Money

A congregation has to pay its way. Money comes mostly from its people's giving, which follows their satisfaction, and every faith gives in its own way: the plate and the pledge in most churches, dues in a synagogue or a Zen center, the boxes and zakat at a mosque, the golak and the langar sponsors at a gurdwara, the hundi and the rites families book at a Hindu or Jain temple, amulets and lamps at a shrine or a Chinese temple. It goes mostly on staff and the building. This chapter explains every source of income and every cost, the four finance screens, and how to borrow without sinking.

The finance screens

Finances on the top bar opens four tabs. Every figure is read from the congregation's ledger.

• Overview: the balances (cash, endowment, and any campaign fund), warnings, most serious first, and what the 1st of next month will bring, line by line, ending with the cash you'll have afterwards before the week's offerings.
• Monthly: the last five monthly statements and the month so far, by category, with each fund's closing balance and a chart of a year's income against expenses.
• Weekly: the last six Sunday-to-Saturday weeks (whatever the tradition's main day), which add up exactly to the monthly statements.
• Budget: the settings (maintenance budget, endowment drawdown, apportionment share), what's due next against this year and last, each building system's risk with a button to replace it, the staff's cost, and the forms to start a capital campaign and take a loan.

Warnings

The Overview warns you, a month ahead, about:

• an overdraft, or bills on the 1st that would cause one;
• any building system with a 4% or greater chance of failing next month (a stronger warning if the repair would empty the account);
• spending more than came in, three months running;
• unpaid apportionment (whatever the wider body calls what it's owed: an assessment, a union's dues).

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Where money comes from

Giving capacity and engagement

Each adult has a giving capacity: what they could give in a year if fully committed. It averages about $3,500 (roughly a tenth of a typical income, the share many traditions teach: a tithe, a Sikh's dasvandh), less for new visitors. How much of it they actually give depends on engagement, which follows satisfaction: nothing below 0.25, rising in a straight line to full at 0.8.

The offering

Each tradition gives in its own way, and the game calls the gift by its name (the offering, the collection, tithes and offerings, tzedakah, sadaqah, chanda, dana, incense money): a plate passed along the rows (most churches, an Indo-Caribbean mandir, an Arya Samaj, a Vedanta Society's chapel), an offering walked forward (the AME, National Baptist, COGIC, and United Pentecostal churches), boxes by the door or before the altar (a mosque's boxes, a gurdwara's golak before the Guru Granth Sahib, a Hindu or Jain temple's hundi, a shrine's offertory box, a Buddhist temple's dana box; the Witnesses' contribution boxes too), envelopes mailed in (a synagogue's gifts, a Konko church's), or giving kept private (a Latter-day Saint's tithing, a Vietnamese temple's named envelopes, a Sathya Sai center's). At every main service, as the tradition takes it:

• A household that hasn't pledged (or pays no dues) gives about capacity × 0.8 × engagement ÷ 52, give or take 30%; where the tradition doesn't pledge at all, the full capacity × engagement ÷ 52, each week it comes.
• Tithing expected gives 15% more (most Pentecostal and holiness churches, the Latter-day Saints, the Adventists, the Ahmadis); not emphasised, 10% less (most synagogues, most Buddhist and Hindu temples, the shrine and the Chinese temples, as well as many churches).
• A pledging household drops in a few dollars of loose cash.
• Daily services take no offering.
• A visiting household gives $5 to $25 where a plate is passed, half as much again where the offering is walked forward, and nothing where there are only boxes: a visitor to a mosque, a gurdwara, or a Hindu temple gives nothing at the service. Where the boxes are the only way to give, members give a tenth less than into a plate, and an offering walked forward brings 15% more. (A temple or a shrine that keeps open hours takes something at the box from every visit, below.)
• Where it's mailed in or given privately, it comes at the month's start; online givers add 8% a month. See The congregation in its community for income beyond giving.

