In my last post related to Creating a Master Finance Document, I wrote about Establishing a Reporting System to the church. [read that post]

In today’s post, I’m writing about the next step – Setting up a process whereby church members can ask questions.

 

I mean, it’s all fine and dandy to report to the church but effectiveness is dampened if you don’t provide a vehicle for your members to ask questions.

Before we talk about setting this up, you should determine the kind of questions you’ll provide answers to and which ones you will not. You’ll get some questions directly related to the financial reports you publish – that’s good. You’ll get some “how do you do so and so” related to financial processes – that’s good. But, inevitably you’ll get a question that is sensitive or confidential in nature. (Think salaries).

First, being transparent doesn’t mean everything is available to everyone. (An open set of books where all church members serve as “Auditors or Board Members”, if you will). There is something known as duty of privacy to others. At the end of the day, The Pastor and Staff along with Oversight Boards are stewarding the finances of the church, not the church members.

Another way to look at it is this – As I mentioned in my reporting post, I’m an advocate of reporting to the church in a high-level, summarized format – a few line items. What I’m not a proponent of is sharing the transactional details beneath line items.

Secondly, the goal of financial transparency beyond putting safeguards in place and communicating financial outcomes vs. expectations is this – your church SHOULD KNOW what the safeguards are and how/when financial reports are issued. Lastly in this is, they need to know how their questions can be answered in regards to any of these areas.

Just be ready for the request for sensitive information.

Here’s the DEAL:
In my experience, requests of this nature stem from 3 lines of thinking. A Personal Hurt. A Personal Preference or a Perceived Right. (Should’ve been a preacher…3 points starting with same letter). You’ll need to be ready to address all 3. The bottom line – No one needs to know salaries by person anymore than they need to know what other people give.

Again, that’s why it’s important that people know and understand upfront how Salaries & Benefits are DETERMINED. A simple statement in your Master Finance Document could read “The Pastor, Personnel Team and Elders work together in determining Salaries & Benefits by looking at Compensation Surveys to ensure our compensation ranges are reasonable and equitable”. You can provide more details as to the mechanics if asked.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program…
Create a vehicle for your church to receive answers to their questions as they arise.

Sure, you can have a Q&A before the Annual Budget Meeting, but don’t let that be the only time people can ask questions. Some churches still do a monthly business conference, but these are becoming less and less. Read this post by Thom Rainer as to why.

For all the other times, set up a system where members can email questions to the Finance Team Chair, the Pastor (or XP) or someone on the Finance Staff. Phone calls to the church office that are directed to the appropriate person works well too. Start there, but if necessary or requested, meet with them. More often than not, things can be better explained in person.

Let me leave you with this idea.
There’s a wonderful vehicle to share information with the church and is what I’d call a Stakeholder’s Meeting. (Call it something different if you want to). Stakeholders are those who are investing in your church by serving – your Greeters, Teachers, Ministry Lay Leaders and so on. (Hopefully they are giving as well).

Invite all Stakeholders to a Quarterly Meeting. Have food. (Yeah!) Celebrate and thank them for serving. Recognize a Volunteer of the Quarter even.

Then, go over Ministry Highlights from the past quarter. Share what’s coming down the pike. (Great opportunity to share vision/strategy each quarter).

Then share Financial Results for the quarter and/or year.

Wrap up with a time for feedback. Encourage your “stakeholders” to engage by sharing ideas and asking questions. What this does is provide a voice for those who are investing in your ministry. And, who knows, they may have ideas that are better than yours!

Lastly, consider this. Your Stakeholders are on the front lines so to speak in your church. They’ll be fielding questions long before they get to the Pastor or Staff. A well informed stakeholder is incredibly valuable to your ministry.

A large part of being transparent is creating an environment where questions are encouraged and welcomed.

That’s all for now. In my next post I’ll wrap up the series on Creating a Master Finance Document.