How To Determine the Average Weekly Donations Per Person That You Can Count On

Show Notes

Pastor Brian and Jessi Gibson team up Clay Clark and Doctor Z to break down how to determine the average weekly donations per person that you can budget and plan on as a pastor in ministry.

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Determine the Average Weekly Donations Per Person

  1. $5 to $8 – Per Person – Inner City Church
  2. $20 – Per Person – Younger Church
  3. $60 Per Person – Established Congregation
  4. Money comes in 6 months are you bring a new person into your church
  5. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – Romans 12: 2
  1. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Knowing your numbers is a fundamental precept of business.” – Bill Gates (Co-founder of Microsoft)
  2. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “When I built DJConnection.com, I wanted to make $175 per event not related to me and thus my goal was for our team to do 80 weddings per weekend.” – Clay Clark
  3. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “You must determine what the least amount of money that you will make on a deal is so that you can determine: how many deals you need per week just to break-even, and how many deals you need per week to achieve your goals.” – Clay Clark
  4. ACTION ITEMS –
    1. STEP 1 – Create a massive spreadsheet with three columns (income, fixed expenses and variable expenses).
    2. STEP 2 – Type up ALL of your income and expenses for the passed 3 months (this should take 5 hours)
    3. STEP 3 – Place expenses that are variable (related to the cost of providing the services or products) into a variable expenses column.
    4. STEP 4 – Place expenses that are recurring and essentially flat (they don’t really go up and down much every month) into the fixed expenses column.
    5. STEP 5 – Schedule yourself to attend the Thrive Financial Workshop (this is included in your coaching fee) and bring these numbers to the workshop.
    6. STEP 6 – Schedule a specific time and place to hold your weekly 1 HOUR of POWER ACCOUNTING MEETING WITH YOURSELF to go over:
      1. Fixed Expenses (look for outliers and bills for things that are more than what you have budgeted for)
      2. Variable Expenses (look for costs related to providing your products or services that are more than what you have budgeted for)
      3. Wage War on increased expenses.
      4. Ask yourself, how can I cut costs by 3% this week without hurting the customer experience?
      5. Ask yourself, how can I improve my experience by 3% this week without increasing costs?
      6. What can I live without and cut?
      7. What could I stop spending money on so that I can start reinvesting 5 to 11% of my gross income into advertising like Michael Levine, Clay Clark, Doctor Zoellner and any long-term successful business owner does (McDonald’s, Nike, Target, Apple, Coca-Cola, Mathis Brothers…they never stop advertising).
  5. Podcast – How to Determine the Profit Per Customer You Need to Make – https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/business-podcasts/determine-profit-per-customer-need-make/
  6. Downloadable –
    1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/gt9vwyqzrzdhvy2/Interactive%20Profit%20%26%20Loss%20Statement%20-%20Thrive15%20-%20Sheet1.pdf?dl=0
    2. https://www.dropbox.com/s/pjr0ducbw498bx2/Proforma%20Template%20-%20Thrive15.xlsx?dl=0

30 / 30 / 30 | 10 – Church Budgeting 101 (Part 1)

  1. Many churches get stuck at 200 members
  2. 30% of your costs should be spent on your facilities
  3. 30% of your costs should be spent on your staffing
  4. 30% of your costs on the programs of your church
  5. 10% of your costs you should be savings
    1. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.” – Dave Ramsey

    2. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – 1 Timothy 5:18

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work in preaching and teaching.” – 1 Timothy 5:17

