Finish Well Campaign

Help Us Hit 15!

Why an end-of-year campaign?

We know that many churches, ministries, and non-profit organizations depend on large, last-minute donations to keep them financially afloat each year. Thankfully, that’s never been The Village’s story! The Finish Well Campaign isn’t an annual thing - nor do we expect it to be! We plan, pray, and put our budget into action each year with wisdom, faith, and transparency in order to be good stewards who earn and keep one another’s trust.

So why an end-of-year campaign in 2021? In a nutshell, our expenses were slightly higher than planned and giving was less than we had projected. Our folks do a lot with a little, and we strive to make every dollar stretch. But sometimes the ends simply don’t meet! Thankfully, our Finance Team plans for ups and downs, so our savings has been able to cushion the shortfall. That said, we wanted to let you know where we are, where we’d like to be, and how can help us get there!

What’s the big picture?

Expenses this year have been within 2% of our annual budget.

• This is a good thing! Thanks to our folks for planning and stewarding well this year.

• Livestreaming equipment, pre-packaged communion, and Zoom expenses (all things related to living in a COVID world!) were among the higher-than-expected line items in this year’s budget. Other normal expenses like printing and binding of in-house resources and keeping the Huddle Room stocked for meetings were slightly higher, too.

Giving this year has been about $15,000 less than we anticipated.

• We projected this year’s giving to grow as it has the last six years (between 5%-10%). That just didn’t happen!

• About one-in-five (1/5) of member households aren’t giving regularly or semi-regularly. This does have an impact!

• That said, we’re thankful for the four-in-five member households and other connected folks who do contribute!

We dipped into savings to make up the difference.

• That’s why we have savings to begin with! However, we’d like to close the gap in our giving and build our savings back up if we can - not just for this year, but as we move into next year!

• We’ll obviously plan accordingly for next year (which we’re doing right now!) knowing how this year has played out.

What’s the goal?

Raise an additional $15,000 in december!

While it might seem crazy, we want to throw it out there and invite you to contribute - if you can! - above and beyond your normal giving to help us hit that goal. We’ll put 50% of everything we raise towards replenishing our Benevolence Fund, and the other 50% will go towards our General Fund to close this year’s giving gap and tee us up to build back savings.

So this month, we’re asking you to do one (or more!) of these things: