Balancing the Church Budget – More Cost Saving Tips December 5, 2008
Posted by Gordon in Church Stuff.Tags: Christian blog, Church budget, Baptist blog, church finances, Baptit blogger, Church budgeting
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A key part of setting the 09 budget began many months ago when we strategised what our telecommunications and internet strategy would be. The market has got plenty of options now and if you shop around and change to the right systems you can increase your communications capacity and still save lots of money.
Here’s how we brought about savings to free up money for better things:
- We changed our telephone system to Talkswitch. Now we save lots of time by not having to answer our phones all the time [we had a Commander system before that rang at every station]. We now have a little black box [computer] that greets and sorts all incoming calls.
- We shopped around for a much better price on our phone line and calls initially.
- After making savings that way we then switched over to VOIP, and our Talkswitch system uses VOIP. We found the best VOIP provider price wise, and made sure they work well with Talkswitch.
- We changed over to a WordPress website, and we don’t have to pay expensive web hosting and maintenance fees, or own software.
- We made the transition to a paperless church by using www.constantcontact.com for our weekly e-bulletin.
- We now have reduced costs on photocopying and paper and we save many hours of labour which frees up time for more people focussed activities.
- We set up a tax-deductible building fund and now we attract more donations to our future building projects funds.
- We challenge ministries that have income generating capabilities to self-fund. A number of key ministries that were previsouly a drain on our budget now add to the bottom line.
- We’ve tried to eliminate the notion that as a ministry you ‘expect’ fudning from the chruch budget each year, and introduced the concept of thinking outside the box to see if funding can be attracted through alternative means [our runners and walkers club is funded through sponsorship and advertising from local businesses].
- We have paid our debt of more quickly than we needed to saving on interest payments. We should be totally debt free in August. A few churches around us service debts of a couple of million! No thank you!
- Over to you. This is a collective wisdom blog so what are your tips?
Something I’ve always thought would be a natural outcome for large buildings in Brissy would be solar power. A large building like a church hall for example could host more than enough solar panels to supply electrical needs to a church (let’s face it, the electricity gets a hitout for a couple hours most nights, and one full on day per week). The rest of the day it is generating electricity for the grid, and the QLD government will pay you for it.
Yes, there is a financial impact for the initial layout, although the rebates are getting attractive, but a church like yours which is almost debt free should be able to afford it, and I am sure you’ll find the return on investment could be quite attractive. Add in a storage battery and perhaps you’ll have a zero $ power bill?
Oh, and here’s another one from my part of the universe. laser printers. hate ‘em. Devil’s work!
You’ve got a photocopier, and it sounds like it’s starting to feel unloved with an otherwise paperless church. Chuck the ‘orrible lasers and use the copier as the printer. And if possible the ONLY printer in the place (encourage those with offices to get up and walk when they really need to print something … and sensitivity can be maintained by using pin numbers on all I know of).
Likewise with the fax machine, however in this case, the copier can translate incoming faxes to an email (unless TalkSwitch does that for you).
1 ream of paper = 6% of a tree and 5.4kg CO2 in the atmosphere, and 167 litres of water! Don’t even get me started on the toner, toner waste and particulates (a laser printer in the house is equivalent to a pack a day smoker).
A copier isn’t perfect, but a single copier is far better for the environment, and far far cheaper than a laser printer … or several. Do some sums. How many pages did you print on a laser printer last year? How much did the toner cost? How much would that cost if done on the copier? And can you get a better copier cost deal? Talk to your public servant parishoners about the deals they get!
Good advice! We have upgraded to a Toshiba networked photocopier and now the laser printer occupies benchtop space.
The Toshiba allows you to double side print, plus all computers have a code whcih needs to be inputted before printing. This cuts down on staff printing cos they think before they print. It also cuts down on randoms using the photocopier for all and sundry [toomany people have a church key].
I will look into the solar panel pricing, I have been aware of the benefit as we have some big roofspace. We also have a veggy patch now! – run by an enthuisiastic Boys Brigade leader as part of their education. A local lawn maintenance guy dumps his grass clippings for us to compost.
Our electrical needs are pretty much 6 days a week, Saturday being the only day that the building is not utilised by a lot of people. Renting out space at super low rates for community groups ensures almost total usage of the building.
The recent storms have given us lots of capacity for mulch on our gardens, saving on water and ries to the dump to dispose of trees.
[...] (a Baptist Union pastor I believe) has some helpful tips for saving on your church budget here, here, and here. (Just don’t switch to [...]