Congregational Stewardship

People are not born with a giving gene. Because joyful giving for the sake of the giver is a worthy goal, faith communities want to help their congregants discover their own personal generosity. This discovery process requires focusing on the joy of giving, on being self-giving rather than self-serving. Recruiting volunteers and raising money can be almost incidental to creating a healthy culture of giving.

In Giving and Stewardship in an Effective Church, Kennon Callahan writes that the purpose of stewardship is giving, not fundraising, and that stewardship actually provides a service to the giver. The role of those leading a stewardship campaign, he believes, is to help people discover their own generosity.

Callahan proposes a four-year program to increase giving. He suggests that a congregation focus on growing the donor base in the first year and increasing the number of volunteers who work on the annual budget drive in the second year. He recommends that the third year be devoted to increasing the giving level of specific current households. He believes that the cumulative result of the first three years should create a quantum leap of giving during the fourth year.

While Callahan’s plan offers a well-conceived sequence, I believe that the first step is to find a way to talk about giving. The conversations can’t be specifically about money. They must include talk about call and spiritual vocation. A person might share his call (willingness to proclaim the good works of the faith community) by talking about his passion for one of the congregation’s programs or ministries at a new-member reception. A congregant might demonstrate her spiritual vocation (willingness to take up the spiritual work of the faith community) by participating in a Habitat for Humanity project or volunteering to teach English to a group of recent immigrants.

If your congregation is entrenched in a culture of scarcity, develop an intentional plan to explore the meaning of giving. By initiating conversations about giving, you can introduce the topic and reinforce the concept until it slowly becomes part of the congregation’s way of life.

As the economy slowly . . . very slowly . . . starts to recover, more congregations are asking for the support of Congregational Stewardship consultants. In some cases, congregations are asking for annual budget drive support. Some others are asking for strategic planning guidance and still others are asking us to lead them through a capital campaign.

In all cases, an assessment visit is the first step in a relationship between your congregation and one of our consultants. There are three outcomes of an assessment visit:

First, the visit provides an opportunity for your congregation to get an objective assessment from a stewardship consultant. Prior to the visit, you will have sent several documents to the consultant. Once on site, the consultant gathers more information in a series of meetings with key professional religious leaders and volunteer lay leaders.

Second, an assessment visit provides your congregation with specific recommendations to get “from here to there.”  Based on all the gathered information, the consultant lists several steps necessary to allow your congregation to reach its long-term goals.  These recommendations are given verbally at the end of the assessment visit, and are then followed by a written summary.

And third, an assessment visit clarifies how the Congregational Stewardship program can be helpful to your congregation. Since 1985, we have provided support to hundreds of congregations. Each consultant brings special skills, as well as the combined skills and experience of the other consultants. Each is prepared to guide and coach your congregation through all aspects of your comprehensive stewardship expectations.

Need more information? Please contact the Congregational Stewardship Services office for more information.

I came across an article in the New Yorker magazine a few weeks back written by Atul Gawande, an expert surgeon who engaged a fellow surgeon to serve as his personal  coach with the goal of keeping his skills sharp and helping improve his performance and results.    See Personal Best at The New Yorker online. Dr. Gawande calls attention to coaching analogies from sports and the arts, noting that elite athletes and singers often have personal coaches to help them be their best.  They observe them in action and suggest small or large adjustments in preparation, strategy, or technique.  Now as you might imagine it’s pretty rare for professionals like doctors and lawyers to enter into a formal coaching relationship.   The same is true in my business of management consulting.  Well as the New Yorker article indicates, the coaching experiment was quite successful, and Dr. Gawande is convinced that both he and his patients have benefitted.

This got me musing about the work that I do as a management consultant and more specifically as a congregational stewardship consultant.   I have never been hired explicitly to be a coach, but surely that is a large component of what I do – observe leaders in action, offer suggestions to help them do their work more effectively, and then work collaboratively to implement the suggestions.  This is true whether the engagement is to improve the services delivered by the information technology department of a large non-profit or to help foster a culture of generosity in our UU congregations.

So now I’m pondering what it would mean for me to think of myself as a coach and my clients as generally skilled leaders interested in improving their skills and effectiveness.    I wonder how my work would be different if I embraced the coaching spirit more fully and openly.   And how might I benefit from personal coaching?

Well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten with my musings.   I’d love to hear from others who have experience either as coaches or being coached.  I’m convinced that there’s something useful in the coaching model and would love some ideas about digging further into it.  Please comment and share your experience and wisdom.

Thank you to Congregational Stewardship Consultant Aggie Sweeney for sharing this article about generosity and the holiday season with our office.