Summer holidays thin attendance (June by 7%, July and August by 15%), so the offering dips in summer. Pledges and dues keep coming.

Pledges

• Only where the tradition takes pledges (15 of the 80: the Lutherans, the United Methodists, the Episcopalians, the PC(USA), a Reconstructionist synagogue, a Theravada temple, a Jain center, and others; see Faiths and traditions). Every November a pledge drive runs for the next year. A household with a member pledges with a chance of 0.9 × engagement; a household of regulars only, 0.3 × engagement.
• The pledge is about capacity × 0.75 × engagement.
• Pledges are paid monthly from January. Each month's payment is scaled by 0.5 + 0.6 × engagement (at most 1), so unhappy households fall behind. Households that leave stop paying.
• Opening the books (a new game) runs a drive for the current year.

Dues

• The Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox synagogues, the Japanese, Zen, and Tibetan temples, the Ahmadi chapters, the Nation of Islam's mosques, the Indo-Caribbean mandir, Chinmaya Mission's member families, a Shinto shrine's sukeikai, and the Daoist temple assess dues instead (12 traditions). In the November drive each household with a member takes up its assessment, about capacity × 0.7 (give or take 15%; a shrine's sukeikai asks only 0.35, a supporters' association's smaller dues), with the chance it would pledge (0.9 × engagement): the disengaged let their dues lapse and give, if at all, as they come. Regulars who haven't joined pay none.
• Dues are paid monthly, and nearly always: each payment is scaled by 0.85 + 0.3 × engagement (at most 1), so only the most unhappy fall behind. The ledger calls them "Dues".
• A synagogue that sells seats for the High Holy Days charges $150 for each adult in a household with no member that comes on a feast drawing at least twice the usual crowd (Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre, Yom Kippur), in place of their offering. The ledger calls it "Seats for" the day.

Zakat and Ramadan

• In a mosque that collects zakat (the Sunni center and the W. Deen Mohammed masjid), giving at the boxes is 1.8 times as much through Ramadan, by the Islamic calendar's dates, so it moves about eleven days earlier each year.
• In the month Ramadan ends, each household that belongs gives about capacity × 0.3 × engagement (counted as at least half engaged) as zakat. It passes through the mosque's books ("Zakat") and straight out to the needy the same month ("Zakat given to the needy"): it doesn't pay the bills.

Visits, amulets, and lamps

A temple or a shrine that people visit one by one, in its open hours (Worship and the year), takes its money a visit at a time:

• The box. Where the tradition gives at boxes, each visit drops in about $2.
• Amulets (a Shinto shrine, a Chinese folk temple, a Daoist priest's temple): each visit buys about $4 of amulets, talismans, incense, or fortune slips, half as much again on a feast day, once there's an amulet counter to sell them from. A shrine's New Year, thousands strong, is its year's income.
• Lamps (the folk temple, the Daoist priest's temple, the Chinese Buddhist temple): at the lunar New Year, households renew their lamps, $30 a household ($100 at the Chinese Buddhist temple): of member households, 85% of the fully engaged; of regulars', half; fewer the less engaged. The ledger names them in the tradition's words ("Lamps of brightness").

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Rites asked for, and long readings

Many Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Shinto, and Chinese congregations live on rites families ask for and pay for, at the prices the temple lists. Each such rite has its fee and a rate (how many times a year a household asks for it):

