It's wise to review giving and spending at least once a year, both as individuals and as churches. For a church, this can often seem like a daunting task, particularly for those who find talking about money difficult. Nevertheless, annual stewardship season or 'Giving Review' is essential for a healthy church, whether as part of our annual diocesan Generosity Week or at some other time in the church calendar.
Giving Review Guide
To support parishes, we have created a step by step 'Giving Review Guide' to help navigate the process. It also contains key messages to communicate, up to date findings about the relationship between giving and deprivation and research on the culture of Anglican giving.
Giving Profile Tool
In the Giving Review Guide we explain the importance of understanding existing giving levels and trends before undertaking a Giving Review. This can help quantify results and measure success. Our Giving Profile Tool has been developed to help with this analysis. It can show areas of vulnerability, for example if a large percentage of giving comes from a small percentage of givers, inform areas of opportunity and reveal compelling data about the best method of giving by value.
Communicating a Giving Review
For those familiar with Canva, we have developed a suite of templates that can help produce a bespoke booklet or flyer to effectively communicate the importance and need for regular generous giving. The templates are fully editable and customisable and the Generous Generous Giving Team are always available to provide hands on support where needed.
Download Giving booklet template (portrait)
Download Giving booklet template (landscape)
Download Giving flyer (wider community)
Giving Review Response Form
We also recommend communicating a clear end date once a Giving Review has been presented. To encourage responses we suggest inviting people to return a personal response form such as the example below which can also be customised in Canva.
Download Giving Review Response Form
Additional Resources
Further resources are available from both the national church and other dioceses to help parishes build up to a Giving Review or work through a detailed giving review programme.
A comprehensive programme developed by the Diocese of Liverpool, this is best suited to medium/large churches but contains sections and templates relevant to all.
Developed by the Church of England, this giving programme is particularly desigend for smaller or rural/village churches.
This programme is suitable for all churches and encourages each parish to discern its vision and future plans, as the focus for an increase in planned giving.