Church Radically Changes Budgeting Process - Evangelical Covenant Church

Great article about the way Montecito Covenant Church — MoCo — developed their budgeting process. One concept I learned about was their creating a two-level budget. Check this out “What we elected to do is create a two-level budget with ‘base’ and ‘provisional’ components,” says Ludwick. “The base amount is a conservative plan with modest growth over the prior year's expenditures,” Ludwick says. This year, the base amount totals $651,574, a 3.7-percent increase over the previous budget. “The provisional component contains expense items—we prefer to call these ‘investments’—that are pre-approved by the congregation based on certain income targets being met by mid-year,” Ludwick says. He believes the two-level budget provides flexibility as well as inspiration. “In this way the congregation understands the dreams and objectives of the pastoral and council team at the outset, and we challenge ourselves to support those higher goals,” Ludwick says. “However, if there are changes in the economic realities of our congregation—as there well may be this year—then the base budget is all we accomplish, and we are not feeling any crisis about this.” Seems like a great idea that could be very inspiring and encouraging to the congregation.