Business Coach | Ask Clay & Z Anything

Audio Transcription

Attend the world’s best business coach workshop, led by america’s number one business coach for free by subscribing on itunes and leaving us an objective review, claim your tickets by emailing as proof that you did it and your contact information to android, drivetime, show.Com, nitro, nation, walk back to the conversation is the drive time show on your radio when I could not be any more excited to be with you on this sanctimonious on this glorious wednesday, then then I can tell him right now, because we have two incredible guess. We have to guess that have traveled you’re all the way from owensboro kentucky to be on there on the show with you and it’s pastor, brian gibson and pastor jesse gibson pastor brad. How are you doing my friend I’m doing great it’s a wonderful day to be in tulsa oklahoma? It’s actually our kids spring break. So you know the greatest spring break spot in the business coach world. Is tulsa people block you from all over the all over the nation driver and then the family jesse tell him he’s the only driver because he can’t not scream if you drive so i, don’t trip because I’ve had about maybe 10 racks trying drive him in any wakes up and screams and tries to put us in a nap. Do you guys, typically debate like hard to solve mysteries of the universe or do do do politics or what do yellow dogs remember:yellow dog from chevy chase’s movie, the funny farm yes, i, slept through the whole show on fire. Jesse does the same thing in the car. That’s the only time that I can sleep is when I’m driving I can’t sleep when you’re driving, cuz I’m, terrible I am sleepy, but I do wake up. Always thinking jesse is going to kill us and I’ll wake up screaming clay a lot.

My wife doesn’t like it when I scream like we’re having pending doom and near-death right in front of us, have assist average weekly donations per person business. This could be parallel with the idea of determining how much revenue you can bring in per customer churches. I’m sure you don’t look out of your congregation and envision people with over. That’s that’s 50 people in each one of those people, I look at his forehead and i. Think 13 is the average, but it’s some point. You have to pragmatically pay the electrical bill you have to until how do you? What is the average business coach donation per person? How do you figure this out and you going to be in ministry forever? You started with nothing so how to do it? How do you do that? Won’t? Let me answer this. First. First of all, pastors don’t get into ministry for money. You know some people begin to think. Like all the church wants, is there money and if I get that kind of mentality and I’ll say this I’ve never seen anybody walk into a

walmart and say all this walmart woman is my money because that’s all they want I’ve, never seen anybody walk to the bar and see all this bar wants is my money. But people say that at the church and I believe it’s because there’s something that’s trying to keep them away from the church, see I believe that there is a world out there that has the needle in it and I believe that god is real and is trying to help people and there’s an evil force that tries to push them away. I was saying all of our time and ministry I met very few guys in ministry that all they cared about was money. Most of them are well-intentioned. People who love people they are people are not perfect, but most of those guys aren’t businessmen. They have a genuine love for the church for sheet for lost people, so they going to ministry and money is not their focus. I mean I walked off from a big family business when I was a kid that bit I had every opportunity in the world to knock it out of the park, but the call of god matters more to me than money. So you say all that just to let everybody know hate that that’s the plates. I would have brought this idea. If you you don’t, but if somebody is not in your organization focusing on the money now, the church has weird a weird situation:that’s the other side of the coin, that’s the business side of the coin, and that’s why I thrive play clark. His coaches are so good at taking guys that are just focused on the spiritual by nature and they help you look at the business side. So so here’s how it works. He was talking about in the business world play in dr. Z, we’ll talk about a break even number or at what what do i? What do I have to sell how many customers at what price makes a solvent and makes us profitable if you were in the business coach world when the church I know this that there’s some generalizations there’s some broad sweeping numbers. If you have a church, less say of a hundred people and you’re in an inner-city environment, there’s less money in an inner-city environment than there will be in the new suburbs outside of the city, every person kid grandma, mama, daddy through the doors average donation, will be five to $8 a lot of time. Church kind of like up-and-coming church, maybe a suburban, church pastor jesse i-mean, can I count on like $20 a person or how much you, if I’m out there and I’m listening I’m a pastor. How much can I count on it? Whippersnappers early twenties about $20 a head per person per week, is what you’re looking at whenever you have a donor for that, so you have to establish church by jessie ware.

