Originally posted by: DealMonkey
I Googled, looking for a study showing how much churches, on average, spend on charity and other things.
How Churches Spend Money
John C. LaRue, Jr.
After completing the long process of preparing an annual church budget, you may wonder how your congregation compares to others. Here's one way. YOUR CHURCH has just completed a major study on church budgets, including such topics as indebtedness, insurance, property values, and pastor salaries. This report, based on that study, is the first of a series on churches and money.
According to the study, staff compensation accounts for more than 40 percent of an average church's budget. Large churches with annual budgets of more than $500,000 appropriate an average of 40 percent of their budget to staff pay. This is slightly less than the typical 46 percent that's allocated by smaller churches with annual budgets of less than $500,000.
Building Costs
Keeping a church facility going grabs the second largest piece of the budget pie; about $2 of every $10. Churches, large and small, dedicate about the same percentage of their budgets to paying off, maintaining, and protecting their property.
Link
It appears running a church exhausts about 60% of an average church's budget, leaving only 40% for charity, but who knows how much of that is actually spent on charitable efforts? Certainly lends credence to the argument that meeting in a grassy field instead of an ostentatious edifice would go a long way towards sending more of the church's money to places where it does the most good.
Another study by the same site, looked at nearly 1,200 churches and how they spend their money. This gets really interesting.
Our Study
Those figures are high compared to what we learned from the study YOUR CHURCH recently completed on churches and their budgets. A total of 1,184 surveys were mailed, with a response rate of 23 percent. A more detailed analysis of those findings will be presented in a series of Special Reports, beginning in this issue ("How Churches Spend Money"). But, briefly, the study shows that the average-size budget of the churches surveyed is $292,790. Here's how the pie is divided:
43 percent for staff compensation
20 percent for facilities (rent, mortgage, utilities, upkeep)
16 percent for missions
9 percent for church programs
6 percent for administration and supplies
3 percent for denominational fees
3 percent other.
Link
I'd say that 16% for "missions" is where the church is spending money that benefits those who need it most. You might argue that the 9% for church programs might help people too, depending on what programs they're referring to.
But at best, you have 16%-25% of an average church's budget going towards helping people. And you have to wonder how many of their "missions" are truthfully just evangelical missions to proselytize and not truly charitable missions where they're helping the less fortunate.
Kinda pathetic if you ask me. It appears something on the order of 75%+ of a church's budget goes to simply maintaining the church itself. Frankly, that money isn't helping anyone, except the people who mistakenly worship the building itself and not their god.
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