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From payroll and insurance to church loans and retirement, churches handle a lot of money. And yet, unless you had a secret past life as a CPA, the need to manage money at an organizational level probably isn’t your strong suit.
At Chaney & Associates, we’ve seen time and again that having a capable, well-informed helping hand can make a huge difference in how well a ministry team stewards its financial resources.
Enter the financial consultant.
A knowledgeable, experienced professional can help you oversee your church’s fiscal health. This is especially true when they’re well-versed in church finance, in particular.
In this resource, we’re going to dive into the concept of financial consulting for churches. We’ll explore the definition of financial consulting, the benefits it has for faith-based organizations and their church accounting practices, and what you should look for in a church consultant.
Let’s dive in.
Financial consulting is common in secular settings. It refers to the practice of providing an independent opinion from a highly qualified professional related to a client’s financial activity, planning, and similar money-based decision-making.
Financial consulting can apply on both an individual and a corporate level. Someone with significant assets and income may require guidance in managing their personal wealth. A business can also invest in a financial consultant to analyze its finances and plan for the future.
Financial consultants are different from financial analysts (although the terms are often confused and used interchangeably). An analyst studies and observes other organizations. They look for patterns and industry-wide takeaways.
In contrast, a consultant is an outside professional hired to provide internal financial advice and guidance for a single entity. They provide this third-party expertise through a variety of services, including:
A financial consultant should offer a range of services and solutions that address both existing and future financial concerns.
It’s easy to see how a financial consultant helps an individual or a business. But what about a church? What can someone who is professionally trained to optimize financial activity and maximize wealth do for a non-profit organization focused on building the Kingdom of God and tending to the needs of His people?
The answer is that there are many services a financial consultant can offer a church. These fiscal factors may not be priorities in the same way profits are for a business. Nevertheless, they are instrumental in helping a church operate and grow in healthy ways. Here are a few examples of how a consultant can directly impact a church’s activity:
Your church may not focus on revenue growth or maximizing profits. But it still requires cash to keep the lights on in the sanctuary and each aspect of your ministry moving forward. A church financial consultant can play a key role in keeping your ministry’s money management efficient and effective.
Seeing the benefits that a financial consultant can provide for your church is just as important as understanding what they can do.
After all, if you’re a bigger church, you can technically hire an accountant or CFO-equivalent to help in-house. Smaller and medium churches may simply undervalue what a consultant can do for a smaller faith-based organization in the first place. Or they might consider them an expensive option that is simply out of reach.
That said, here are seven ways a financial consultant can benefit not just churches of all sizes, but your church in particular, through better money management and financial planning.
Hiring a consultant may feel like a frill reserved for wealthy individuals and major corporations. In a church setting, though, a financial consultant can effectively fill the equivalent role of a cost-effective CFO in a corporate setting. They provide big-picture advice, help identify unnecessary expenses, and optimize investments.
It’s true that a consultant will add another item to your budgeted expenses. However, as a third-party entity, these benefits come at a fractional CFO price tag rather than the salaried burden of a full-time hire. Since you’re in a church setting, the cost won’t be tied to profit or financial performance, either. Instead, it will likely be a steady, predictable, and affordable expense. To top it off, in most cases, the cost will be more than made up for by the positive financial impact that a consultant can generate over time.
A good church consultant will be able to create church financial statements, grasp complex ministry tax requirements, create church financing guidelines, and so on. At the same time, they will be able to boil all of that complex information into simple concepts that your team can understand and work with.
This streamlines the entire financial planning and execution of your church. A consultant can cut through the clutter and set up steps, systems, and software solutions that are often so simple a volunteer can use them.
A church has many moving parts — and by extension, so does its finances. This can create a lot of pressure for a leadership team as they stress over whether or not they’ve accounted for each financial element and responsibility on a regular basis.
A church consultant reduces that stress. They help make big decisions and can provide financial reports and analyses that provide consistent overviews of the state of a ministry’s coffers.
Church finances are important, but unlike a for-profit business, they aren’t a top priority. They simply exist to facilitate the Kingdom-minded elements of your ministry. While that’s good, it makes it easy for church financial responsibilities to slip through the cracks.
By working with a church consultant, you can ensure that a third-party individual is reviewing your ministry’s financial state on a regular basis. This provides greater credibility to your financial planning and boosts accountability as your team executes your financial activity on a daily basis.