You have people who are going to the church that I’ll have a job. This is one thing I found is a business owner. This is awesome when anybody on my team gets married, I celebrate financially so I know that you was ministers in in pat-pat pastors. You don’t think about the money, but it’s business. It’s really all i. Think about is my 3-piece i, think about making a great product and I’m proud to sell my mom for a service where my mom could say. My son is involved with that business it, but my mom wouldn’t feel good about I won’t! Do it because I want to make sure that the people who work there are are are fun to work with them? A lot more gets married. My office I think yes, never going to have a baby and I’m always give a baby I just got married last week. Do you have a baby soon as she pregnant? Please have a baby as soon as they get married, their productivity increases dramatically and when the child gets here, I just want to ask if you were working with an established congregation where the members are late, thirties and forties. Are they all have jobs, obviously earning more? How much of a donation per person? Could you count on if you had to budget based on that? Well, let’s see if you get all the way up like to what was saving establishing on church and grandma, the mom, the kiss everybody’s business coach is going first thing on my list of the biggest methodist church downtown right jesse, it’s going to be 40 to $60 a person through the door, so these people are established our generational families a lot of times. They have deep roots in the community, more money flowing in that ministry like there’s a church in our town. They say it could operate and we saw that one of those kind of kind of church is can operate solvent how much money they can operate for 30 years now, without one more donation, harvard university I’ve seen that I was at church down in business coach dallas. That I’m very aware of that. Did they there they have real estate holdings that they never have to get another donation prestonwood, and so, if you’re listening here and you, let’s say that you are a pastor, listen to the show and you have new people attending. This is what I’ve seen you tell me if I’m wrong I’ve seen if you have a new business, typically like amazon, it took an amazon 9 years to make their first prophet took facebook after 3 years, facebook lost 3.6 million dollars. If you think about fedex, it took fedex almost a decade to make a profit. Espn, 13-year albert einstein, never focus on profit. His ideas didn’t come to fruition for years, so and entrepreneurial world I get how long it takes. Now-and someone comes into the church for the first time-and they visit you one time-usually right tip after a breakdown this, what I’ve discovered this is just my take on it.

The funeral I need to go to church kid gets on the drugs I guess I should probably find a church home. It’s right on the drugs I like that he was taking. The pain was sick in the pot, the divorce, it’s like right before the bread after the breakdown there’s the breakthrough so that go into your door and I’m very few people in the world are proactive. How long do you typically? How does it take before? You typically see a donation of any kind from a new person? One that’s recorded I would say anywhere from 6 months to a year why they say that your heart get that you give god your heart, then you give him your mind. Last but not least, your wallet I think people, it’s just the order that they come to jesus in and then you can’t really change the traditional. You can’t I think it for the pastor’s listening, it’s important. You don’t try to change me your best, but it’s hard to change the way people for debeers have done. Church I mean it’s hard to get into the mind of a nude congregation member and just beat him over the head with hey. Please donate something,, oh yeah. It’s it takes time for people to learn that there’s some people that were raised in that culture, like the first time, i, can remember seen money as a child. My mother was putting it in my hand, and she was telling me to give it in sunday school class when I was a little boy and it in church. So there’s some people that just know to do that and there’s other people that they think the church just exist like an angel, shows up with a bag of money and drops it at the front door on monday morning to pay the bills for that week. So it’s going to take time as a business coach. Everything in the kingdom of god takes time. Everything worth having in life takes time. Training children takes time. It’s the renewal of the mind romans 12:2. We we teach it all the time it says. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed i, don’t just be like everybody else, but you want to be transformed. You don’t have a transformational process by the renewing of your mind and I’m still getting my my mind, renewed every day,, pastor, there’s still things I need to learn there. Still some stinking thinking, i-80 you something that’s thrown around forever, but people have to change the way they think and so do i. But it’s a process, I think there’s somebody listening that he needs to hear this notable cordless trim, bill gates, who said knowing your numbers, is a fundamental precept of business. I would also say:knowing your numbers is a fun little presumptive running the church and I want to get your take on this pastor jesse because I know there’s somebody listening is a pastor and you have a youth group and you really want to do something great for the youth group.

