It is time at our church where I work to do our annual budgets – we run on a calendar year but it takes several months to get everything done when you are working with multiple committees of volunteers. It tends to be a little stressful during this time for me as I try to balance keeping the budget reasonable since we depend on the generous donations of those who attend our church, and at the same time trying to give the various committees and areas of ministry the money they need to do their work. It’s hard trying to keep everyone happy!
It’s also stressful for me as I try to come up with fair compensation for the staff. I do some research, looking at what inflation is, what other churches pay for the same positions, how have they been performing at their work, what can the church afford, etc. The longer I am in this position the more I realize that compensation is more of an art than a science!
Unlike a lot of other nonprofits who have been hit very hard by the economy, we have done fairly well throughout the recession. I have friends who have not had raises for three years, others who have had their hours cut back to part-time, and I have heard of others that have lost their jobs because the company / nonprofit just could not afford to keep them any longer. Fortunately I have not had to make any of those tough choices. So I guess compared to others this will be a fairly easy budget process – we may even be able to increase the budget a few percentages, and we will probably be able to give raises again this year. So I guess we are very fortunate!
