Churches Left Out of Charitable Giving Increase in 2010

While total estimated charitable giving edged up by 3.8% compared to 2009, gifts to churches and religious organizations actually declined when adjusted for inflation.  Philanthropy toward other human services groups, like those which sought funds for the Haiti earthquake disaster, fell even more, registering a 1.5% decline when adjusted for inflation.

The latest information on charitable giving is out, courtesy of the Giving USA Foundation.   Their Giving USA 2011: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2010, is an invaluable tool for those interested in charitable giving, including churches and religious institutions.

Here are the charitable giving recipients who benefited from the rise in giving (subtract approximately 1.6% to adjust for inflation):

• Educational institutions up by 5.2%
• Foundations up by 1.9%
• Health research and organizations up by 1.3%
• Public-society benefit causes up by 6.2%
• The arts and humanities up by 5.7%
• International affairs up by 15.3%

Here are the losers in charitable giving in 2010:

• Religious groups and organizations at 0.8% (adjusted for inflation -0.8%)
• Human services at 0.1% (adjusted for inflation -1.5%)
• Environmental and animal causes at 0.7% (adjusted for inflation -0.9%)

Trends in how people give are also in flux.  While charitable giving as a whole was up 3.8%, individual giving was up by only 2.7%, meaning that the 10.6% rise in corporate giving raised the overall average in giving significantly.  But, giving by foundations is actually down 0.2%, which may reflect a poor return on endowments, or a drop in giving because many foundations would come under the categories of human services, environmental and animal causes, or religion.

What does this mean for small churches in particular?  While overall religious institutions claim the largest piece of the charitable giving pie, at 35% of total giving, contributions to religious groups are not rebounding at the same rate as education, the arts, and international affairs giving.  Based on the demographic that church memberships tend to be older than the population as a whole, the failure of religious giving to recover might reflect the continuing poor returns on investments held by many older adults.

But, I believe that the continuing decline of religious institutions, churches in particular, also means that there are fewer people to give to support churches and their ministries.  To address this problem, and to qualify for gifts from foundations and even government programs, many churches have formed not-for-profit corporations under which they fund and run their programs designed to benefit the common good.  Some churches will have ideological difficulties in making that leap, but other churches which have successfully done so can serve as models.

The good news for churches in all of this is that charitable bequests are up 18.8%.  Your church might consider doing what ours has just done — establish an endowment fund and encourage your members to leave a bequest to the church in their will.  You will need to consult estate-planning professionals to help your church craft a program that will ensure benefactors that their money will be handled carefully to ensure the long-term viability of the congregation they love.  But, with careful planning, churches can take advantage of this trend in charitable giving.

You can view and download a free copy of this giving report at http://www.givingusareports.org/free.php.

Credit:  Giving USA Foundation (2011). Giving USA 2011: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2010. Retrieved from http://www.givingusareports.org/free.php.

Think Churches Can Feed America’s Poor?

Churches are an important resource in caring for America’s poor, but the job is too big for churches alone. With all the talk about healthcare and the nation’s deficit, I’ve seen more  than one blog suggest that churches take over the responsibility for caring for the nation’s poor.  While that is a noble goal, moving all government “safety net” programs to churches is a numerical impossibility. Let’s just take one example — the food stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  The Cato Institute, a conservative think-tank, puts the food stamp program budget at about $75-billion dollars.  But, let’s use a more conservative estimate from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  They estimate that 36-million Americans (1-in-8) receive what most of us call food stamps, or nutrition assistance.  On average, each participant receives $133 per month, or about $1,596 per year. Okay, let’s do the math on those numbers: $1,596 x 36,000,000 = $57,426,000,000 or about $57.5 billion per year.  That’s less than Cato estimates, but will serve our purposes just fine. The total number of congregations in America is generally estimated between 350,00 to 400,000.  Let’s use  the higher guesstimate of 400,000 churches of all denominations in the United States.  The median size of these congregations is 90 in attendance each Sunday. Here’s where the numbers tell the story:  For churches to take over the feeding of America’s poor, each church in America would have to feed 90 people each.  That means that the average church would take on as many poor people as it currently has in attendance! But, even more difficult is the financial picture.  If each church allocated $133 per month to feed each of the 90 people, the total yearly cost would be $143,640 per church per year.  Most churches with 90 in attendance don’t have a total budget of $150K per year, much less a benevolence budget of that amount. Of course, this is only one program.  The SNAP program is run through the US Department of Agriculture, but other programs

Sermon for Sep 30, 2007

I have just posted my sermon, Can You Hear Me Now?, for Sep 30, 2007, to my sermon blog.  This is my reflection on the lectionary reading, Luke 16:19-31, the story of the rich man and Lazarus.  Have a great day tomorrow!