You want to take him on a missions trip till it’s a mexico or you want to build a basketball court out there behind the church for the kids to hang out. You have a coffee bar. You want to build visions you have. Can you talk to me about how you, as a pastor, how you balanced all these things you want to do for your congregation members and the actual practical side of we’re going to have to pay for that. Somehow? How do you balance that? How you do that I think for us? It was learning to be reasonable. You know where to come from churches of maybe even a business  thousand. Then we moved to another city. We worked in a church of 4000. We had attended a church or 12000 mile we’re in college in his gigantic places, and then we go my last youth group that I that I was youth pastor in before we moved to owensboro. My youth group was about 500 kids and then we move and I had six students in that youth ministry. You know so bringing that we thought at the very first week that it should be a thousand people that really allowing our mind to say. Yes, this is the visions where we want to go, but today we have to do what is in the budget and we are going to. We had nine buildings in in 5 years because we would get the building we could afford and then we would allow god to grow until we busted out of it to ask you about knowing your expenses. How important is it for you to know your fixed expenses? You know you’re at your lease, your phone, a media. Is it something that you did a lot of people getting the ministry, not cuz, they’re accountants? Where does it for all the pastors out there listening to know these things, so it’s it’s massive for them to know. They’re fixed cost the expenses because those bills are coming to kalamazoo shoe taxes are coming, death is coming and the bills are coming with amazing regularity. Once a month, it’s going to show up the same as a regular show me to pay that rent or that business coach mortgage, so you’ve got another call on what you have. So you can project what you have to have and what you can do in the future. It’s it’s really budgeting. So I got to know what my mortgage payments going to be. I have to know all of my building cost. I have to know my staff expenses I have to know what I have left to run. My programs and a support missions.

I have to have a plan in his coaching client for typically with almost every client we have to take. We always have a weekly coaching meeting, but in addition to that, we usually have to take for 5 hours one time when someone flies into the workshop to sit down and get their finances straightened out, and it takes all of four or five hours to sort that out. It really is because I’ve never done a deep dive and really looked at their fixed expenses and variable expenses. When we come back we’ll talk about is a pastor. You have a busy busy schedule, but how do you set boundaries? So you can stay happily married while also running a growing and thriving organization and church-state agenda world’s best business workshop led by america’s number one business coach for free by subscribing on itunes and leaving us an objective review, claim your tickets by emailing. Did you did it and your contact information to info at drivetime show.Com grease, trap nation? My name is clay clark in the former uss, be a entrepreneur of the year, a member of the forbes business, coach, council and basically I run around pontificating on how you can grow a successful company and then every time someone argues with me I just say:what are you going to visit the optometry clinic? Why don’t you just see how that works there we got for. Why? Don’t you just go to the auto auction? Why don’t you just go to the haircut facilities near? Why don’t you go in the thing? Is I’m not good at a lot of things, there’s a lot of things. I’m not good at I will list them real, quick, sports elongated business coach conversations that don’t involve action, steps I’m watching any kind of movie at all:traveling, not traveling, just really life outside of business. What business is one thing I do very, very well, and one thing I like to do is surround myself with people who are experts in there given areas, people that really know their stuff. So when I have an accounting question, shocking, I call paul, hood and paul hood is a cpa. Has thousands of clients he probably right and I’m, probably wrong? Whenever I have a difficult question about legal issues, I call winters and king, because winters and king represents joel, osteen, td jakes, trick them and represent me, but they represent all the. Joyce meyers I mean these are the who’s who of what they do and it’s so much it approves. It turns out over time it actually cost more money to be cheap, as example friend of mine recently went on a cruise and they they told me this is probably i, guess, I’m old enough to say the other day, but it was about what a year-and-a-half ago so I guess it does a verify. 18 months ago, friend of mine, said I wanted cruises, and how was he so terrible? Why was it terrible that was the cheapest I could get travel all the way from owensboro kentucky to have a church of a north of a thousand business coach people that attend stomach, settle a stomach settle more but they’re, breaking down accounting from a church perspective.