• Asking. Each month a household asks for each at its rate, a member household half as often again, a household of regulars three quarters as often, and the more engaged the more often. A rite on a day of the year (the 7-5-3 rite in November) is asked for in the ten days up to it.
• Booking. It's booked at the first time it can be held, within four weeks, between seven in the morning and nine at night: the leader, or a member of staff who performs rites (a pujari, an assistant granthi, a negi, a Daoist priest), free for it; the worship room free, for one held there; and half an hour's journey each way to a home. Put off more than a week, the household is let down (−0.02); not held within four weeks, it goes without.
• Paying. Held, its fee goes to the fees line, in the tradition's words ("Puja fees", "Path offerings", "Prayer offerings"). Where fee rites are kept, they take the place of the flat stipend at each service.
• Long rites, such as the gurdwara's Akhand Path (48 hours of unbroken reading, $501), are kept in shifts (two readers at a time, two hours each). Members of staff take six shifts each, volunteers two; at night, between eleven and six, only one volunteer in four will sit up to read. A shift that goes unfilled breaks the reading off: the fee is given back, and the family is hurt (−0.06). Finished, the bhog gathers the family's friends (+0.01).

The price list rewards a temple with staff who perform rites: a head priest alone can't be at the temple and in three homes on a Saturday. Each tradition's page in Every tradition: services and what they need lists its rites, their fees, and their rates.

Honours and life memberships

• The boli (a Jain center with images, through Paryushana): the honours of the season's rites (twenty of them: waving the lamps, swinging the fourteen dreams, the parents of the Lord at the birth celebration) go to the highest bidders. The wealthiest member households (the top 8%, at least two) bid for each, 1% to 3% of a year's giving capacity, the more engaged the more, and a household that's won one bids less for the next. Winning is an honour (+0.03); losing narrowly, by a tenth or less, stings (−0.02). It's held on Community → Fundraising, and needs four volunteers.
• Life memberships (a Hindu temple's and ISKCON's, $1,001; a Jain center's, $301): each household in the tier pays its fee once, with a chance each month of 0.15 × its engagement; until it has, it doesn't vote.

Capital campaigns

A campaign raises money for one purpose over 3 to 36 months, one at a time (Budget → Capital campaign: choose the purpose, goal, and length).

• Each active household commits with a chance of engagement × the cause's popularity, and gives about capacity × 0.6 × engagement × popularity, spread over the campaign.
• Popularity: expansion 1.0, accessibility 0.9, repairs 0.8, music 0.6.
• Gifts go to the campaign fund. Construction, furnishings, and repairs are paid from that fund first, then from cash.
• A happy congregation of 150 raises about $160,000 over a year for an expansion, and about $45,000 for new instruments (an organ, a piano, a temple's drums).
• Some faiths raise building money their own way too, as fundraisers: a mosque's interest-free building campaign, a Hindu temple's shila campaign, a gurdwara's kar seva fund, a Tibetan center's stupa dinner (The congregation in its community).

The endowment

• It earns about 6% a year on average, varying about 12% either way from year to year.
• Each month, the drawdown you set (0 to 10% a year, 4% by default) moves into cash.
• A member who had attended ten years or more leaves the endowment a bequest a quarter of the time when they die: 2 to 15 times their yearly giving capacity.

Other income

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Where money goes

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Debt

• Loans cost 6.5% a year, over 1 to 30 years, up to $5 million in all. Take one in Budget → Loans. Where the tradition forbids interest (every Muslim tradition but the Nation of Islam), the same form arranges Islamic financing instead: the bank leases or sells at a markup, for 7.5% a year, and the ledger names it so.
• Overdraft costs 12% a year, and most scenarios are lost if it runs deep for months.

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Rules of thumb

• A full-time leader needs about 150 active people to pay for. Below about 75, a bivocational one is the difference between solvency and an overdraft.
• Fund building projects with a campaign first, then a loan, never the overdraft.
• Hire someone to lead the music once you average a surplus of about $2,500 a month: a choir director or organist in a church or a synagogue, an organist at a Shin temple; a cantor, full time, costs about three times as much, and a gurdwara's ragi jatha about twice as much.
• In a crisis month, paying half of what's owed upward (the apportionment, the assessment, the movement's dues, the parent church's offerings) is a reasonable compromise. Paying nothing for long is not.
• A preschool pays for itself and brings the most newcomers of any ministry.
• Small, steady maintenance is far cheaper than repairs.

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