Parish Financial Update: Mid-Year Report

Last week we read in this column about our fourth mission goal, which is related to our financial wellbeing as a parish, securing long term financial stability and being good stewards of our physical facilities. The first step to achieving this goal is to have awareness of where we stand today. We have recently completed the first half of our fiscal year (July 1- December 31). It is timely therefore, to provide a report of our finances from this time period. 

Our revenue for the six months was $2,164,387, while expenses totaled $1,974,185, leaving us with a net income of $190,201. We are ahead of budget by $176,386 primarily for two reasons: gifting to our parish is ahead of budget by $63,000 for the first six months of the year and our investment income is up by $100,000. This investment income is an unrealized gain, so if the markets fall, our investment income will decline. While gifting is up, our adult envelopes are down $13,000. This could be an indication that some have shifted from using weekly envelopes to giving a gift to the parish once or twice a year. Overall our income from donations to the parish is up. Our Christmas collection was up $10,000 over last year and up $26,000 from just three years ago. Tuition income, which is about one-third of our budget, is projected to be what he had budgeted by yearend.

Our expenses are also exceeding our budget by $102,000. One of the largest areas where our expenses exceeded the budget is our charity fund. This year we have already provided $15,000 more to help others than we budgeted, which shows that more people are having greater need for assistance in our community. Fortunately this is offset by the fact that gifts to our charity account are also ahead of budget. Lay wages, technology, and maintenance are other expense areas where we are ahead of budget. We had to replace the water heater at our school recently, which cost $18,000. We also spent $17,000 in December for snow removal which is more than we had budgeted for the whole year and more than we spent the last two years.

We are forecasting total revenue for this fiscal year to be $3,856,809, with expenses of $3,837,076. This means we would end the year with a modest net income of $19,733. However, we budgeted a net loss for the year of $159,161. The Parish Finance Council approved a budget with a net loss believing some of the deficit would be made up by income from investments. Historically we have not budgeted for this. We knew we could rely on some savings from previous years, if necessary. 

Moving forward into the second half of the fiscal year, two areas that we are concerned about are utilities and insurance. We have seen increases in our rates in recent months in both of these areas. We are also concerned for a downturn in the markets, which would wipe out our unrealized gains. 

Purely in regards to our cash flow we are always concerned about our payroll, which is at over $100,000 every two weeks. The weeks seem to go by quickly, when it is again time to make this payment. We have adequate reserves if we need to transfer money to cover our payroll, but seeing that number appear twice per month as an expense causes one’s heart to beat a few extra beats. But with continued strong giving and donations to the parish, we should end the year financially sound. This will contribute to meeting our goal of securing long term financial security.