Giving rate ‘between ourselves and God’
Recently we've been looking at the proportion of our after-tax income which we give to support the work of the church. Some of this helps to pay the Parish Share which provides for our parish clergy and their training and other activities undertaken in the diocese; it also helps to meet the running costs of the parish such as heating, lighting and insuring the church building. Naturally most parishes have income from other sources such as fund-raising and investments; and sometimes there is a special project to which members and the community will respond with one-off donations. However, regular giving is our most important source of income and forms over 60% of the total (see pie chart).
Last month we found that all our giving averaged about 3% of our personal income after tax.
In making this estimate we included one-off giving and all the tax recovered on Gift Aided income. Then we compared this with an estimated income of church members after tax, which in the 2006/7 tax year averaged £16,500.
General Synod's challenge for church members is to give proportionally to their income; an initial benchmark is 5% of personal income after tax. Given this yardstick it seems appropriate to apply this only to our regular giving and to exclude from the calculation any special one-off donations or tax recovered - if we use Gift Aid.
With these exclusions regular giving in 2007 totalled £13.5m which, taking our previous 39,180 members with an average personal income after tax of £16,500, results in a giving rate of 2.1%. This contrasts with the previous all inclusive rate of 3.0%.
If we consider only regular Gift Aided tax-efficient contributions, these totalled £9.4m from 17,320 donors who, with an estimated average personal income of £21,220 after tax, had a giving rate of 2.6%.
The amount which we give to our church is between ourselves and God: do we give ourselves "First to the Lord"? Next month we'll see how a survey in 2002/3 helped us understand more about this.
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