How are local churches funded?

Factual Questions
21

My church is a somewhat old (1950s) church that has moved several times. The last move in about 1980 was from a piece of prime freeway frontage real-estate, and the church has occupied the new building ever since.

So I suspect that they own the building outright, and likely bought it outright with the proceeds from the sale of the old church/church lot.

I also suspect that the preschool that the church runs is likely something of a cash cow for the church at large; the church itself is about 40% full at any given service (pre-pandemic), so it’s not packed full of people coughing up tons of cash. My further suspicion is that there are some older folks who donate large sums, and a small handful of younger families that are really engaged that probably actually tithe to the church (i.e 10% of earnings). There are also some fund raisers, etc… but nothing massive.

I don’t know that there are enough of the above to fund the place without some of the preschool earnings funding the church as a whole.

22

Back when I used to be a Catholic, I heard a presentation from our pastor on our parish as an administrative unit – who paid the power bills, where they bought the Eucharist wine, how the floors got vacuumed. He said that the diocese gave the pastor a fair amount of leeway in terms of organizing the administration, but that two committees were mandatory as per canon law: the Administration Committee and the Finance Committee. He also said that Catholic seminaries were beginning to add accounting, human resource management, and business administration to the curriculum for priests in training.

23

It’s not just paying the pastor, the staff, and the utility bills: Most churches also have some sort of outreach program for helping their communities. My church, for instance, has meals for the hungry, a space for AA meetings, GED classes, and computer classes, as well as less formal arrangements like folks coming to he door and asking for help with anything from a bus pass to a month’s rent.

Bake sales per se might not be a big thing (though they are still a thing), but there are a number of other fundraisers churches use. At my church, we have:
St. Patrick’s Day: There’s a big jam-packed mass in the church (one of the largest in the city), then folks go downstairs to the hall for an all-day party, where they pay for food and drinks (mostly donated by a local brewery, owned by one of our parishioners).
Fish fries: Every Friday in Lent, we buy a bunch of ingredients for about two bucks a plate, add volunteer labor, and sell it for eight bucks a plate. Lots of folks come eat, not just parishioners.
Rummage sale: Folks donate old clothes, household items, toys, etc., and then we set it all up in the basement hall and sell it for anywhere from 25 cents (for a small toy) to maybe $50 (for a large piece of furniture). This also doubles as a form of outreach, since members of the community can get usable items for cheap.
Raffle tickets: Folks buy tickets for maybe $20 each, and one lucky winner ends up winning a trip to Ireland.
Rental: There’s a cell phone tower on the property, and the phone company pays us something like a thousand bucks a month for it. Not one of our biggest fundraisers, but it’s non-negligible.
A steak roast every year: The steaks are of course overpriced, and there are also opportunities at the event to buy the raffle tickets or otherwise make donations.

We also do get help from other parishes in the diocese, but that’s mostly just directed to the outreach programs: Churches in rich suburbs, where there’s more donation money and less need, are paired up with churches in the inner city, so they end up helping our poor. We’re still expected to stay on top of our own non-outreach expenses, though.

And yes, among Catholics, the diocese usually does own the real estate, but the rest of the finances are handled at the individual parish level.

24

Oh, and I should also mention that a lot of those fundraisers have been either canceled or severely cut back in the past year, due to COVID. I don’t know how we’ve been weathering that, but I suspect that loans are involved.

25

I appreciate all the contributions to this thread. I’ve wondered how churches keep the lights on. There’s not much in the collection plate anymore except what kids and older people contribute. They still use cash. But credit cards are always welcome. :wink:

Covid must have really hurt membership and contributions.

I remember my old Southern Baptist church kept the lights off except for the pastors office. He had a part time secretary that helped out. The sanctuary only got lights and heat for services. It was kept closed up the rest of the time.

Churches and other institutions have to adapt to changing needs and expectations.

26

Speaking for our own church: it absolutely did. We’ve been doing online worship for the past 14 months, and we’re blessed with having a church member who’s a professional video editor, who runs that program for us, but we know that attendance, particularly among some of our older parishioners, took a hit. We did a focused donation drive last fall, and that did help close the budget shortfall, but finances are an even bigger headache for our church council than usual.

27

Our church is unusual for England because it was only built in the 70s. The land was gifted to the diocese by the council but the building was paid for by local donations. I think the church hall next door was built by the council but is now owned and maintained by the church.

At first, we had our own full-time vicar and a part-time secretary. The vicar had a four bedroomed house on the grounds (now rented out at market rate). We no longer have our own vicar as, in common with parishes all over the country, churches have been grouped together and share a ‘team’ ministry.

Most maintenance, cleaning and general upkeep is carried out by the unpaid churchwardens. Tradespeople are contracted as required. The last major upgrade to the hall was carried out in 2019 and the cash was raised from donations and from the various groups that use the hall.

Money is a struggle and we are better off than most as we are not having to maintain an ancient monument. One of the other churches in our group was built in the 12th century - Weddings are a major source of income for them.