Church financial consultants offer more than basic budgeting or accounting. They provide CFO services that can take a church’s financial health to the next level.
A good consultant will be highly experienced and equipped with the expertise that comes from up-to-date training and knowledge. They will also come with church finance software, assessments, and other tools that can elevate the way your church makes financial decisions.
When finances aren’t in the spotlight, it can be easy to hesitate when you need to make a big decision. Even something as simple as setting a Christmas budget becomes easier when you have a thorough understanding of your current finances and where they’re headed in the future.
By working with a consultant, you can clarify your church’s budgeted capabilities. Setting clear goals also gives you a sense of confidence as you delegate, save, and spend money in the future, too.
Finally, a church consultant should be someone you can trust. They are professionally trained to come into your organization, look at your most intimate financial data, and then help you make sound decisions in confidence.
With each goal-setting session, budgeting meeting, and church financial report, you can expect your financial consultant to operate as one of your own team members and trust that they won’t let loose lips fire up the rumor mill.
Understanding the need for a financial consultant for a church is a good first step. But what does a Christian CPA look like? What qualifications and attributes should you consider as you vet each professional and look for one that is well-suited for your ministry’s financial planning and management needs? Here are eight things to look for:
We already touched on the powerful effect that a professional consultant can provide. A good consultant will have an intimate understanding of everything financial, from the nuances of clergy tax reporting to the complexities of capital fundraising.
Financial consulting must be able to adapt to the needs of each individual and organization — including a church. For example, at Chaney & Associates, we are big believers in the idea that a church should work with a financial consultant who understands the weight that comes not from simply generating revenue but from stewarding tithe money and similar donations. Make sure your consultant intimately understands what it means to run a church’s finances.
Everyone attends church, and as a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural entity, God’s Church is constantly adapting to new circumstances. That means congregational trends, behaviors, and expectations are going to change over time. A good consultant should operate with innovative software and bleeding-edge knowledge to help guide a church through this ongoing shift.
Church coaching and strategic planning are very different from their corporate equivalents. Chaney & Associates has helped over 1,100 churches with accounting and payroll services for over 21 years. Look for that kind of experience when selecting your consulting partner.
A financial consultant should be able to balance a short-term perspective with the big-picture stuff. They should bring your current budgets, reporting, and day-to-day operations together with long-term vision relating to new ministries, bigger staff, building funds, and so on.
A church consultant shouldn’t be a solo act. They will operate best when they come with a solid firm or agency behind them. This gives them a deep bench of experience, resources, and perspectives to call on when needed.
A consultant isn’t a fortune teller. Nor will they know everything in the here and now. Their word isn’t law, and they shouldn’t treat it as such. If a consultant talks down to you or makes you feel ashamed for questioning their advice, walk away. Make sure you find someone who is willing to come alongside you and work together on bettering your church’s finances.
Gear matters. A consultant will struggle to help you turn concepts into reality if they don’t, in turn, have the tools to help them do their jobs well. This is why Chaney & Associates invests in perpetually improving our church financial software solutions. Our live dashboards populate with real-time data and feature an ever-expanding suite of capabilities designed to deliver the best-in-class financial services for a church.
From mindsets to tools, expertise to a Kingdom focus, look for the right attributes in each financial consultant you consider for your church. Trust us when we say it makes a difference.
With the entire faith-based financial landscape as their purview, it can be difficult to know what you can and can’t ask a church financial consultant. That said, here are a few common questions you could easily bring up with a consultant.
If you already are working with someone, use them to gauge their opinion and glean wisdom on how you can better guide your own church’s finances. If you’re in the midst of financial consultant shopping, these are great “test questions” to measure a consultant candidate’s depth of knowledge and see how they would advise you in specific situations.
There are countless questions that come with church finances. By working with a quality church consultant, you give yourself access to high-quality advice and support as you seek the best options for your ministry.
It’s no secret that they didn’t teach accounting in seminary. But that doesn’t mean you need to go it alone when it comes to your church’s finances.
As the accounting firm for the church, Chaney & Associates offers financial consulting that uniquely serves the needs of ministries. If you want to maintain a healthy, Biblical approach to stewarding your finances, reach out. Together, we can plan out a Kingdom-building future for your church.
