Ministry budgeting is often a simple exercise of doing what one did the year before with the requisite addition or subtraction depending on the economy. This makes sense for fixed costs.
However, when it comes to non fixed costs consider an alternative - goal based budgeting where the budget is based on the goals and plans of the ministry division or team and the results of its prior year's goals. This budgeting strategy sends the most resources to those ministry divisions that get the best results, deliver on their plans and have the greatest vision. It rewards those who deliver on their ministry plans and withholds resources from those who don't.
Goal based budgeting also calls the question on ministry teams or divisions that do not live up to their plans or who have deficient vision or execution. Honest evaluation of results is not a strength of many ministries. Goal based budgeting helps evaluate success since it is based both on future plans as well as on past performance.
Goal based budgeting is a simple strategy to tie funding to vision and performance.
An interesting and true comment on this post:
Matt Steen has left a new comment on your post "Goal based budgeting":
This can be a scary thing for many churches because it involves thinking through why they are doing what they are doing and then asking the question "how are we doing at it?"
This is also a very good thing for churches to start doing because it forces them to think from vision rather than tradition. This is also one of my favorite things to do with our clients.
2 comments:
This can be a scary thing for many churches because it involves thinking through why they are doing what they are doing and then asking the question "how are we doing at it?"
This is also a very good thing for churches to start doing because it forces them to think from vision rather than tradition. This is also one of my favorite things to do with our clients.
We've done this for years and I can't imagine a more effective way of connecting budget dollars to leader-driven ministry.
The elders set the ministry AIMS (achievable, inspiring, measurable, significant) for the coming year, for the church at-large.
Each of our ministry LEAD teams establish ministry AIMS for the year ahead (considering elder AIMS if necessary. By that I mean the elders may want to make specific moves for the disciplling of parents that may affect Children's ministry. That may not. Have direct affect on our Extension ministry, but that work still needs annual AIMS and budget dollars. The LEAD teams gain the input of their supervisor (we call these branch leaders (there are five branch leaders who make up our Managment Team). Then, the LEAD team builds their budget request based on those ministry AIMS. Our Finance Director compiles the budget requests, the MT works through the budget and may make adjustments. When the budget is ready the AIMS and budget goes to the elders.
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