A note from our treasurer:
For those of you who missed the congregational meeting on 8/30, 2020 has obviously been a difficult year as a result of COVID. The good news is we were prepared for a situation like this such that we have been able to weather the storm so far. However, it is more important than ever that we understand what to expect in terms of financial giving for the rest of 2020 and 2021 as we can only keep supplementing our income with reserves for so long.
We experienced a 27% decline in offerings for the fiscal year ended 8/31/2020 versus 8/31/2019. We have managed to secure grants of approximately $28,000 to help offset that decline. We have developed a budget that gets us back to breakeven presuming we can return offering levels to slightly less than what they were in fiscal 2017 through 2019 ($254,000). As you probably know, about 90% of our costs each year are fixed and go towards salaries and facility costs (mortgage, utilities, etc.), but we have managed to set an expense budget that keeps costs flat this year (and only a slight increase over 2018 and 2019) while still giving our employees a 3% raise which the elders believe is important. All of LiveOak's financial information is available to anyone who would like further details.
So between now and the end of September, we will be collecting pledge cards from every LiveOak family. What we saw in 2020 was that we retained 96.5% of our recurring online donations, which is truly a blessing for us! However, we obviously experienced a large decrease in the gifts that we have historically received as checks and cash. We understand this is an unusual time for everyone, but understanding pledge information from everyone will be absolutely critical this year. We will also continue to ask that everyone who is not yet giving via a recurring monthly payment through the giving tool on our website to please consider signing up for this type of giving since it really helps us understand our cash flows and plan for the future.
Please follow the link below to fill out your pledge card. We request that all pledge cards be completed by September 30. In mid September, our elders will begin following up with each family until we have 100% participation. Only with 100% participation (even if someone can only commit to $1 per month) will we be able to accurately plan our spending levels moving forward.
Contact our church treasurer for more info: treasurer@liveoak-church.org