Woodbury (CT) UMC Inspires Giving, Erases Deficit with Special Campaign
Woodbury United Methodist has had a challenging few years financially, and we were determined this year to finish in the black for the first time in four years. We started the year anticipating a $30,000 shortfall by the end of the year, which would have cut our liquid assets by nearly half.
By April, we’d reduced our deficit to $20,000 through expense reductions and revenue generating events, but we still wanted to balance the budget. Stewardship was asked to run a special campaign.
And that’s when someone made the joke: If only there were 13 months this year, we’d be all set! After the laughter faded, we asked ourselves, why can’t there be an extra month this year? Every few years, the Hebrew calendar adds a thirteenth month. Why can’t we? Maybe we’d just been being too Gregorian-centric!
So that’s how the campaign was born. We’d appeal to our church family for one extra month’s worth of their offering, and the offering would go directly to offset the deficit.
But, as so often happens, our enthusiasm got ahead of us. We did the math. Even if every family gave another month’s offering, we’d only raise about $13,000, and we needed $20,000. And that theoretical maximum only reminded us that not everyone was in a position to give an extra offering.
But some people could, and not only that, we thought, some people could give more than that. That’s when our idea took full form. We would enlist a few families who could become matching donors, giving one dollar for every dollar the congregation gave.
In fact, we found three families who would give a total of $10,000 if the congregation pledged $10,000. We were on our way.
On June 7th, we announced our campaign. We called it, “November, December, Remember!,” with Remember being the thirteenth month of the year to remember our church deficit. When the campaign ended five weeks later, we not only met our goal of $20,000, we beat it. We raised $26,000 and wiped out this year’s deficit.
Those matching donors made all the difference. In our campaign letter, we used Luke’s telling of the little boy whose five barley loaves and two fish fed 5,000 through Christ’s blessing. With one extra months’ offering, our gifts would also be magnified. That was certainly an incentive for many of our church members, and it was a strong motivator for one of our “extended family” members. You see, I had our campaign letter sent to our congregation as well as to those who’d moved away in the past few years, and you know what? One family that hadn’t been in our church since 2006 donated $10,000 alone. They lived in Missouri, but their hearts were still in Woodbury Methodist.
So what were the lessons for us on the Stewardship team?
- Be bold. Just because a calendar says there are 12 months in a year doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.
- Be uplifting. Especially if you’re addressing a serious issue. Those who were able to give more were grateful for the opportunity to help their church. Those who could give a little felt empowered by the matching gift.
- Be faithful. None of us thought that we’d raise more than $18,000, frankly, but we raised 140% of that. It’s another reminder that if we plant, God will provide the increase.