28

A very unusual example is Trinity Church in lower Manhattan, which owns billions in Manhattan real estate, dating from an eighteenth century grant from Queen Anne.

29

A lot of churches, particularly those that have been around for a long time, have some sort of trust fund or endowment program. Many of those endowments were set up 50 or more years ago and have been paying out steadily for years. Not a lot, but a little cushion.

In my church’s case, we paid off our mortgage many years ago. Our day care program is set up to plow any profits into keeping tuition low. (The program pays the church $600/mo. for rent, utilities and office costs.) Our two major expenses are salaries (one minister, one administrative assistant, a part-time music and choir director) and building maintenance.

30

adjective relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero.

(from Google). So I guess it would be like a church worshiping Aladdin.

Anyways, my former* church is okay, but did have to stop paying my dad for his services of locking everything up (something they did after he lost his job).

footnote

(They are now my former church because of two things, once I won’t tell due to it happening to a loved one, but the other was having a youth camp where the kids did not wear masks or socially distance. It’s the first time I’ve directly called them out on Facebook when they showed photos from it. My dad even agreed with it, though he got me tone it down slightly. But he also saw me crying about it.)

31

I hate when people don’t set up the board correctly.

32

I’d have to re-read the Washington Post article, but I think the incident in question there were safeguards in place, the money wasn’t supposed to be the Bishop’s piggy bank. But the Bishop was the senior most figure involved in its management, and I think other people involved were bullied out of really disputing him taking over its purse strings for his own ends.

33

The church I went to as a kid in north suburban Chicago had an interesting history. Built in 1927 the original patron apparently passed away at an inopportune time and construction was never finished due to the funds drying up. The belfry was stopped halfway up and only the lower level of the three story fellowship hall, Sunday school, and office wing was built. A slipshod roof was constructed over that lower level and the opening to the never-built fellowship hall was hastily sealed with plaster and stucco.

In the 1960s with increased attendance those missing two stories were built with a more modern utilitarian design than the original English Gothic Tudor style of the original building. Nonetheless, it gave the church some proper offices for the pastor and secretary, modern bathrooms, and about 10 classrooms, as well as opening up the old basement for the fellowship hall, kitchen, and a meeting room. This was already a bit late in the game as church attendance started to drop shortly thereafter, if not during construction.

So by the 1990s when I was there, at least everything was paid off (I think the 1960s addition cost under $200K which ain’t bad for steel, concrete, and masonry construction, even accounting for inflation), and the pastor had a parsonage next door to live in, but attendance was normally in the 30-ish person range. Only one classroom was really ever needed for Sunday school, so most of them were rented out to a non-sectarian daycare/preschool, which along with tithing is what I think provided most of the funds. The sanctuary was rented out to a Korean church and there was also the usual assortment of rummage sales, dinners (some potluck and some for pay), raffles, and income from a couple of adjacent rental properties.

34

It’s declining these days but some churches used to bring in decent cash from Bingo and other fund-raising events. These games often existed under the radar of law enforcement concerning gaming laws, but I recall a couple of cases where churches competing with each other for Bingo income had to be reined in. Other fund raisers like Fish Fries have been popular also. I get the impression that many of these fundraisers are minimally profitable and largely promote general participation in church activities.

35

My mom’s the one who runs the rummage sale and the fish fries, and I can tell you that those two, at least, are genuinely profitable, and provide a significant chunk of the church’s income. Of course, that’s only possible because of volunteer labor, and if the volunteers were paid even minimum wage, they wouldn’t be profitable, or at best much less so.

36

In my experience, the ones that are minimally profitable and seem more like social events that raise a little money on the side are run by church-related organizations to fund their charitable activities - for example, the St. Vincent de Paul Society might run a spaghetti supper and use the money raised to stock their food pantry. It’s the bigger, more profitable events where the money goes to the church* - bingo, a bazaar**, or a raffle/lottery with cash prizes and fairly high ticket prices. One I remember was limited to 250 tickets at $100 each - half went to prizes and the other half to the church.

  • or school- churches with associated schools do a lot more fund raising in my experience

** this might be a very location-dependent name - a bazaar is an event run by a non-profit organization that’s kind of like a carnival. There are rides and games of chance and of course carnival food.

37

In England, we have a fête. This is a small event with homemade (for the most part) games and entertainment. There will probably be a bouncy castle and a kiddy roundabout along with coconut shies and even throw a wet sponge at the vicar. Not to mention cakes and other goodies.

38

I assume that a kiddie roundabout is something like a merry-go-round, a ride with some sort of seating on a platform that rotates horizontally about an axis. And I get “throw a wet sponge”, though around here it’d be more likely to be a “pie” (typically, just a pie pan filled with whipped cream). Similar is the “Dunk Tank”: A person is sitting on a seat cantilevered over a tank of water, and people throw balls at a target off to the side, with a mechanism such that if the target is struck, the seat collapses and the person is dropped in the water.

But what’s a coconut shy (or shie)?

39

I have no idea how I know this- but it’s a game similar to the ones where you throw a set number of balls at some boxes or bowling pins to knock them off a platform.

40