A New Year's Resolution for your Church

2022 was certainly a year of change, disruption and uncertainty. So, even more than most years, the end of 2022 was a natural point to pause, reflect, and make plans. It is just as important for churches and charities, as it is for us as individuals.

Similarly, it’s easy for the trustees and leadership of churches and charities to become so busy with the day-to-day demands that they are never able to pause to take a detailed look at all of their responsibilities. An important first step, though is knowing which diagnostic questions to ask. A US politician was mocked for talking about the “unknown unknowns” – but sometimes we do need help to know what we don’t know!

In this time of uncertainty, trustees need to be even more aware of the risks their charities face – and what they’re doing to address them. Carrying on as if “nothing really ever changes for us” is not wise.

This is why Stewardship has developed a very useful tool which enables church and charity leaders to work through all of the key areas of a charity for which they are responsible, diagnosing where further discussion and possible remedial action may be necessary. This free tool has recently been relaunched and is available on their website: ( https://www.stewardship.org.uk/resource/financial-health-check-churches ) Developed to support growth in the key areas of Attitude, Accountability and Administration (our “AAA” rating), it looks at themes such as:

• Leadership and Culture
• Generosity and Giving
• Risk
• Financial Controls
• HR and Payroll
• Long-term planning
• Organisational considerations
• Fundraising

Why take the Financial Health Check for Churches?

It will help you:

1. Identify which areas of your finances are healthy and which may need further attention.
2. Encourage healthy conversations about finance between your leaders, trustees and finance team.
3. Explore your church's attitude towards generosity and money: how can generosity and a healthy view of money help shape the culture of your church?
4. Understand what makes a church good to give to. 

Completing the Health Check will give you clarity and definitive steps forward, including:

• An overview and analysis covering nine key areas, giving you a clear picture of your church's financial health.
• The option to speak with a member of the Stewardship team to discuss your results and help you identify where support may be useful.
• Access to their expansive resources to help plug any gaps in your knowledge.
• A collation of questions that you have flagged for discussion with your team.

This is even better than the good New Year’s resolutions you come up with yourself – because Stewardship does the hard work, and your curated church-healthy New Year’s resolutions are given to you! All you have to do is work through the structured questions to guide your thinking.

If you’ve completed the Health Check, and want to follow up on the outcome, please get in touch with Stewardship via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or phone on 0208 5025 600 to speak with someone who can help.