Basics of Church Giving and Finances

Donation decisions

• Donate to the church or ministry if your goal is to support the organization, its mission, and its general work.
• The church does not accept "personal gifts" to pass through to specific individuals. We only receive donations for church ministry and operations.
• If you mostly want to help a specific person, please give to them directly as a personal gift rather than through the church.
• You can easily set up recurring monthly donations to the church through your bank’s automatic bill pay service. You can also use your bank’s bill pay or similar tools to regularly bless someone you care about with a personal gift, or simply mail individual checks whenever you like, without needing to order a new checkbook.
• Do not assume "tax-deductible" means "saves money." Many donors get little tax benefit, and a consistent, genuine personal gift to someone you want to bless is often mroe meaningful for the recipient.

Why the answer is often different than people expect

• Even as nonprofits, churches still deal with payroll taxes and other tax rules, and church employees still pay ordinary taxes like other workers.
• Pastors actually pay twice as much as most people for Social Security and Medicare taxes.
• Church tax-exemption mainly means churches do not pay business income tax on normal ministry donations.
• Churches are nonprofit religious organizations, but their costs work much like other organizations: it takes more than a simple salary number to employ someone (for example, payroll taxes, insurance, benefits, and administrative costs).
• A housing allowance can reduce a pastor's federal income tax, but it usually does not remove the extra Social Security and Medicare tax.
• When you donate to the church and those funds are used to pay staff, the church must cover payroll obligations and the staff member pays taxes, so the amount they actually receive is noticeably less than the original donation.