Winning With Money vs. Generic Financial Wellness Programs: What’s Actually Different
If you’re weighing a financial education program for your church or organization, you’ve probably noticed that most of the options look similar on paper. Budgeting, debt, saving, planning for the future. So the real question is what actually separates a faith-based curriculum like Prospera’s Winning With Money from a generic financial wellness program. This isn’t […]
GivingTuesday for Churches: How to Prepare Your Finances and Reporting
Most GivingTuesday advice for churches is about marketing: the email sequence, the social posts, the campaign theme. That matters, but it leaves out the part that determines whether the campaign is easy or painful for your finance team afterward. When the gifts start arriving, someone has to record them correctly, reconcile them to the bank, […]
Church Year-End Giving Statements: A Compliance Checklist for Leadership
Every January, church offices field the same wave of messages: “Can I get my giving statement?” “This total looks wrong.” “You’re missing my December check.” Most of those problems trace back to the same cause. The giving records were never reconciled to the books during the year, and nobody confirmed what the statement needs to […]
Preparing Your Church for a Financial Audit: A Practical Checklist
The word “audit” makes most church leaders tense up, usually because it sounds like something went wrong. In most cases, nothing did. Churches get audited or reviewed because a lender requires it, a denomination or governing body asks for it, the board wants independent assurance, or a grant or major donor expects it. And a […]
Multi-Campus Church Finance: What Changes When You Add a Second Location
Adding a second campus is one of the biggest growth milestones a church can reach, and one of the most financially disruptive. Systems that worked well for a single location, such as one bank account, one budget, and one person who knew where everything was, tend to strain quickly once a second site is involved. […]
What Happens During a Church Bookkeeping Cleanup? A Behind-the-Scenes Look
If your church’s books have fallen behind – months of unreconciled transactions, a treasurer transition that left gaps, or records that were never quite set up correctly in the first place – the idea of a “Church Bookkeeping cleanup” can feel intimidating, almost like admitting something went wrong. It didn’t. This happens constantly, for reasons […]
Church Financial Red Flags: Warning Signs Your Books Need Attention
Financial problems in a church rarely show up all at once. They build quietly – a report that’s a little late, a reconciliation that gets skipped “just this once,” a question nobody quite answers – until enough of them stack up that leadership is dealing with a real problem instead of a minor one. The […]
Capital Campaign Financial Planning: What to Model Before You Launch
A capital campaign fails financially far more often from a modeling gap than a fundraising gap. Churches are usually good at rallying a congregation around a vision – a new building, an expansion, a renovation. Where things go wrong is in the financial planning that should happen before the campaign launches: what it actually costs […]
Should Your Church Have a Finance Committee? Roles and Responsibilities
A lot of churches operate on an informal version of financial oversight, the pastor signs off on big purchases, the treasurer handles the rest, and the board glances at a report once a quarter. That can work for a while. But as a church grows, that informal arrangement tends to break down at exactly the […]
Church Payroll Taxes Explained: What’s Withheld and What’s Not
If you’ve already read our overview on whether churches pay payroll taxes, you know the short answer is “it depends on the tax and the employee.” This post is the detailed version – the specific tax types, actual rates, and exactly who’s responsible for remitting what, broken down by employee type. The Full Breakdown, by […]
