70% of Regular Giving is by Gift Aid
“We will face the crunch together”, was the headline last month over a report that, in a letter to parish priests Chief Executive, Steven Webb, had encouraged parishes and congregations to maintain their giving levels as far as possible.
Only recently Church Statistics 2006/7, the annual publication from the Church of England, appeared with useful information about numbers in ministry, church attendance and parish finances. An accompanying press release ensured there was press coverage. Thus we learned that in 2006 the direct giving to parishes averaged £5.38 per week per electoral roll member. Within this was Gift Aid amounting to £8.26 per week per subscriber, before tax-recovery.
Given the letter from our Chief Executive and this latest information from the Church of England, we turn this month to the matter of finances. All the information depends on the single sheet summary returns made by parish treasurers. Around 80% of these are returned in any year, both nationally and locally, and so estimates are made for the missing 20%. Many dioceses pass these returns on directly to the National Church for processing. In this diocese we have processed the forms in-house since 1998 which gives many advantages, not least the ability to include forms which arrive several years late! Another advantage is that we can compare just the totals for parishes submitting forms two years running. This we believe may give a more reliable estimate of change than that obtained by comparing two totals which both contain estimates for missing data. Data is also processed earlier so we can therefore already report on 2007.
Church Statistics 2006/7 shows that between 1998 and 2006 the regular income of PCCs rose by 45% whilst expenditure increased by 49%. In 2006, in this diocese, we estimate the regular income of PCCs, including the net proceeds of fund raising and trading to have been £24,275,000, an increase of 48% on 1998. Likewise regular expenditure, which includes Parish Share, we estimate to have been £21,792,000, an increase of 47% on 1998. Both these figures compare well with the national average.
A crucial contribution to PCC income is tax-efficient giving (Gift Aid) where there has been a very significant improvement since 1998. The number of members now using Gift Aid is around 18,000 which is a 35% increase on 1998. However, this represents just 45% of our membership compared with an average of 52% for the dioceses in the Eastern Region so there could be room for further improvement. In 2007 the amount received by PCCs for general purposes through Gift Aid totalled an impressive £8.9 million, with the tax recovered contributing a further £2.7 million. Crucially, this made up 70% of all the regular giving to PCCs, and was equivalent to an average of £12.40 per week per subscriber. This helps explain why the Chief Executive’s encouragement to parishes and congregations to maintain their giving levels as far as possible is so important.
Parishes interested in an analysis of how they are progressing and how they compare with these averages may contact the Parish Finance Office (01245 294430) for more information. The Office can also help with Gift Aid.
Canon Don Cardy
31st October 2008
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