This resource is to help you review the balance of your giving including to your local church and support of mission activity beyond the church. It suggests a method for analysing and reviewing how your giving might be allocated across different types of mission and ministry locally, nationally and globally.

 

It’s so easy to add new projects or organisations to your giving without considering the overall balance of the “portfolio”. So here’s a way to help you evaluate whether your personal giving has an appropriate balance. It uses the same principle that you’d use with any investment ie that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

 

How to do it?

• Make a list of the people, projects and organisations that you currently support.

• Enter them on the matrix spreadsheet supplied with this resource, grouping together by line: local, national and global areas of activity.

• Decide whether each organisation or initiative is primarily about:

  • Mercy, relief etc

  • Influence and advocacy

  • Life discipleship and training

  • Evangelism

  • Another areas of ministry

Enter the financial value of your support in the relevant column. NB There may be some organisations where your giving is being split eg both mercy/relief and influence/advocacy.

• Total each column and then calculate the percentage of total support for each.

• The answer may surprise you, so ask some questions:

  • What do you personally consider the most appropriate balance should be? NB You might prefer to do this before you use the matrix to calculate your current allocation.

  • Is this the right balance?

  • How might you go about moving towards that target for the future?

 

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When?

Its worth carrying out this exercise at least every three years. You may decide its worth doing annually if there has been significant change in how much you are able to give or who you are supporting.

 

Other applications?

You may also find this a helpful tool to suggest your church uses to analyse their mission giving. See the Signposts section below for a link to a similar resource for church use.

 

Signposts

• HH: How much to give? Offers a personal method for discerning what to give to and amounts to give.

• HH: A balanced portfolio for mission support

• HH: What the Bible says about money

• The Grace of Giving: John Stott & Chris Wright

 

Author & copyright: Helen Calder 2019

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