Offering Plates Predict Wellness of Nonprofits

Churches and nonprofit organizations stand to gain or lose one huge chunk of the giving pie in the next few years.

That’s because the nation is undergoing one of the largest inter-generational transfers of wealth in its history.

In a January 2003 article, The Journal of Gift Planning projected that Americans stand to inherit between $41 trillion and $136 trillion from the deceased in the next 50 years.

Nonprofits stand to gain $25 trillion of that pie, The Journal of Gift Planning estimated.

But statistics would suggest our parents gave more than we will.

A survey released Oct. 14 by Empty Tomb Inc. of Champaign, Ill., estimated benevolent giving has been on a steady decline for more than 30 years, falling from 0.66 percent of personal income in 1968 to 0.38 percent in 2003. That figure includes contributions to overseas and local missions, such as soup kitchens.

In Northwest Arkansas, what the largest churches give as a percentage of their revenue varies from 0.8 percent to 3.17 percent (see chart). That’s based on current operating budgets for three of the area’s biggest churches, divided by their individual number of members. Those figures do not include capital improvement campaigns within the churches or mission funds, in some cases.

Sylvia Ronsvalle, vice president of Empty Tomb, said any time church contributions are down, it paints a picture on the horizon for all nonprofits.

“Giving to religion is really the canary in the coal mine, and if it’s gasping then we can expect society as a whole to suffer from a philanthropic point of view,” Ronsvalle said.

The fact remains that churches are losing market share of personal income, Ronsvalle said.

The Need

As the population continues to swell in Northwest Arkansas, so does the need.

Catherine Fletcher, director of development for Ozark Food Bank in Springdale, said her organization gave out more than 1.7 million pounds of food in 2004. That number is projected to increase by 35 percent year-over-year, with 2.3 million pounds expected to be given out before the end of 2005.

Fletcher said the Food Bank serves about 115 different benevolent agencies, of which about 39 percent, or 45, are church-affiliated.

The Ozark Food Bank estimates 12.5 percent of Northwest Arkansas residents live below the poverty line. Of those, 19 percent are senior citizens and 25 percent are women and single parents.

“If you’ve got a woman and a couple of kids, they need to make $13 per hour to make a living, and that’s hard to do that around here,” said Howard Anderson, manager of Helping Hands Inc., a non-profit clothing store in Bentonville.

Anderson said Helping Hands spends about $1 million annually to help with various causes such as utility bills, food, clothes and rent.

He said nearly all of the more than 115 volunteers on the roster come from various church organizations.

Fletcher said a 2003 Donald W. Reynolds Foundation survey indicated there are more than 90,000 individuals at risk of hunger in this area, which includes Benton, Washington, Carroll and Madison counties.

For every $1 donated, the food bank can give seven meals.

“If church members [nationwide] had given an average of 10 percent instead of the 2.6 percent actually given to churches in 2003, there could have been an additional $156 billion to help people through churches,” Ronsvalle said.

Ronsvalle said in 2003 Empty Tomb estimated Americans gave 1.12 percent of income to charity, with 72 percent, or $91 billion, directed towards religious charities.

“I believe that every church has a responsibility of various ministries that are ministries of mercy to the hurting, to the down and out, to the poor and to the people that are walking through difficult times, and we’ve done that through the years,” said Ronnie Floyd, senior pastor of both the First Baptist Church of Springdale and The Church at Pinnacle Hills.

Doug Sarver, minister of global missions for FBC-Springdale, said the church has 15 mission trips slated for the next year. In 2004, $250,000 was raised for mission trips aside from regular church collections, he said. That amount is not included in the church’s fiscal budget.

That also doesn’t count the more than $100,000 that members gave separately for hurricane relief this year.

The entire Southern Baptist Convention, of which FBC-Springdale is a member, gave $239.6 million to overseas missions in 2003, Empty Tomb said. FBC-Springdale’s more than $250,000 for missions puts it right on par with the Southern Baptist Convention, since 2 cents for every dollar it received went to overseas missions.

The combined efforts of FBC-Springdale and The Church at Pinnacle Hills include a two-year strategy that will distribute 100,000 paperback Bibles nationally and internationally and will build 14 new churches. The Bibles alone will cost about $300,000, based on Sarver’s pricing of $3.00 per paperback Bible if bought in bulk.

