ask each department to let you know if they ever have money left over from year to year or if they are finding that they are in need or more money. This will help you to see if that department should have a larger portion of the budget or if their department could stand a cut in funds.
2. Start off with your obvious expenses. These would be gas, electric, phone, water, sewer, Internet, among others. These expenses will be the ones that won't change or that you must have money for.
3. Continue with expenses for the building and what you think you will need for any repairs during the year. You should always include money for anticipated renovations or unexpected repairs that may occur in the future that you are saving up for.
4. Add in your pastor's salary and any associate pastors you may have on staff. Also include the pastors health plans, housing allotments, pension and traveling expenses. List all other paid workers of the church such as the janitor and the secretary. Most churches also pay organists, choir directors and even some nursery workers.
5. Create a category for supplies. hat would include paper, bulletins, postage, Bibles, Bible Study materials and Sunday School materials--basically anything you would need for you office or the church's classrooms. You can categorize this as office expenses or office supplies.
6. Now you need to add the totals from the various committee's. Some committee's you may have are the evangelism committee, missions committee, children's ministry, benevolence ministry, youth groups, among others. Each group should tell you how much money they feel they would need for the next year.
7. Finish off by adding any miscellaneous expenses. Every church should have a miscellaneous expense for unforeseen items they may need. This category could prevent a church from taking on any debt.
8. Now gather together the records of past giving for a year. Compare that to the totals you have from all of your listed expenses. Is the amount more than the expenses? If so you are in good shape and you can use the budget you created. If your amount is less than the average giving for a one-year period then you are going to have to cut some of your categories until your giving equals your expenses.
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