ECCU Blog

Wouldn’t it be great if we never had to worry about dishonesty in the church? Unfortunately, the church is not exempt from becoming the victim of wrongdoing. That’s why it is important to take appropriate measures to ensure that your church isn’t thrust into a negative spotlight resulting in a lost testimony to the world.

Keith Hamilton’s article 10 Ways to Prevent the Embezzlement of Church Funds outlines ten practical and easy to implement steps. From conducting an annual financial review to tracking giving patterns over time, Hamilton illustrates how your church can practice good financial accountability.

What steps is your church taking to prevent embezzlement and other types of fraud?

Once a disaster happens, time to prepare is gone. All you can do is cope. 

Recent massive earthquakes around the world, in particular along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” remind us at ECCU of the possibility of a significant quake in Southern California. Wise ministries, businesses, and individuals will respond to this possibility by preparing to meet their initial needs until outside assistance arrives, because, as we have seen in Japan and other disaster areas, help may not come for days or even weeks. 

While many things are beyond our control once a disaster strikes, there is much within our control to prepare for one. To illustrate, here are some ways ECCU is preparing to care for our people and business in the wake of a disaster:

• Appointed a Safety Officer to implement and manage a preparedness program.
• Created a Safety Team to deal with imminent threats to human safety.
• Created an Emergency Response Team that is trained to stand in the gap, rendering first-aid and performing basic rescue techniques until professional responders arrive. 
• Placed personal survival kits under every desk in our building. 
• Maintain bulk emergency supplies on-site, including: food, water, first aid items, rescue tools, blankets, and hygiene items.
• Established close relationships with the Brea Fire Department and AlertOC, our local agency connected to the Department of Homeland Security.   
• Encouraged our staff members to prepare at home.

For these efforts, ECCU was awarded the “Excellence in Preparedness” award in 2007 by the American Red Cross.

In addition to our safety preparedness, we maintain a robust business resiliency plan, designed to ensure our business is up and running with the least amount of interruption. This plan considers every critical system we rely on to manage and protect your financial resources. 

Is your ministry proactively preparing for the possibility of a disaster? There are numerous resources to help you prepare your ministry, some of which are unique to your organizational structure or geographic region(s). Start small and build upon a good foundation. Also, encourage your staff to personally prepare for a disaster at home, beginning with visiting the Make a Plan site and completing an Emergency Financial First-Aid Kit. 

What does your ministry do to prepare? Please share so others can learn from you!

No one likes to think of the words “fraud” and “church” as having anything to do with one another. Most church leaders probably tremble at the mere thought. Others may shrug and say, “That would never happen in my church.” Unfortunately, the church is not exempt from fraud.

Join Vonna Laue, CPA and partner with Capin Crouse, LLP and John Van Drunen, ECFA vice president and legal counsel, for a 60-minute webinar as they discuss Reducing Fraud in the Church. They will provide important proactive steps your church can take to prevent fraud.

What steps are you taking to prevent fraud in your church?

The unemployment rate fell to a two-year low of 8.8 percent in March and companies added workers at the fastest two-month pace since before the recession began according to the Associated Press.

Stats like this don’t mean much on their own. My goal today is to help put them in context and begin to help your ministry better understand the general economic conditions that ultimately have a very real impact on the finances of each and every church.

You already know that we’ve recently lived through the most significant economic downturn since the great depression. We won’t get into all the possible causes here, but what we will do is explore where we are today and some of the signs we are looking for to help determine where we go from here.

The goal of this economic update is to share some of the latest data on various economic indicators and my interpretation of that data. It’s actually more interesting and relevant than I just made it sound…

2011 started out with a national unemployment rate over 9%, University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Index stood at 74.5, housing starts, which topped out at an annualized rate of over 2,300,000 in 2006, have been bouncing around the 600,000 mark for several months, and sales of existing homes continue to be slower than hoped.

As of the end of March, unemployment was down to 8.8%, new-car sales were up, and there were some encouraging signs on business capital spending as well as banks showing a greater willingness to extend new credit. However, housing starts fell below 500,000 and consumer sentiment had an unexpected drop to 67.5 in March, suggesting consumers are worried, a concern that is likely fueled, at least in part, by the recent dramatic rise in gas prices. 

While some progress has been made on unemployment and retail sales, shaky consumer confidence and a real estate market that simply won’t pick up continue to weigh on the economy and its ability to grasp on to meaningful recovery. Along with the general lack of direction across indicators, the recent spike in energy prices has created additional concern and real pain for the individual consumer.

The new normal is conservation and change. The individuals and institutions that understand and embrace this will be best prepared for recovery when it does fully take hold.

So what do all these numbers, stats, and trends mean for you and your ministry? For more on that, check out my post today at ChurchThought.com for some implications and suggestions.

Sites and articles consulted for this report:

Value Line

Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers

NYDailyNews.com

Bureau of Labor Statistics

The best way to cure an illness is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Maintaining your ministry’s good financial health is the first step in preventing a “church financial heart attack.”

On Thursday, April 14, 2011, ECCU Ministry Development Officer David Lee will present a free webinar titled Church Financial Health: A Lender’s Perspective. We asked David to tell us more.

MBG: What can attendees expect to take away from this webinar?

Lee: The webinar is intended to equip leaders in the church to better understand some of the key metrics banks look at to determine their financial health. And if your church has a loan with a balloon payment coming due soon, it is critical that you understand how lenders are looking at your numbers.

MBG: What does a financially healthy church look like?

Lee: There are some general financial principles that all churches need to consider, like liquidity and key performance ratios; and yet we all recognize that not all churches look the same. I will provide some key metrics that churches can use as a goal.

How has your ministry assessed its financial health?