Fundraising for your church has come a long way. In the “good ol’ days” you could just put some tables in the fellowship hall or out in the parking lot and pretty much do what you wanted. Now that most churches are under more scrutiny with their finances, how can your track your fundraiser expenses and income easily?
With most simple spreadsheets or basic accounting programs, you can easily account for your money that was spent for advertising or setups and your income. The problem can arise if your fundraising software doesn’t integrate with your church accounting software.
With so many different accounting software packages being sold to churches, finding one that will allow you to easily integrate fund raising into it can be troublesome. Sometimes you can get away with not using the accounting software to specifically track your fund raising efforts, but this can create another problem with sending tax donation letters, etc.
If you are looking into what you need for your fundraising software for your church, there are a few questions that you need to ask.
First, is this fund raiser something simple like a yard sale or bake sale that won’t require tax letters due to the small “donations” that are being bought? When most people buy something at a bake sale or yard sale, they don’t expect a donation letter for their taxes. However, the people that are donating the goods might. Can you quickly account for the value of the donation and the sales?
The second thing to consider is can you track income and expenses into the church budget easily? Will you have to work on one program for the fund raiser and then write out the numbers only to have to input them into the church accounting software package? This can take extra time and allows for other mistakes.
Another consideration if you are using your accounting software for tracking the fundraiser is will your software categorize the assets and liabilities of the fund raiser. Will you have to pay anyone for their services for the fundraiser? If you are doing a cookbook fundraiser for the church, will you have to pay for printing costs or delivery or shipment costs? Just something to consider.
If you are looking for church accounting software for fundraisers those tips are just a few of the things to consider. If you already have software for your church’s accounting needs, check it out further and make sure that you can use it for your fund raiser tracking.
