St Mary the Virgin Merton

Diocese of Southwark, Church of England

St Mary’s Merton Finances:
Update from the Treasurer
 

For the half year to the end of June, we recorded a small surplus of £1,257. This is better than the budget result was, mainly thanks to a small number of increased & new donors to St Mary’s under the planned giving scheme. About 9 members of planned giving were responsible for our success so far this year in increasing the planned giving numbers. We also benefited from increased investment income, steady income from the hall and £500 from letting out the Church for filming. The result was all the better because we have not had the usual Summer Fair, which normally brings us in about £2,000, and instead we had the excellent party for Tom’s farewell, which cost us £1,053 after income from the event. We also collected £1,742 for Tom’s retirement gift from us all which we handed to him on the day.

The overall effect is that we shall probably just about break even for the year but the interregnum is, paradoxically, helping us this year and our ‘quota’ to the Diocese will rise again next year (2008). All this means we need to maintain our efforts to increase our regular income if we are to remain solvent on a year by year basis.

Therefore, for those of you who have not so far increased your planned giving efforts this year, I would like to encourage you to look at this again. We shall soon be preparing for 2008 – when, as noted above, costs are likely to rise, by about a further £6,000 per annum or so due to a continuing increase in obligations to the Diocese to help offset the cost of Clergy pensions. Generally we want to be able to welcome our new Vicar without financial worries to slow down the new start, so it would be great if we could get more support on promised offerings. As always Andrew Mills, the Churchwardens or myself will be happy to answer your questions about how to start or increase your giving.

Just to summarise St Mary’s finances, the facts are set out below. We presently have 221 members of our congregation who come at least once a month so I have set out the cost per Parishioner as well as the total costs per week based on this year’s budget.

Income from sources other than giving
Parish Hall surplus £169
Investment income £298
Weddings, funerals etc £86

Net cost of church + clergy                      £2,310                                                        £10.45

To give an idea of where we are, here is an analysis of current giving patterns from the Planned Giving scheme. Note that figures are per donor, which may include husband and wife as one donor.
 

  The Bible teaches us to give proportionately to support the church, and the Church of England suggests 5% of disposable income as the target. St Mary’s giving as a % of potential based on the income surveys is below the average for the Diocese of Southwark.
So we hope that those who are able will be willing to increase their giving to at least cover their share of the costs going forward.

The government helps us by allowing us as a charity to claim Gift Aid in respect of donations from taxpayers, which at present means that we can increase any gift aided donation by 28%, so the £10.45 per parishioner per week we need falls to £8.16 if gift aid can be claimed back by us. From next April however the amount of Gift Aid we can claim will fall to 25% of the gift aided donation. But even so, the bottom line is that with gift aided donations of about £8 per parishioner per week, we can fund expenditure of about £13 per parishioner per week.

St Mary's also has an outward giving programme which we are funding by special events like the Sponsored Walk, Barn Dance and Quiz night coming up this autumn, please support this outward giving as well and come along to some of these events. To the extent that we generate a surplus in the Church, we aim to top up this outward giving in the future as we have in the past. So far this year, not much has been raised for outward giving, so your increased giving this year will also make it more likely we can continue to support our chosen charities. Our long term goal would be to achieve a level of regular (planned) income such that we could meet all the costs of running the church and be able to make outward donations to missions and charities to sit alongside our (required!) support of other less fortunate parts of the diocese through our diocesan quota.

Mark Hackforth-Jones (markhackforthjones@btinternet.com)
 

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