Recent news reports confirm for those of us who work in a church what we already know.
Most people don't tithe. We may not agree on the best approach for addressing this reality, but whatever we think about the topic of money it will probably come up. Your pastor is in good company if he does the occasional sermon on biblical stewardship.
So, I'm a facts guy. We know pastors like a few numbers, but we also know they can play fast and loose with them. Ever heard the term pastorally speaking?
So, here is a cool report for the Shelby Contributions users. It is actually like 10 cool reports all bunched up together each trying to answer just one of your pastor's questions about giving.
This one you can't just copy and paste! At the top of the code You have to set:
- The calendar year you want to study (optional, looks at last year by default)
- The minimum threshold for what you think a "tithe" might be in your church. Say $4,000 on an average household income of $40,000.
- The Shelby Contributions purpose code you want to study.
However, you will get answers to these cool questions:
- Total Giving (for that purpose that year)
- Giving By People Excluding Loose Plate AND Businesses
- How Many People Gave?
- How Many Families Gave?
- Average Giving Per Family?
- Estimated Number of Families Tithing
- Avg Family Giving By Tenure - 0 Years (how does how long they've been giving impact their average?)
- Avg Family Giving By Tenure - 1 Years
- Avg Family Giving By Tenure - 2 Years
- Avg Family Giving By Tenure - 3 Years
- Avg Family Giving By Frequency - a. 1 Gift (how does how often they give impact their average)
- Avg Family Giving By Frequency - b. 1 - 5 Gifts
- Avg Family Giving By Frequency - c. 6-11 Gifts
- Avg Family Giving By Frequency - d. 12-23 Gifts
- Avg Family Giving By Frequency - e. 24 Or More Gifts
- Giving By Top 20% of Families (SQL Server 2005 version only)
- Giving By Top 20% of ALL Giving Units (SQL Server 2005 version only)
Your report won't look nice unless you can format it somehow. I used a report designer, but you can use Excel by right clicking on the data and exporting it there.
Please note that this report only looks at people who give recordable gifts. It assumes your loose plate offering goes to a fake organization record not a fake Individual record. It can't know anything about those who give loose plate offerings or about those who don't give at all. That means it doesn't average in non givers and annonymous givers who would bring averages down. It also may not include some of your biggest donors who give through foundations or businesses that might bring the averages up. It certainly will not include giving you didn't put through ShelbyContributions like gifts of stock.
This report does not show any names or indiviudal giving info, but it does require rights to the Contributions tables to execute from ShelbyQUERY
Here is the code. There are two versions one of which may not work for you!
Download Tithe-Sermon-Questions-SQL-Server-2005.txt (SQL Server 2005 or better required)
Download Tithe-Sermon-Questions.txt (Any SQL Server/MSDE that runs Shelby v5 should be fine)
Disclaimer: This is the most complex query I've shared to date. There is at least 3 hours of time invested here. It may not work for you. Even if it does, it could cause you some frustration if you are new to this. Post questions as comments here. Please note this only handles a single purpose at a time right now and it probably should be your main "general fund" purpose code. if you have multiple general fund codes that's a major modificaiton to the query. As always I am not affiliated with Shelby Inc and they have not approved this report. I do not guarantee its accuracy in any way for your data.
