ECCU Blog

Budgeting is often seen as a necessary evil. It should never be. One big lesson from the Great Recession is that bad budgeting can lead your ministry to the brink of failure.

Conversely, the process of building a good budget is essential for ministry success. Without a good budget to guide the use of limited financial resources, too many “good” opportunities can distract you from your ministry’s mission.

Here are three key principles that can help you budget better: 

1. Align your budget to your mission and vision. Your ministry’s strategy should clearly outline key objectives and outcomes you intend to accomplish in the next year. With this clear strategy, you can invest your resources to accomplish these objectives and outcomes.
2. Good budgeting requires extensive collaboration. Putting a budget together is not just for the finance team or senior leadership. It requires that leaders grapple together with how to achieve their ministry’s key objectives and outcomes. This will often require some give and take and may even prompt revision of the key objectives and outcomes to make them more realistic.
3. Once your budget is approved, monitor it regularly, report to your leaders at least monthly, and hold them accountable. If revenue or expenses have changed significantly, you may need to make adjustments.

Need some budgeting help? One resource we made available to those who attended our recent Budgeting 101 webinar is a budgeting checklist that can help guide you through the budgeting process.

What have been some success factors for your ministry as you’ve gone through the budgeting process?

A good budget can help your ministry plan for and stay focused on its highest priorities. Two new webinar recordings now available from ECCU present practical ideas to help you budget better.

Budgeting 101 is for ministries with annual revenues up to $2 million. It covers:

• Different budget approaches
• The importance of aligning your budget with your mission
• Specific steps for creating, approving, and implementing a budget
• How and why to monitor budgets carefully         

Vonna Laue, audit partner with CapinCrouse LLP, presents withIngrid Robinson, founder/CEO of LenShaw Financial Services, andMark Jones, ECCU vice president and senior banking consultant.

Advanced Budgeting, for ministries with annual revenues of more than $2 million, goes beyond the principles of basic budgeting to examine the greater complexities of budgeting for larger ministries. It covers:

• Why and how to align money and mission
• The importance of accurately projecting revenue and how to do it
• How to use your budget to stay on mission

Arthur Wilson, CFO of The Park Ministries (Charlotte,North Carolina), presents with Billy Burnett, executive vice president and CFO with Joni andFriendsInternationalDisabilityCenter, andMark Jones, ECCU vice president and senior banking consultant.

These webinar recordings are free. To watch them, follow this link.

Our friend Paul Clark, executive pastor at Fairhaven Church in Ohio, blogged recently about what makes up a healthy church. One metric he lists in 13 Measures of a Healthy Church is, “Leaders are being developed and placed in ministry roles.” Another is, “Our budgetary needs are being met.”

That one’s timely since you can still sign up for ECCU’s Advanced Budgeting webinar. It’s an hour long. It’s free. It’s tomorrow, August 23, at 10:00 a.m. (PT). Check out the details here.

Have you identified ways to measure the health of your ministry?

If you’d like to do a better job of budgeting for your ministry, there’s still time to register for the budgeting webinars being offered by ECCU. Here are the details:

Budgeting 101, for ministries with annual revenues up to $2 million, will be presented on August 16, 2012. It will cover:

• Different budget approaches
• The importance of aligning your budget with your mission
• Specific steps for creating, approving, and implementing a budget
•  How and why to monitor budgets carefully

Vonna Laue, audit partner with CapinCrouse LLP, will present with Ingrid Robinson, founder/CEO of LenShaw Financial Services, and Mark Jones, ECCU vice president and senior banking consultant.

Advanced Budgeting, for ministries with annual revenues of more than $2 million, will be presented on August 23, 2012. It will cover:

• The importance of accurately projecting revenue and how to do it
• Why and how to align money and mission
• How to use your budget to stay on mission

Arthur Wilson, CFO of The Park Ministries (Charlotte, North Carolina), will present with Billy Burnett, executive vice president/CFO with Joni and Friends International Disability Center, and Mark Jones, ECCU vice president and senior banking consultant.

These webinars are free. Follow this link for more information and to register.

As a ministry grows, its budget becomes more complex. The process for building that budget must change to reflect the increased complexity. Presenters for the upcoming ECCU webinar Advanced Budgeting have proven track records building and managing budgets for larger ministries.

Under Billy Burnett’s leadership as executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO), Joni and Friends International Disability Center has been ranked in the top six percent of fiscally managed nonprofits in the country. His passion for fiscal responsibility is matched by his passion for ministry, which has taken him around the globe, including Ghana, West Africa, where he oversaw staffing of a center to restore wheelchairs to meet the mobility needs of families affected by disabilities.

Before becoming CFO at The Park Ministries in Charlotte, North Carolina, 10 years ago, Arthur Wilson worked 15 years with the Internal Revenue Service in the areas of employee plans, exempt organizations, and 501(c)(3) compliance. Besides managing a substantial budget at The Park today, he is passionate about helping the body of Christ destroy the demon of debt. Arthur travels across the country helping people eliminate debt and increase their lifestyle of giving. He also consults with smaller congregations regarding 501(c)(3) compliance..

And Mark Jones, a vice president and senior banking consultant with ECCU, has worked in banking for over 25 years and specializes in helping nonprofits manage their finances. He has taught and written extensively on nonprofit financial management and banking. Mark is a Certified Treasury Professional, Accredited ACH Professional, has served on the governing board of his church, and now works as their finance director.

You can benefit from the expertise of these three ministry financial professionals by attending the Advanced Budgeting webinar at 10:00 a.m. (PT) on August 23, 2012.

This free webinar is for ministries with annual revenues of more than $2 million. You can follow this link to learn more and register.