“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.”
BUDGET PROCESS
Our fiscal year is October 1 to September 30 of the following year.
In June we enter into the planning process for the new budget:
This starts with a review of the income and expenditures up to June.
We email all department managers to ask for their proposals for the coming fiscal year.
As ideas are roughed out for a first draft of the budget, the Executive Pastor asks for counsel from former elders or businessmen/women in the church.
Elders offer comments, and the budget goes through a second and third draft before final approval.
The new budget is posted on the website for members to access.
What we post online is a detailed budget, not a summary or a budget that lists just the main areas. For instance, you will see over thirty lines of expenditures for the missions department, not just one line that says "missions" and then one amount.
Finally, we are always looking for ways to be better stewards of the resources God gives us. Please let us know if you see something in the budget or our operations that could be improved.
FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY
At Desert Springs Church (DSC) we treat money as we would any other resource that God gives us: it is to be used for spreading God's glory broader and deeper. Accountability is imperative in this, and here are some of the ways we work to properly handle money.
We have a staff person here at DSC with the title of Finance Administrator, and she produces these reports:
Four different financial reports each month so we can monitor all areas of income and expenditure.
Every month she isolates each department's expenditures and runs a report for the department managers.
In addition to these reports, as a church we hire a CPA firm to review our reports quarterly and annually, and they furnish end-of-fiscal-year reports based on these reviews.
A common question among churches is whether pastors, or a governing board, looks at individual giving records. At DSC none of this happens.
Below please find a link to access DSC's past expense reports, and our current budget. Email me at chase@dscabq.com if you have any questions or if you are a member (or in our membership class) and do not have the password to access the documents below.
To give online, please visit our giving page.
Chase Jacobs
Executive Pastor