So if you’re listening right now and your church has i, don’t know less than a thousand people, I would encourage you to take a lot of notes. If your church has more than a thousand people, I’d encourage you to think about. Does this apply to me? Cuz I bet you. It does so you’re talk about this principle, pastor about 30 30 10. What does that mean? Yes, it’s! So it’s something that pastors have talked for years. People have slight variations to this, depending on who they are where they’re from their camp. But this is a general rule. If you are starting to church or let’s say you’re at a lot of churches, get hung at 200. 200 is a place where it feels family, but it’s not really growing and flowing yet, and the breakthrough there you’re going to have to start to learn some stuff, especially about budgeting and here’s one of the tools. We learned that that I think it’s as helped us at times throughout throughout the path in, and that is you want to have 30% on your facilities. You look at your total budget, so 30% on your facilities. Now going to give you some wiggle room, cuz there’s times when you’re starting a church, clay or business when I do believe you have to go all-in. I don’t want to live, is a gambler. I, don’t know, there’s ever a time where you don’t have to go all in and I’m, not a pastor and and frankly, I have a great business coach admiration for what you guys do. But I would just say dr. Z says you have to be the pig at breakfast. Your whole life to the breakfast process, not just to give an egg, so you guys are all in so you can speak. Prince I know that you guys started the church with nobody right in a town. You would never really been too very much right, so you’re all in. So what are you going to 3% on your facilities? I’m talking mortgage juice, that kind of thing 30% of budget? Okay, then I’m going to go 30% on my staffing, so I got 30% that pays for my people, my staff, people that are doing life with me and helping push the ball down. 30% of your cost should be spent on your facilities at 30% of your car should be spent on your staff right now, and you got to think about this. Your staff are also a part of the ministry cuz. They are ministers, they’re, bringing life to your people. People. Don’t like spending money when they see on employees in a church world then understand they’re the people carrying the mission. You have to invest in them right.

The next third is going to be on your programs of your church, the day-to-day life of the church, kids, ministry, youth ministry, music, ministry aviall that the other third also you want to have some missions in there, so I would have I would have missions in their outreach that’s in the other 3rd, and then you have 10% that you should be saving now. I’ll say this violated all these principles at one time or another. So don’t come in nail me down cuz! Here’s the deal were talking about going all-in. There were times jesse remembers. You got a facility that you can’t get your peep and you’re running multiple services and you get over to non-primary church-going times. You are stuck and I want to I want to bring this up. What you’re saying here and I want to talk about your next segment as well. Cuz, there’s somebody out there that needs to get this idea. Pastor jesse I mean to speak in front of a church of people who judge you based upon how you guys look sure. So, if you guys look like you, you know hadn’t had your haircut, it was more like he has a volunteer say:hey I’ve got some new scissor. Do you want to be at work trying to be frugal here? So you how you appear you have to spend a little bit of money on that I would I would think matt and I know, there’s a lot of guys. I work with winters and king the attorney to represent joel, osteen and td jakes I know a lot of pastors struggle with the concept of pastoral compensation. Cuz you hear these stories are on 20/20 dark, trying to nail the pastor for paying themselves too much, and there are historic examples of people that have donated you know very little to the church and spent a lot of themselves. That’s not the average, but that’s the rare that was course you like to run stories about the rare exena, the deed extremes. But how do you determine what you pay yourself as a business coach? I mean? Does it fit into that 30% and the 30% that he was talking about that goes for staffing, but the way that we handle that is, have someone come in and do an estimation of what what is going on in our church size? We are what kind of town we are, what our budget is, and they can give you a professional opinion as to what that sour should be make a recommendation to the board. The board is a compensation is sat through that process and then you’re paid in that way. A lot of of pastors wives and pastors and a female pastors male pastors. Don’t pay themselves anything at all and they feel really really terrible about asking for anything as a general rule, how do you do that? How do you set your pastor or compensation? I mean? What’s? Is there a is there? A number is at 1% and 3% of 0% cuz i, can’t I’ve seen pastors rolled up the churches and I get it’s rare, but I’ve seen pastors that are spending a ton of money and I’ve heard people in the church say amen this guy’s I wish I was a bad yeah.

It sucks, okay number one jesse hit on it, and that is they call it a compensation, study, winters and king, who is on here some of the other guys around their ministry specialist and they know how to run a compensation study for you. Also, there are compensation handbooks. It’s like the handbook of ministers. Compensation is published every year or two it’ll show. You averages on your geographical region, the size of church, who are the amount of money that business coach church brings in so you can get a feel. A lot of these people don’t know what the market value is right in any job has a market value, and so pastors or the or the same way when we come back from the break, I want to get more into the market value of pastors. What to pay yourself? What not. I know, there’s a pastor listening right now, that is your living with your mom blow your means, but I want to balance frugality practically. How much should you pay yourself as a pastor

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