“The urge to give that is awakened around this time is an important one: Philanthropy plays a crucial role in American society, providing funding for a vast array of services. Giving also connects us as a culture: According to a study by the Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, nearly two-thirds of all Americans gave to charity in 2008. American charities took in nearly $300 billion in 2010.” by Leon Neyfakh

You can read the rest of the article on The Boston Globe website.

Stewardship efforts are highlighted in so many unique ways, and First Unitarian Society in Madison in Wisconsin is no exception. This congregation, with over 1,600 members, wanted to give back in a meaningful way. They decided to raise funds to contribute to microfinancing, which can provide individuals in developing countries with loaned money to start small businesses. An article in the Wisconsin State Journal details how the congregation approached raising money for this justice project.

“At First Unitarian, task force members bypassed traditional fundraisers and went to the congregation with a direct pitch to donate money. The church’s foundation pledged to match up to $10,000. The total amount raised would then be invested in microfinance organizations that would pay returns to the church on the money.

This approach, similar to socially responsible investing, made for a more sustainable, longer-lasting program than a one-time donation, said Scott Andersen, another task force member. It also made for an easier pitch — donors would be strengthening the church’s financial health while helping to reduce international poverty.

‘It was a one-two punch,’ he said. ‘There were benefits on both the local and global level.’

About 50 families donated a total of $13,000. With the church foundation’s $10,000 match and a $10,000 grant from the national Unitarian Universalist Association, the church had $33,000 to invest.”

First Unitarian Society also has highlighted information about the microfinancing kits on their website.

From time to time, I get asked about ways to audit the finances of a congregation. Here’s a brief overview of three possibilities. It has been adapted from an original uumoney post by Don Mohr from the UU Congregation  of Columbia, SC. Refer to the article, Three Options for Auditing the Finances, to read more.

Compilation 

The goal of a compilation is to take information that is on the general ledger and accumulate it into financial statements in the same format that would come out of a review or audit. The key sentence of a compilation report from the accountant reads, “We have not audited or reviewed the accompanying financial statements and, accordingly, do not express an opinion or any other form of assurance on them.”

Review

The goal of a review is to provide limited assurance that financial statements do not have any known errors or departures from the accounting rules found in GAAP. The key sentence in a review report reads, “Based on our review, we are not aware of any material modifications that should be made to the accompanying financial statements in order for them to be in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles.”

Audit

The goal of an audit is to provide reasonable, but not absolute, assurance that financial statements are fairly presented in accordance with GAAP. The key sentence in an audit report reads, “In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of [organization name] as of June 30, [year], and the changes in its net assets and its cash flows for the year then ended in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.”

I have been thinking a lot about the definition of generosity. Recently, my colleague Ian Evison wrote:
 “I think we are going to enter into a time when the idea of getting people to be more generous is going to need to be much more balanced by focusing on sustainability—even what people will be generous about will be more about sustainability.”

Seems to me that since so many congregants have lost jobs or are currently under employed, that our congregations may be faced with flat annual budgets that reflect the new generosity.

For example, if a congregant had previously contributed $1,000 to the annual budget, and that same congregant is now unemployed, maybe a $250 annual pledge is even more generous than her previous pledge. Maybe you have a dozen other congregants, or more, facing the same dilemma.

By extension, it is quite possible that your annual budget might even be smaller than the previous year and could reflect even more generosity than the previous year.

Maybe a new definition of generosity is needed. Maybe we need to correlate generosity with sustainability. Maybe the idea of getting congregants to increase their generosity means that we focus on sustaining those most important aspects of congregational ministry, rather than expanding into new programs.

The Coming Death Tsunami, written by Lovett Weems and shared by Rev. Brian Covell of Third Unitarian Church in Chicago, pursues this issue. Take a look and see what you think. I would love to begin a conversation about this issue.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

The folks at the Eno River UU Fellowship in Durham, NC have produced a DVD of skits about financial stewardship called Dramas to Provoke Generosity. It features members from the Fellowship in 6 skits. Some of the skits touch on religious beliefs and giving and others connect our UU values to our financial giving. They are amusing and provocative, and try to get at some of the considerations that our members may have about financial stewardship in our congregations.

The producers provide the scripts for the skits, in files on the DVD, so your congregation can adapt them and produce them in your own congregation. They are all brief enough – perhaps you have some talented folks in your congregation who would present one skit each week during your annual budget drive period? Or maybe you could invite congregants to read the scripts together and discuss them as an adult spiritual development series? They might also be useful as a starting point for exploring other religions and their approaches to stewardship.

If you are less adventurous, you might consider just showing the skits as a starting point for consideration or discussion. Because the DVD is well produced, the acting fits the material, and the scripts are broadly humorous; they are engaging but not likely to offend anyone. Click here to purchase the DVD.

Here is a video preview of the DVD: