March 21, 2011 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Chicago
Religious fund raising is in a tailspin, according to a speaker here at the annual conference of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
Churches, especially in California, have gone into bankruptcy. Catholic schools are closing. Church scandals continue to erupt. Audits from the Internal Revenue Service are increasing for those religious organizations not toeing the mark.
“We’re in a crisis,” said James Peak, founder of Peak Fundraising, in El Paso. “This is why people are losing faith in many religious organizations and their own churches.”
Mr. Peak made his remarks at a panel on fund raising by faith-based organizations at the fund raisers conference.
“The percentage of giving is going down, and we need to do something about it,” Mr. Peak said.
About a third of the $303-billion given to charity in the United States in 2009 went to religious organizations, but that share used to be much higher, Mr. Peak said, though he did not provide a comparison figure from earlier years.
On average, Mr. Peak said, American Christians of all denominations only give two percent of their income to the church.
Church attendance is down in the United States and in what used to be great bastions of religious expression such as Britain, France, and Spain, he said.
“My challenge to you is to get involved with your parishes, synagogues, or mosques, and teach them what they need to do,” Mr. Peak said.
Some faith-based organizations are trying.
At the Florida United Methodist Children’s Home, in Enterprise, Fla., for example, fund raisers are not pouring their energies into holding time-consuming special events to raise revenue. Instead, the group now encourages other parishes and congregations in South Florida to mount those events on behalf of the charity.
Recently the organization began what it calls its Fifth Sunday collection in most United Methodist churches in Florida on behalf of the children’s home. In the months in which there are five Sundays, all of the money given during the church service on the fifth Sunday goes to the children’s home. It collected about $3-million last year, says John Rivas, vice president for development for the charity. The organization’s only work is printing 180,000 leaflets and insert them into church bulletins. “The Fifth Sunday has been a tremendous benefit for the children’s home,” he says.
In addition, the organization has made an aggressive effort to educate and train members of United Methodist churches to give. It invites 1,500 to 2,000 guests to an open house on its main campus in Florida. It also provides a network of estate-planning attorneys, financial advisers, certified public accountants, and tax attorneys for parishioners.
“I refer to Florida as ‘God’s waiting room,’” Mr. Rivas said, joking about the large numbers of elderly people who reside in the state. “In God’s waiting room, there are a lot of people who love us and know us who have not been trained to give. Their pastors have not been trained in planned giving. They’re not reminded by the church to put the children’s home in their will.”