Everyday Challenges

Not all benevolence can be quantified as a line item on an annual budget. And as a group, the churches interviewed for this report declined to really trumpet their local efforts.

They get calls every day from local people in need.

“The church is really the church at best when it is actively doing what the scriptures challenge us to do,” said Drew Tucker, associate pastor at The Church at Pinnacle Hills.

Tucker said a group of 50 choir members collected $1,100 at practice the other day to help a single-mother who was leaving an abusive situation.

“We could spend our whole budget on the needs in the community and we wouldn’t even make a dent in it,” Tucker said.

Ronsvalle said data suggests that people are giving to nonprofits; however, giving to health and human services is declining faster than giving to religion as a portion of income.

Sarver said the challenge for the average citizen is choice.

“I ask this question all the time, what percent of what is going where,” Sarver said. He said givers should ensure the charity has a specific cause.

Ronsvalle said church budgets can vary widely from denomination to denomination.

For example, Catholic priests are paid less than protestant pastors, and there are more services per building. The pastor-to-member ratio is much more with Catholic priests than with protestant denominations.

In some of the largest area churches, the staff-to-member ratio varies widely. At Fellowship Bible Church of Northwest Arkansas, the ratio is 1-to-133, at FBC-Springdale it’s 1-to-77 and at St. Raphael’s Roman Catholic Church in Springdale it’s 1-to-812.

Sarver said the big buildings of larger churches sometimes give people the wrong impression.

“Many people view a large church as a large source of income,” Sarver said.

Ronsvalle, whose organization openly advocates overseas mission work, said there was a social movement in the 1980s among churches to become more “consumer-oriented.”

“Instead of confronting people about the responsibilities that come with affluence, churches opted for a consumer approach to make people happy,” Ronsvalle said. “That’s not what Christianity is all about. It’s to give joy, but authentic joy. So you have churches that find it awkward to ask about giving.”

Interestingly enough, Ronsvalle said the denominations that have experienced membership growth over the last 40 years were those that gave a higher percentage of income to oversees missions.

When asked how his church balances internal programs with benevolent giving, Floyd said his church follows the words of Jesus Christ.

“It’s the words of Jesus in Matthew 28 verses 18 through 20,” Floyd said. “That is to take the good news of Jesus Christ around the world, so that’s why we give so much money to missions.”

Building the Future

Three of the area’s largest churches have building expansion plans that also aren’t being financed by regular contribution. They’re covered by financial commitments of members willing to help pay off a construction bank note over time.

St. Vincent DePaul’s building project in Rogers totaled about $10 million when its new 60,000-SF facility opened in 2002. Precept Builders started construction this summer on a new $24 million Church at Pinnacle Hills facility in Rogers, and Crossland Construction started a $7 million expansion for Fellowship Bible Church of Northwest Arkansas.

“This is still a part of the country where people think [church] is important,” said monsignor Richard Oswald of St. Vincent DePaul Church. Oswald said if St. Vincent DePaul was to calculate giving as a percentage of income, then parishioners at lower incomes give more from their paychecks.

Oswald said the congregation is 50 percent Hispanic. The noon Spanish mass can get “quite full,” he said, and parishioners tend to segregate. When he came to the parish in 1988, the church had 350 families. Now, membership is about 9,600.

Robert Cupp, directional leader of Fellowship Bible Church of Northwest Arkansas, said the weekend attendance averages 6,500 to 7,000.

“Buildings are tools, and you use them when you need them,” Cupp said. He said some services are “packed to the wall.”

Fellowship’s expansion will double its existing space. Cupp said Fellowship adheres to strict guidelines set forth by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, which requires both external and internal audits annually. During the 2003 fiscal year, when Fellowship’s budget was $6.3 million, excess revenue after expenses totaled $126,363.

When asked about the public perception of FBC-Springdale’s construction of the 140,000-SF Church at upscale Pinnacle Hills, Floyd said it was a difficult question to answer.

“I don’t believe in picking on people,” Floyd said. “I think what they need to do is learn our heart before they judge us. They need to know the reality of who we are personally and as a church before they cast suspicion upon our character and motives.”

Bottom line, Floyd said, churches are built to touch other people.

“You have to have a place for those people to meet,” he said. “If you are going to help more people in the future you have to provide a bigger facility.”