PRIORITY RESOURCE PLANNING
(or Purposeful Budgeting)


You know your church's purpose and have identified the vision toward fulfilling that purpose. Have you now re-allocated your church resources to align with the purpose and vision? It is unlikely that the vision can be fully realized without this realignment of resources.

The "Priority Resource Planning" tool is designed to analyze present use of resources and then help make purposeful budget plans. This tool has four different screens: A DATA entry screen, a budget ANALYSIS screen (Table 1), a budget PLANNING screen (Table 2), and a five year financial PROJECTION screen (Table 3). These screens can be used individually and independent of one another, but are designed also to be used interactively with one another in three steps:

  • Step 1 - Begin with the Data Entry screen. This screen provides a number of fields in eight categories including four categories related to the purposes of the church, two functional categories for staff and facilities, and two additional or 'Other' categories to be used as optional categories. Enter data from your current church budget. Even though your budget will likely have different categories, explanations will be provided to help know in which categories to enter items from your budget. Once data is enter in this screen it can be automatically transferred from the Data Entry screen to the Table 1 screen in which it can be analyzed.

  • Step 2 - The Budget Analysis screen (Table 1). Your current budget can be automatically transferred from the Data Entry screen or entered directly in this screen, also referred to as Table 1. When the 'Calculate' button is clicked the per capita giving of the congregation will be figured as will the percentage of each budget category to the whole budget. Recommended percentages are suggested for each category. This allows you to determine how the budget compares to recommended allocations. Figures from this screen can also be automatically entered into the third screen for Budget Planning (Table 2).

  • Step 3 - Budget Planning screen (Table 2). Calculations from screen 2 (Table 1) can be automatically transferred from the Budget Analysis screen (Table 1) or entered directly in this third screen. If transferred from Table 1, calculated percentages from your current budget will be shown for the purpose of comparison. In this screen average worship attendance and per capita giving will be used to determine income for the budget to be allocated to the various budget categories. Then desired percentages can be entered for each category based on the priority as it relates to the purpose and vision of the church. Also in this screen the default categories can be changed as desired to make the planned budget more applicable to your situation. Attendance, per capita giving, and percentages for each category will be used to 'plan' a budget based on priorities rather than on the spending of previous years. This screen allows experimentation with attendance, per capita giving, and percentage allocations of budget categories to explore possibilities for the future use of your church resources.

  • Five Year Financial Projections - Table 3. This screen is a tool for calculating projections over the next five years. It helps answer questions such as:

    • If our attendance increases over the next 5 years the same as it has the past five, what will our attendance be at that point?

    • If attendance and per capita giving over the next 5 years increase at a slightly greater rate than the past five, what will both figures look like?


    These and other questions can be asked and answered by experimenting with attendance figures, per capita giving figures, and annual percentage increases in both attendance and per capita giving.





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