What is the problem with a Flat Pledge?

“Just put me down for whatever I gave last year.” Those words, be they in the form of an e-mail, an on-line pledge, a voice mail message, or a filled out pledge form are a wonderful blessing and a real challenge at the same time. Why?

First the blessing: Since every contributor’s support is very important to make the Stewardship Campaign a success, every pledge is truly appreciated.

Now the challenge: If our pledges remain unchanged from the prior year (as 33% of our pledges do), and our costs increase (as they tend to do despite every effort to economize), then we will have a budget deficit. Each year a pledge remains unchanged, it is actually declining as a proportion of the total budget. The message, “Just put me down for whatever I gave last year.” really means “I want to reduce my contribution to the Redeemer’s budget this year”.

One might argue that the financial impact to the Redeemer of one flat pledge is not that significant. Our financial problem, however, is that we have too many pledges that remain the same year after year. If you multiply the proportional reduction of a flat pledge by 82 pledging units (the number of pledging units that on average remain unchanged from one year to the next), the issue becomes much more significant.

If, in 2004, every parishioner who had a flat pledge had instead increased his or her pledge by just 5%, our total giving would have increased by $5971.55. Over ten years, this would have increased the church’s income by almost $60,000.

Stewardship is a task that is made easy with many hands. Certainly, some parishioners on fixed budgets cannot easily increase their pledges. At the same time, there are certainly many parishioners who are able to increase their pledges. If each of us will do our part to support the Church, then the burden for all of us is light.

We have all been blessed with so many gifts, and making a pledge and increasing your pledge is just one small way that we say thank you to God for the blessings that we have been given.

Please help us make Stewardship successful.  Make a pledge to support the Redeemer.