This page contains the same content as the information that went out in our pledge packets in late October, 2024.
St. Dunstan’s Draft Budget for 2025: Sustaining and Growing
Sustaining…
Our parish leaders want to sustain our budget at its current level as much as possible.
- The early draft of our 2025 parish budget is about $346,000 – about a 1% increase over 2024.
- The increase is largely due to increased insurance rates and a cost of living increase for some staff, as recommended by our diocese, offset by some other changes like a reduced diocesan assessment.
- Our goal this year is to keep our budget as steady as possible – while increasing our capacity to fully fund our common life, and to build towards the future.
Your pledged giving will help sustain our parish’s mission and ministries.
- We adopted a deficit budget for 2024, knowing we could cover the deficit if necessary, but hoping to reduce the gap through generous giving and careful spending.
- In 2025 we hope to move towards fully funding our budget, with less reliance on reserve funds, gifts and grants.
- By sustaining our budget now, we seek to prepare financially to allow for future growth.
- We know that folks are hearing about – and being asked to help with – budget shortfalls in many settings right now. By keeping our parish budget as stable as possible, we seek to be responsible with and respectful of our shared resources.
The goal of our giving campaign is to sustain our common life as a parish: shared prayer, worship, and learning, care for one another, serving our neighbors and the wider world, and boldly proclaiming God’s love for everybody, no exceptions.
Growing…
We can keep our budget stable, while still moving forward.
- We continue to grow our common life by building community, deepening our learning and practices of faith, and extending our capacity for mutual care, care of others and care for God’s world.
- We have already taken a bold step by adding a quarter-time youth minister role. One priority for this year and beyond is to grow our capacity to support that position, beyond special grants and gifts. This is our faithful response to the joy and solace that our youth find through this program, and the ways they give back to the parish.
- Growth is not just about numbers – but we rejoice in welcoming new members and discovering how they shape the church we are becoming. This will continue to be a priority and a delight!
- We are mindful of the need to grow our financial base beyond pledged income. This year, the Good Futures Accelerator team began the work of imagining ways of using underutilized parts of our church property to meet community needs and generate income. The Place-Keeping Fund, a fund intended to help cover property-related expenses, is a different step in the same direction. Work on both fronts will continue in 2025 and beyond.
Thank you for all the ways your presence, participation, and gifts have brought us to this moment, and will help us move towards God’s future, together.
Goals for 2025
Our pledge goal for 2025 is $290,000. This is ambitious; it’s a big step up from our 2024 pledge total of $282,000. It reflects the hope of moving towards fully funding our budget.
We know that just as St. Dunstan’s budget continues to be stretched by rising costs, so are your personal and household budgets. But even small pledge increases can add up, and new pledges can help us move towards our church’s financial goals.
While we anticipate about $47,000 in income from other sources, including plate offerings, rental income, fund proceeds and diocesan grants, our main source of income is the pledged giving of members and friends of the parish. You regularly give 85% or more of our budgeted income. THANK YOU!
When we pledge, we choose to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Every pledge, in any amount, is important and appreciated. You can invest in the ministry and community of St. Dunstan’s by returning your pledge card by November 17.
St. Dunstan’s Money Story
In August, a group gathered to reflect on St. Dunstan’s “money story,” using the prompts from the Our Money Story reflection process that we’re sharing this fall. Here’s part of the report from that gathering.
Ups and downs, but a throughline of generosity…
We have gone through hard times in nearly seventy years as a parish, but there is an ebb and flow to our story which has kept us moving forward. Our history includes a legacy of very generous givers, who have helped carry us into this century. Big-picture economic and demographic changes, fear of deficits and other obstacles are part of our church’s money story today, but only a part.
Generosity is a core word in our community’s money story. We have taken bold and hopeful steps in recent years. People are willing to put resources into something in the hope of helping it grow and thrive – and to build something together, not just maintain something the way it’s always been.
A mission to care for one another, our neighbors, and our world…
Our community believes that money should be used to help others, and that God calls us to be a blessing. At the same time, we know that we must care for ourselves and one another, in order to continue to care for others. People come here looking for something – community, healing, growth, connection with the Holy, a place to share their gifts. What we offer one another here, and what we become together, matters.
Moving towards God’s future…
St. Dunstan’s is a church that is choosing to have a future. But how we find – and fund! – that way forward is very much something to be explored, discerned and created together. Our annual pledging and budgeting process, and continued exploratory work towards longer-term financial sustainability, are both crucial aspects of our journey towards the future God wants for us.